Charades in the Language Classroom

Your language teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to use charades as a method for introducing or reviewing grammar or vocabulary.

I have memories of being a kid and peeking through the staircase and watching my parents and their friends play charades in the living room. I also remember thinking “I could’ve acted that movie title out better than Uncle Fred did!” Then, when I became a language teacher, charades became a class favorite improv game for reviewing or introducing grammar or vocabulary.

 What started at a parlor game in 16th century France has evolved into a fun, simple, but incredibly effective game to play in the language classroom. The basics of charades are:

  1. At least two teams competing against each other

  2. A person mimes (silently acts out) a prompt

  3. Their teammates must shout out the correct answer

  4. Within a set timed limit

  5. And fun is had!

 In my opinion, charades is best played with lists of vocabulary* or verbs. For example, in French students need to memorize the irregular past participles of verbs**, which can be quite boring. However, by doing past participle charades, students are incentivized to not only learn the correct past participle, but to make sure they know the meaning of its verb, since they’ll need to act it out or recognize it. (See below for adaptations of difficulty when using verbs).

 Preparation before class:

  • Find a place for this in your lesson plan. Maybe this is to review before an assessment? Or you are using the Drama Grammar method, and this is perfect for the ‘context exploration’ part of the lesson (in which case you’ll want to create some support materials to help students). Budget between 10-15 minutes, depending on how familiar students are with the game already.

  • Create a list of prompts (ex. specific verbs, irregular past participles, the unit vocab words in the target language, etc.) and print it out. Cut the prompts into individual small pieces of paper, then put in a container (i.e. envelope or Ziploc bag). Since I’ll often have five groups of six in a 30-person class, I tend to use five different colors of paper. That way if I find a random piece of paper when class is over, I know which bag to put it back into!

Before the activity:

  • Divide students into groups. As mentioned above, I like smaller groups of three competing with other groups of three. This way there’s two people guessing, which is small enough that students can’t just sit there. They also are guaranteed at least a couple of rounds of acting out the prompts.

  • Set the ground rules. Are participants allowed to put prompts back in the bag if it’s taking too long for their teammates to answer or they don’t know how to act it out? Are they allowed to have access to their notes when guessing and/or acting? If they violate the rules of charades (speak aloud or spell out a word) do they get any second chances or are they disqualified? If someone shouts out the correct answer right after the timer sounds, does it still count? I usually let each group decide for themselves.

During the activity:

  • The team with the most points wins the game. Points are gained when students on the person acting out the prompt’s team shout out the correct answer. There is a time limit (I usually do a minute, but that can be negotiated ahead of time) and the goal is to get through as many prompts as possible (gain as many points) during that time. The winner is declared when all prompts have been exhausted. As most students have access to phones with timers, I’ll have each group individually time themselves. This wikihow video explains how to play quite well.

  • While students are playing, I usually circulate to make sure everyone is on-task. If I see a student struggling, I might look at the paper and suggest a gesture or action for them to try. Because of the competitive nature of the game, there’s often a lot of engagement… and sometimes, too much noise!

After the activity:

  • I’ll sometimes follow up with a reinforcement activity, like a crossword** or a quickwrite, to solidify the learning in students’ minds. You can also have students do a quick reflection about how they did, and which words were the hardest to remember. Perhaps they could think of tricks of how to remember that word for next time? Students could also be asked to nominate an MVP of the group, whoever acted the best or guessed the most. Don’t forget to have students collect the prompts and put them all back into their container before you move on to another activity! There’s nothing worse that scrambling to deal with tiny scraps of paper between classes.  

Adaptations:

  • Do a round-robin style tournament where teams compete for the title of ultimate charades champion.

  • Do a whole-class version where either half the class guesses, or it’s a free for all (depending on the class, this could get raucous!)

  • Transition to a game of Pictionary after warming up with charades, or vice-versa.

  • Add in obstacles. For example, “for the next three words, you can only use your hands to act” or “you must stand on one foot for the next two words”. You could brainstorm a list of possible obstacles with the class, and pull one out of a hat every round. Or, you could throw them into the bag with the prompts, so when students pull out a suggestion, every once in a while, there’s a random obstacle added!

