Translanguaging and product-oriented drama: Full Transcript

Foreign language theatre groups are extra-curricular projects for students aiming to develop their language skills by staging performances of authentic plays. The current study investigated the translanguaging practices of 12 students and a teacher rehearsing a German play as part of a UK university theatre group comprising different European nationalities. Our aim was to understand how these practices can support foreign language and literacy development in the context of a script-based, product-oriented approach to drama. Three group rehearsals were audio-recorded and transcribed. Following identification of translanguaging instances, discourse analysis was applied to extracts selected for their relevance to the research questions. The findings revealed that rehearsals provided a rich learning environment in which participants were affectively engaged, with specific opportunities for contextualised language learning and literacy development. Translanguaging enhanced these learning opportunities, enabling students to engage with the German script and its language as bilinguals, and drawing on both their linguistic and multimodal repertoires to learn. The study concluded that the integration of translanguaging and product-oriented drama offers a linguistically diverse and embodied pedagogical approach to language education, which offers a wealth of learning affordances that are less readily accessed in monolingual environments.

外语戏剧社团是面向学生的课外实践项目，参与者通过排演原汁原味的正版戏剧来提升语言能力。本研究以某英国高校戏剧社团的跨语实践（translanguaging）行为为研究对象：该社团由不同欧洲国籍的学生组成，正排演一部德语戏剧，研究样本包含12名学生与1名指导教师。本研究旨在探究此类跨语实践，如何在基于剧本、以成品为导向的戏剧教学框架下，助力外语学习与读写能力发展。研究对三次集体排练进行了音频录制与转写；在识别出跨语实践实例后，研究者针对与研究问题相关的片段展开了话语分析。研究结果表明，排练活动构建了丰富的学习场景：参与者能够深度投入情感，并获得针对性的情境化语言学习与读写能力发展契机。跨语实践进一步拓展了此类学习契机，使学生能够以双语者的身份沉浸式研习德语剧本与德语表达，并依托自身的语言与多模态资源储备开展学习。本研究最终得出结论：将跨语实践与以成品为导向的戏剧教学相融合，可为语言教育提供一种兼具语言多样性与具身化特征的教学路径，此类路径能够带来诸多单语环境下难以获取的学习可供性。