Drink, Drugs and Knives: How They Help me Teach English

Liz Plampton, UK

Liz Plampton teaches General English and is also a playwright and professional actress. She recently presented a workshop on Drama in the Classroom at the IATEFL Conference in Cardiff, 2009. Email: Liz@plampton.co.uk

I have been looking for good, authentic texts ever since a student of mine who was staying in the UK came up to me in class and complained. He said the language I was teaching him was-‘No good’ – ‘Waste of time down pub’. He said he wanted the sort of language that real people use. He just couldn’t understand what people ‘out there’ were saying.
I was quite shaken, as you can imagine. I’d spent days thrashing out the use of the present perfect with him. What more could this ungrateful, rude, egotistical,……. student want?

After some reflection, it seemed that what this student wanted, (apart from a good slap) was not only to learn English, but also to live the culture. All I needed to do was unlock the door to the language of native speakers! Hmm, not so easy I thought, when you have a course book and syllabus to keep to. I suppose I could give him a few colloquial phrases as we go along, I thought forlornly. But surely there must be something out there!

And of course there was! Let me introduce you to One Million Tiny Plays about Britain from the Guardian newspaper. Discover ways to engage and motivate students by exposing them to what is really happening in our society today – its culture and social issues and the language that supports it!

WARNING! Some of these plays may offend you. You may not even like some of them. They may be inappropriate for your students, - but I’ll let you be the judge of that.
All I can say is that I have used a number of them in the classroom and my students found them entertaining, motivating and as a result, the plays were extremely successful in engaging students with the text for both the language and the meaning.
Students recognised the language. They’d heard it down the pub! How cool was that? Suddenly it was like the light had come on and there was someone there!

If you haven’t already come across these plays, they are short, one side of an A4 and they address relevant, modern day issues and problems in our society. They can be explicit, very funny, poignant, disconcerting and sometimes shocking.

I believe this sort of material is motivating because it gives students an insight into what is really happening ‘out there’. Real people’s lives, today’s society and real language.

They often tell students what they don’t already know.

Introduce new and relevant ideas and make students think about things they probably haven’t thought of before - in a foreign language.

They help students to understand the way different people in society feel or think.

They can motivate students to read for themselves to find out more about a subject.

The language is natural and reflects spoken usage without being distorted by numerous examples of the present perfect, for example.

There are usually some new, authentic examples of colloquial English.

There is absolutely nothing to prohibit you copying or changing them. And they are easily downloaded!

Knowledge of the world facilitates comprehension. (Christine Nuttall – Teaching Reading skills in a Foreign Language)

Understanding a play, just like any text is important, but what is also important is recognising its relationship in the outside world.

This type of material, with the correct use of questions, forces readers not to just think about what the writer has written, but how and why the writer has written it, thus equipping then to tackle more difficult texts.

The need to ‘read between the lines’ is apparent in many of these plays which is useful for students to see the deeper meaning behind the words, this being necessary in lots of other kinds of texts.

Just in case you are a little nervous of performing the play, for students learning to interpret the play, the value is in the preparation, not necessarily the performance. However, in performing it, students’ understanding is deepened and made clearer when they have to think and decide what the other character is doing at any given point, or what expression he is likely to have on his face. How, for example, he will behave towards the other characters? In participating, rather than just reading the play, the student begins to experience and understand the true meaning of and behind the words.

At the very least, it may have provoked students to think ‘outside the box’ and introduced a new way of looking at things or even tried to make them share a view they would rather reject!

All I can say is, I’ve used these plays in my classroom and they have been a complete success every time!

For your information:
www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2008/nov/29/craig-taylor-one-million-tiny-plays

Please check the Drama course at Pilgrims website.