  • If playing with verbs in a target language with conjugations, you can start easy (have students guess the infinite) and then make it progressively more difficult. I do this by having a die that students roll. In French there are six conjugations for each verb, which makes it very easy! So, for example, if a student rolled a three at the beginning of their turn, all the guesses for that minute must be properly conjugated in the third-person singular form. If the conjugations are wrong (and you bet the opposite team will be monitoring!) then they can’t get the point until it’s conjugated correctly. You can even have multiple dice for more advanced classes: add in a die for different tenses!

  • If you need a fun game to play to fill time or as a reward, play charades like my parents did in their living room: have students write down famous movies/films/shows and guess the title in the target language

 

*In my interview with Florencia Henshaw and Maris Hawkins they make the point that giving themed vocabulary lists is not evidence-based best practice. However, that doesn’t mean that you might not generate more meaningful vocabulary lists in other ways, such as through reading a class novel, music video presentations, or words that come up through a story if you do TPRS. You might also be in a situation where you are obligated to test students on certain vocabulary, and this is a way to make that rote memorization more engaging.

**French-specific resources (in PDF form):

Have you played charades with your classes? What kind of prompts do you use? Any tips or adaptations to share? Post below in the comments!

Addressing Arguments Against Drama

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to consider the rebuttals against some common arguments against incorporating drama into the language classroom.

Ali J Chan/Getty Images

We know that drama is an incredibly powerful way to for students to engage with language learning. However, often there are concerns from teachers about incorporating it into their teaching practice. Below are some commonly heard issues and my responses to them. I’d like to note that these responses were greatly informed by the work of others, particularly Ryoka (see below).

 

“I am not a drama expert!”

That okay! In fact, the majority of resources available for incorporating drama into the second language classroom are created for teachers with little to no drama experience in mind. As Lobman and Lundquist say in their instructional book for teachers on how to use improv, “improv is too valuable a learning tool to only be used by specialists” (p. xv). If you are looking for some guidance from experts, I cannot recommend the book Enlivening instruction with drama and improv: A guide for second language and world language teachers highly enough, and if you had to use only one resource (other than this website, of course!) this would be the one. Remember, you don’t need to stage a huge theatrical production in order to be teaching using drama. Instead, you can start slowly, incorporating a few games or activities into your existing lesson plans. 

 

“This is all about fun, and not about learning!”

When I hear this, my first thought is always, why can’t learning BE fun? My second thought is that I can’t think of a language learning model that doesn’t involve communicating effectively through speaking as a high priority. What I think this is actually asking is ‘where’s all the grammar?’ Don’t worry though, grammar (even explicitly taught grammar) has its place in drama/improv (see: post about Drama Grammar). Drama games can reinforce grammatical concepts (see: “What are you doing?”) and improv scenes are as legitimate of a way for students to share what they know as writing on a piece of paper.

 

“I don’t want to look foolish in front of my class!”

Neither do your students… at first. But what’s the worst thing that could happen? You have a class where foolishness (i.e. mistakes) are normalized and even welcomed! There’s laughter, and sharing, and an understanding that we’re all in this together. Also, if you expect your students to take risks, you need to be willing to model some of your own risk taking! Remember that incorporating drama is not about the teacher performing in front of the class, but a co-created experience between the teacher and students. If this is a big concern, go slowly and incorporate a few games or activities at a time until you feel more confident.

 

“My students don’t have the language skills!”

I’m not saying that you should expect students to create long, in-depth scenes the first day that they start class, but I am saying that you can start with drama/improv on day one! There are a ton of non-verbal games that still build community and introduce thinking about communication skills. Moreover, body language conveys so much more than we give it credit for!

 

“I have some very shy students!”

Personally, I was very shy as a child, and theatre was one of the ways that I was able to get out of my shell. Specifically, I remember a drama workshop sponsored by BC Hydro that came to my elementary school in grade four that was the catalyst for me realizing I was good at improvising. Therefore, while I wholeheartedly agree that adaptations and accommodations should be made for students, I strongly suggest you find ways to include them in speaking-roles. Some classes (and students) are less enthusiastic than others, which means starting smaller, giving more time for preparation and encouragement, and scaffolding more.  

 

“I don’t have the time for this!”

If you’re worried about planning time, I have some great news for you! I find drama easy to prep for, because my lesson plans can literally have a 40-minute chunk of time that only says “scenes”, but I’m still confident an incredible amount of learning will be happening. (It also makes writing substitute plans a breeze once students know the games!) If you’re worried about fitting it into the many, many curricular outcomes of your courses, I would urge you to remember that time spent on direct instruction does not equal time spent learning. I found that students retained more, even though we spent less time in drill-and-kill mode, because they were able to take ownership of their learning and put it into practice almost immediately. As for me, this gave me much needed time to check in with students individually, observe them, or even have a glass of water uninterrupted!

 

“My students would never do this/they’ll just goof off!”

I cannot emphasize enough the power of peer pressure. Students don’t want to look foolish in front of their peers, and therefore will be more on-task than given a worksheet. They want to get laughs, and look competent in front of their classmates. That being said, making sure that the classroom is emotionally safe (i.e., laughter is always with, not at) is incredibly important before asking students to take risks.

 

“All my colleagues will think I’m unprofessional!”

It’s true that there are teachers out there that view drama as less academic or less focused on the subject matter of the language.  Rather than present your choice to include drama into the curriculum as incorporating drama for drama’s sake, you can explain it to your colleagues as fulfilling the objective of overcoming students’ resistance to using the target language, and creating a need for speaking. You can also explain that you’re not giving up your textbook, to instead think of drama as another way to bring the textbook more authenticity. If they still don’t see value, there is so much research out there that supports drama in the foreign language classroom that you can direct them towards (see: post about academic research supporting drama). Finally, I would ask you, is it more important that your students have a meaningful and fun experience with language learning, or that your colleagues are appeased?

 

If you have any other concerns you’d like me to address, or anything to add to these rebuttals, please leave a comment below!

Resources consulted when writing this post:

  • Angelianawati, L. (2019). Using drama in EFL classroom. Journal of English Teaching, 5(2), 125-134.

  • Atas, M. (2015). The reduction of speaking anxiety in EFL learners through drama techniques. Procedia, Social and Behavioral Sciences, 176, 961-969.

  • Cahnmann-Taylor, M. & McGovern, K.R. (2021). Enlivening instruction with drama and improv: A guide for second language and world language teachers. Routledge.

  • Even, S. (2004). Dramagrammar in Theory and Practice. GFL-Journal 1: 35-51.

  • Lobman, C., and Lundquist, M. (2007). Unscripted learning: Using improv activities across the K-8 curriculum. New York: Teachers College Press.

  • Perone, A. (2011). Improvising with adult English language learners. In R. Sawyer (Ed.), Structure and improvisation   in creative teaching (pp. 162-183). Cambridge University Press.

  • Royka, J. (2002). Overcoming the fear of using drama in English language teaching. The Internet TESL Journal, 18(6), 156-166.

Using improv in the language classroom: Drama Grammar Part II

Your language teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to use the Drama Grammar method to structure improv lessons in your classroom that are grammatically focused.

This is Part II in a two-part series about the Drama Grammar method created by Susanne Evens. In the first post I explored the method, as outlined by Evens in her 2004 and 2011 articles. In this post I will be explaining how I would adapt Drama Grammar for my particular context (middle and high school students) and teaching style.

SCROLL DOWN TO DOWNLOAD THE DRAMA GRAMMAR TEMPLATE

The framework proposed by Even is fantastic, and as I outlined in my previous post, has a lot that I like about it! However, for use in my own classroom, there are a few adaptations that I wanted to make, such as making it a non-linear and reducing it to four phases. What I wanted to address by revising the framework was:

  • It seems from her articles that Even has an almost exclusive focus on Drama Grammar in her second language classroom. While I really like the model, I wanted something more flexible and easier to integrate into other lesson plans.

  • Even taught second-year German to students at the University of Leicester for a full academic year; I teach younger students (ages 13-18) and do not have a full year with them. I wanted to have a framework that would work for shorter attention spans and shorter class times. Therefore, the awareness-raising and context-finding phases can be combined into one phase of ‘context-exploration’.

  • Moreover, four phases fits nicely with the Systemic Functional Linguistics model of the teaching-learning cycle (Gebhard, 2019; Gibbons, 2015) which begins with “building the field or context” as its first step

  • While I understand that the context-finding phase is trying to create an authentic need for the language structure, I think that it is difficult to mimic real-world contexts in a classroom using a game or activity. Rather than try to force this, I would put the emphasis on finding authenticity in the scenes being created by students. I think just creating a need for a grammatical structure in order to play a game can be enough.

  • Even used a lot of process drama techniques and activities (such as teacher-in-role, co-constructing, hot-seating, assuming the mantle of the expert, etc.). While I think there is value to process drama, I tend to favor the more classic improvisational games, which can tend to be more goofy and less focused on creating authentic contexts (see above).

  • The presentation phase is, by its name, focused on presentation of scenes. I would like this to be optional, and focus more on the dramatic play phase, as I want to be more process orientated than production orientated (see here for further discussions on how drama can be conceptualized in the classroom). Therefore, the two phases are combined into a ‘story phase’ to put the emphasis on the narrative being co-constructed by students.

  • I don’t want to be confined to a liner model. Instead, the phases could easily flow into each other or be moved around.  For example, students could weave between the context-exploration phase and the grammar phase, or alternatively the grammar phase and the story phase, as the teacher adds in more information.  Alternatively, students could be in the story phase, be asked to reflect, and then return to the story phase to make adjustments based on their reflections before presenting.

Therefore, for use in my own classroom, I would break the Drama Grammar method into these four phases:

  1. Context-exploration phase: the need for a structure is introduced through small games or scenarios. Students may be given sentence stems or models, though grammatical instruction is not given at this point.

  2. Grammar phase: explicit or co-constructed grammar lesson(s) occurs.

  3. Story phase: students create scenes based on a prompt (visual, textual, or vocabulary, etc.) and focus on incorporating the newly learned grammatical structure. Presentation can be to the whole group, another smaller group, just the teacher, or to no audience at all. (If you’re looking for some different prompts to start your scenes, check out this post!)

  4. Reflection Phase: students reflect on their grammar use, but also their ability to tell a story, cooperate with peers, and engage with their own learning.

I was explaining these ideas to a friend recently and joked that it’s now the (L)even model of Drama Grammar: it’s all Susanne Even’s ideas but I, Aviva Levin, have come along and changed it up a bit!  Joking aside, I wanted to share with you the planning sheet I created to help facilitate my own lesson construction:

DOWNLOAD RESOURCE (.DOC): Drama Grammar Planning Template.docx

DOWNLOAD RESOURCE (.PDF): Drama Grammar Planning Template.pdf

I’ve made an example of how I would use this model for my own lessons. For example, if I were to do adapt my Theatre of the Absurd lesson, which deals with inverted questions and absurdist story telling techniques, to a Drama Grammar framework, I would plan it out like this:

 You can see that we start in the context-exploration phase, go into a grammar discussion, and then return to the same game (the delightful BOOGERS!) to re-explore with our new knowledge. I also am still unsure about the prompt I want to use for students: should it be a bag of objects or a hat full of words? Some classes might not need to prompt at all, and some might need more structure. I also have students presenting to each other and then only two groups presenting to the class. As for the reflections, I broke it into two: one think/pair/share about our understanding of the absurdist genre (reflecting on understanding and performing) and an exit slip (reflecting on grammar; I’d likely have students put two questions on a sticky note, then place it on a traffic light I have in the classroom to signal how well they think they understand inverted questions (red=still struggling; yellow=think I’m getting there; green=I feel very confident). One thing to think about is how the new knowledge is going to be reinforced after the lesson. Like Even had in her sample workshop, perhaps there will be a homework assignment? If I were to stick to my original lesson for the Theatre of the Absurd, students would write new scripts independently and I would check them over the next class.

 

What are your thoughts about how I’ve adapted the original Drama Grammar method? What adaptations would you want to make to have it fit in your own classroom? Share in the comments!

Using improv in the language classroom: Drama Grammar Part I

Your language teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to use the Drama Grammar method to structure improv lessons in your classroom that are grammatically focused.

This is Part I in a two-part series about the Drama Grammar method created by Susanne Evens. In this post I will be exploring the method, as outlined by Evens in her 2004 and 2011 articles. In Part II I will be explaining how I would adapt Drama Grammar for my particular context (middle and high school students) and teaching style.

Recognizing a need for grammar instruction, but wanting to stay away from traditional models, Even created the Drama Grammar method in 2004.

I was introduced to this approach in Susanne Even’s 2004 article “Dramagrammar in Theory and Practice”, in which she explained a new learning model that she has created called “Dramagrammar” (note: by 2011 it was changed to “Drama Grammar”). Drama Grammar was created when Even noticed that post-secondary students were entering universities without proficient grammatical knowledge, which she attributed to an emphasis on communication skills above grammar structures in their previous language education. Nonetheless, even when grammar instruction was introduced at the post-secondary level, students seemed unable to transfer this knowledge into their oral production. Even describes Drama Grammar as “a combination of language in use and language reflection” that integrates “dramatic acting with conscious language analysis” (2004, p. 42).  By replacing traditional grammar, which is devoid of meaning and context, with Drama Grammar, students are given more autonomy as their instructor is more of a guide than a font of knowledge and language learning becomes more social as teamwork is encouraged.

The Six Phases of Drama Grammar

Drama Grammar lessons are broken into six different phases:

  1. Awareness-raising phase: grammar structures are elicited from students by creating imaginary situations in which the structure is necessary, usually in small warm-up games

  2. Context-finding phase: learners use the structure during an improvised scene that mimics real-world contexts that necessitate the same grammar in a concrete form

  3. Linguistic phase:  the dramatic flow is interrupted, and the teacher either explicitly teaches the grammar structure or encourages students to work out the rules themselves. This stage is placed in the middle instead of the beginning so that students have already experienced why they need this structure in order to communicate, which creates greater engagement.

  4. Dramatic play phase: students draft and rehearse longer, more in-depth improvised scenes using their new grammatical knowledge

  5. Presentation phase: students present their improvisations to their peers.

  6. Reflection phase: students settle any remaining questions they have, talk about what worked or did not work, give praise, and reflect on their language awareness and learning process.

Sample Workshop

At the end of her 2004 article, Even runs through a workshop that she has previously delivered to language teachers at a conference, which was taught in English, in order to demonstrate how a Drama Grammar lesson might be taught:

1. First, in the awareness-raising phase, chairs are set up in pairs in a circle around a ‘stage’: one chair (the ‘observer’) can see what is happening on the stage, one (the ‘listener’) cannot. The teacher enters the room, wearing a mask, and performs a short pantomime, then leaves. The observer then describes what they see to the listener. Next, the listeners turn around, and when the teacher re-enters, they tell her what to do, based on the description they received. Once that is complete, the observers describe how the first and second pantomimes differed based on what had been described to the listeners by the observers. Finally, the teacher does the original pantomime, and both the listeners and the observers discuss the differences between the performances. Students are encouraged to use reported speech forms (e.g. “I told John that the person was walking around, but John then said that the person should sit down immediately”).

2. The class then enters the linguistic phase (note: the order of the phases are presented differently in the workshop example than in the article). The class discusses indirect/reported speech, and small groups write out what they believe to be the rules, and any questions they have, on large papers which they present to the larger group.

3. Next, in the context-finding stage, the class plays a modified version of ‘Telephone’ where sentences are said aloud, not whispered, and the wording is changed slightly each time, using reported speech. For example, if the first person says “Yesterday I went to the new bistro. It’s expensive, but the waiter is cute!”, the second person will say “Susanne says she went to the new bistro yesterday. She told me her meal cost a lot of money, and I think she has a crush on the waiter!”. At the end of the activity, the instructor addresses any questions about reported speech.

4. The next activity, as part of the drama play phase, is a continuation of the previous game. In small groups students present a visual/verbal presentation, which are tableaus of a transforming rumor that they have created.

5. Lastly, students are given homework that allows them to transfer their new knowledge to different contexts. In this example, students are given a text within which they must find all the forms of indirect speech, and identify the grammatical tense being used.  

What I like about Drama Grammar:

  • The inclusion of a step of explicit reflection, which I am realizing that I need to do more of in my language classroom. Also, students have an opportunity to discuss the form and rules in an exploratory and collaborative manner rather than receive direct instruction.

  • Personally, in the past, I would have been reluctant to pair a small group grammar discovery activity with improv because of the feeling that it was too much time wasted. Instead, I would have paired improv with an explicit grammar lesson, perhaps because I felt the need to prove that the improv activity was an extension of a more ‘valid’ traditional lesson. This method has made me consider some of my own pedagogical biases and how they influence my classroom practices.

  • How Evens situates Drama Grammar within postmethod pedagogy, which resonates with me as a pedagogical framework as the emphasis is on “particularity, practicality, and possibility”. This helps me anticipate a common question that I get asked when I talk about improv in the foreign language classroom, which is “where does grammar come into this?” Within the context of postmethod pedagogy, I feel confident in saying, “as much or as little as your context requires”!

  • The psychological and pedagogical benefits that Even observed in her students. Psychologically, students felt less afraid to make mistakes, and were willing to take more risks. They also felt more confident and motivated, and were able to form deeper connections with peers. Pedagogically, students were able to understand grammar both cognitively and contextually, and saw its utility beyond classroom exercises. This also enabled students to be better able to self-monitor their language learning, and made them more comfortable with grammar topics in general.

Links to check out:

Check out Part II, where I will discuss how I hope to adapt Even’s Drama Grammar for my own context. What are your thoughts on Drama Grammar? Feel free to share in the comments!

Theatre of the Absurd: Teaching With Drama

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to use a Theatre of the Absurd scene so that students can explore the Absurdist movement, comprehend when and how to use inverted questions, engage in textual analysis, and show their understanding through creating their own dialogues.

Image source: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/beckett-s-waiting-for-godot-was-ugly-jet-of-marsh-gas-that-enraged-censors-5cr6tth6z

I do a whole comedy unit with high intermediate learners (the third or fourth year of them taking language classes) where we talk about comedy is and what forms it can take (stand-up, comics, cartoons, improv, sit-coms, mime, etc.) One of my favorite sections is to examine the Theatre of the Absurd, though this activity can be done with any other unit or as a quick one-off lesson! The Theatre of the Absurd movement is more of a “tragi-comedy”, as the humor comes from the lack of meaning the universe has to offer us (HILARIOUS!). But seriously, so much of humor is absurd, and there is a lot of word play to explore as well. I’m going to be using a French text as an example of how I teach this lesson, but the most famous Theatre of the Absurd play is “Waiting for Godot” and I’m sure you can adapt this lesson to any language!

I don’t normally teach using scripted plays, but I make an exception here, because it ultimately ends up with students creating their own! As for the activities I describe, the script I’m referring to is from En Direct 1, which was published in 1993. These textbooks are no longer in print, so I feel comfortable sharing it below. (Nelson Publishing, if I’m wrong, I’m happy to take it down!)

This text was originally a play written by Roland Dubillard in 1953 which aimed to demonstrate the tenets of the Theatre of the Absurd movement: life is meaningless and the universe is inexplicable. Then, the En Direct 1 textbook adapted an excerpt for French language learners. In comparing the text to the original, I’d say that I would much rather use the adapted text with my students, however some of you may have much more advanced learners in your class who would appreciate the original (and you could watch the video of French actors performing it). The adapted text is shorter, has simpler vocabulary, the subjunctive is removed, and any reference to smoking and alcohol are removed. Most importantly, all the questions were put in the inverted form in order to highlight that particular grammatical feature, such as transforming the original’s simple “Pourquoi?” into “Pourquoi ne supportez-vous pas la pluie?”. However, in my opinion, Dubillard’s original message remains within the modified text. For me, this is also an opportunity to practice some teacher transperancy and discuss with students why I make the choices that I do. I would be interested in their thoughts on authentic texts versus adapted texts and/or their thoughts on censoring mentions of smoking and drinking.

Potential learning objectives:

  • Recognizing the inverted questioning technique (how it is constructed and when it is used)

  • Listening comprehension (this can be paired with a fill-in-the-blanks activity where students listen for the questions and how they are constructed)

  • Textual analysis through the genre of the Theatre of the Absurd

  • Cultural competence through understanding the French historical context of the Absurdist movement

  • Practicing speaking through creating an absurdist mini-scene

RESOURCE: Theatre of the Absurd Worksheet for students in .docx

RESOURCE: Theatre of the Absurd Worksheet for students in .pdf

RESOURCE: Adapted script of La Pluie (PDF)

 

Image source: http://50watts.com/The-Children-s-Theater-of-the-Absurd

PART I: Depending on the level of my students, I like to introduce the Theatre of the Absurd with a video in either French or English (or both!). I’ve found two videos that I recommend that are under 3 minutes: The best French video I’ve found is by Pierre Teuler and the best English video is by the BBC. Through watching the videos, we make a list of characteristics of the Theatre of the Absurd or the Absurdist movement (which we’ll come back to in Part III). I also recommend this post if you want to have stronger grounding in the Theatre of the Absurd movement yourself for context. You can also watch these videos for more information:

  • TedEd video “Why should you read ‘Waiting for Godot’?” by Iseult Gillespie (5:03)

  • CrashCourse video “Beckett, Ionesco, and the Theater of the Absurd: Crash Course Theater #45”

  • Un plume fragile video “Mouvement littéraire : Le théâtre de l'absurde - résumé et explication”

PART II: Listen to the text. The original cassette tape is looooong gone, but this part is important since plays are meant to be performed!  You could get a fellow French teacher to record a version with you to play or perhaps you could ask some strong students to read it aloud (after giving them the script ahead of time to look it over). The worksheet I have has students filling in the blanks with the inverted questions that they hear. I have a bank of the answers that students can use, but for stronger students you can remove the bank. As we go through, I tend to pause to clarify for understand (as much as you can truly understand Theatre of the Absurd!). You can also show a video of the original text (or a short clip from it) being performed once you’re done. Although students might not understand it all, there is something special about seeing how actors are able to imbue a play about meaninglessness with so much meaning and physicality!

PART III: Go back to the list of characteristics. How does this text represent the Absurdist movement? In the worksheet I made, I left space around the script for students to annotate on the actual script. Below are some examples of what I’ve pulled from the text, but your answers may be completely different!

  • Believed life is meaningless and the universe is inexplicable = Person Two is unable to find an answer as to why Person One does not support the rain, and we are unable to understand what that even matters in the first place

  • Wanted to represent a more dream-like environment of confusion and ambiguity, unlike most plays which try to represent reality on stage = Person One begins by stating “Je ne supporte pas la pluie”. This is a bewildering statement to both Person Two and the audience, and as the scene continues to confound us, we must eventually accept that understanding will always be an impossibility

  • Wanted the audience to distrust language as a communication tool, as they believed that language was incapable of truly expressing the human condition = the ambiguity of language is highlighted through the use of the verb “supporter”, which like in English, can have a variety of meanings, such as to accept, to take responsibility for, to tolerate, or to root for

  • Draws attention to the banality of every-day conversation = the words spoken in the dialogue are conversational and colloquial, such as the use of “Eh bien… je suppose que…” and “Hou!”

  • Use of questions to represent the struggle humans have to understand an inexplicable reality = Person Two uses questions to attempt to clarify why Person One does not support various things associated with the rain. This is also how ideas are connected and flow: despite each question eliciting another illogical tangent, the questions are able to move the dialogue forward.

Image source: http://50watts.com/The-Children-s-Theater-of-the-Absurd

PART IV: Students pair-off and write their own absurdist dialogue. In the first column they have the script, in the second part they annotate how this conforms to the tenets of the Theatre of the Absurd, using La Pluie as a model. This is also an opportunity to focus on creating inverted questions! For students that might need inspiration to get started on their scenes, you could have a hat with pieces of paper with a bunch of weather phenomena (ex. the rain, the snow, a rainbow) or another theme (ex. normal activities or common objects) to give students inspiration.

PART V: Have an ‘absurdity-off’!!! A pair of students perform their absurd dialogue for another pair. Between the two groups, they decide which of the two texts were more absurd (honor system). Continue with the winners going up against a new pair (while the pair that was eliminated gets a chance to watch other pairs perform). After there are only two groups left, they perform for the class as a whole and the class votes on the ‘Most Absurd’ dialogue. (NOTE: If you have group that is strong with improv and seems to grasp the concept easily, you can skip Part IV, or at least make it less scripted, having them sketch out their basic idea rather than write out an entire script).

POTENTIAL CONTINUATION/FORMATIVE FEEDBACK: Students individually rewrite the script they made with their partner, paying attention to grammar and vocabulary (which likely has some errors since they quickly wrote it in class). However, the catch is that while they can keep the answers, they have to make completely new questions! (Or the opposite: they need to make completely new answers to the original questions! Or they exchange their scripts with another group and need to do this!) Students then hand it in for the teacher to give feedback on inverted question formation. I also usually start the next day with a warm-up game that involves absurd inverted questions.

 UPDATE: I’ve adapted this lesson for a Drama Grammar lesson template, which you can check out here.

How do you use different types of drama in your classroom? Have you ever explored the Theatre of the Absurd with students? Share in the comments!

What are you doing? Improv Grammar Game

Your language teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to use the “What are you doing” improv game to reinforce present tense verb use. 

“What are you doing?” is a classic improv warm-up game. By that, it’s a game that’s designed to exercise your creativity, not be presented to an audience for laughs (though those usually occur!). More importantly, for our purposes, it’s a great exercise to practice the present tense of verbs!

 The way that the game works is that Person A starts miming an action, let’s say fishing. Person B walks up and asks, in the target language, “What are you doing?”. Person A responds by saying what they are doing using the present tense, but it can’t be the thing they are miming. So maybe Person A says “I’m playing hockey”. Then Person B begins miming playing hockey. Person C walks up, asking “What are you doing?”. Person B responds with anything but playing hockey, so maybe they say “I’m watching TV”. And so the game continues.

Stock image sites are great for brain-storming ideas for possible actions or for printing out pictures to help scaffold students into playing the game.

There are a few ways that this can be played. One is having a small group circle, and the person to the left always asks what the person to the right is doing. A more challenging variation is doing this in pairs, which keeps students on their toes, as they don’t have any time to preplan their answers. More advanced students might be able to do this game without any scaffolding, but novices might need a brainstorm of verbs, or even just conjugations, before playing.

This a great game for introducing students to improv, as typically there’s no audience and they only need to produce one sentence at a time. If you’re worried about students freezing up, the first time you play you can pass out slips of paper with either the sentence students should say or a picture of the action they should describe, so that they can get used to the format of the game (miming the action but saying something different). Then, in the second round, they need to generate their own verbs.

 You can also encourage students to go beyond the subject+verb structure, asking for further information. For example, maybe it’s subject+verb+adverb (or however your TL structures it) so that the student has to mime playing hockey excitedly, fishing unenthusiastically, or watching TV sadly. This can make for more challenging grammar, but also more fun for the students doing the miming! You can also encourage students to stick to themes, such as unit vocabulary or types of verbs (for example, only irregular verbs or reflexive verbs).

The beauty of the game is that there is an infinite number of responses (as many as there are verbs and qualifiers): the only wrong ones are if you describe what you’re currently doing or you assign an inappropriate action to your partner! Students can get really creative with both their answers (walking on the moon, feeding an elephant, eating a cake as big as me) and their mimes (I’m smiling just thinking about someone miming trying to eat a cake that’s the size of themselves!)

RESOURCE: Video describing how to play the game

RESOURCE: Video that goes into variations of the game and tips/tricks

RESOURCE: Florea (2011) breaks down this game into six easy-to-follow steps (presentation / practice / production / preparation / modeling / play) to add more scaffolding into playing this game, which you can read on pages 50-51 of her article.

 

Have you played this game before? Feel free to share any variations, lessons learned, or thoughts in the comments!