Play on Feelings: Using Intonation to Express Emotions

Intonation is notoriously difficult for English learners, yet it is important, particularly in English, for sending emotional messages. The role of intonation in English is complicated but generally English speakers use intonation to express emotion, as well as attitude! When we are worried about a situation, we may express that as much with our tone as our words. The listener needs to pick up on that worry in order to fully communicate. When our students speak, they also need to convey their feelings to help others understand their needs. On the other hand, sometimes we speak ironically. If our students can’t understand a sarcastic tone of voice, they will take away the opposite message from that the speaker intended.

And looking beyond communicating accurately, expressing and understanding the feelings and intentions of others, is key to making friends. Our students can’t have meaningful relationships in English unless they can speak with emotion. They do this naturally in their L1, of course, but it’s another story in another language. Often, our students are struggling with getting the words and grammar correct, perhaps even pronunciation. It’s a lot to ask them to also focus on tone. Furthermore, not every language is as expressive as English, so they have to learn the conventions of emotion and attitude conveyance in English.

So here’s a quick game to help practice using intonation to express emotions! I can it Play with Feelings!

The Activity

1. Pick a few short neutral statements. These expressions could come from a play you are working with or a TV show or film. Or they could be common conversational expressions. But you do need to choose statements that change meaning depending on the emotion or attitude of the speaker.  For example in the play Rising Water, a father returns home in the middle of a city-wide flood. He asks his wife where their son is. She answers:

I don’t know. Downtown, I think.

There are many ways the wife could say this. If she wants to convey her uncertainty, perhaps persuade the father to look for him, she might use a worried tone. However, if she wants to put him at ease and express faith in her son’s abilities, she can say this is a more casual tone. Perhaps she thinks the husband should be responsible for the son. Then she might say this quite angrily or defensively.

Each intonation carries a different emotion and requires a different response from the husband. Other expressions that work well for this include:

• What are you doing here?
• Can we talk?
• I’m not sure that’s completely true.
• I really think we need to figure this out.

2. Write the line you’ve chosen on the board. Then write three different emotions that are distinct such as worry, anger, and joy. Ensure that all three are appropriate for the line. Be sure students know what the words mean, and how to express them with their voice. You might want to model this (which can elicit some giggles and loosen students up).

3. Tell students they have to say pick an emotion and say the line with that feeling. The other students will guess which emotion they feel.

4. Encourage other students to give feedback.  They may say something like, “That’s not angry. This is angry. ‘What are YOU doing HERE?!?!” This gets them all practicing even more.

You can use this activity as a whole-class or in pairs or small groups. Students may want to start in small groups and then do some demonstrations in front of the class. It’s a great icebreaker or quick activity for the beginning or end of class.

Extension Idea

If you’re working with a script (be it a scene or a whole play), you’d then have them go through the script and mark the emotions they feel their character uses.

You can also go on to discuss each line and what the relationship and context might be. Students can go on to write a whole role-play based on a line and an emotion. Following that, have them imagine a situation from their own lives where they might use that emotion. They can role-play and practice dealing with that situation!

More resources to practice intonation to express emotions

• Check out our series of plays and dram activity books.
• Browse our blog posts on teaching with plays including this article on using scripted dramas to teach speaking skills,
• Check out our other drama-based activities: Teaching Students the Pragmatics of Honesty, Ten Ways to Teach English with a Play, Wearing Someone Down, How to Praise Someone , Wedding Party Simulation, and Intonation Sensation.

Pragmatics is Everywhere

I got this amazing feedback from an educator about one of our drama books and how teaching pragmatics resonates with her students:

I introduced the idea of using [Her Own Worst Enemy] in the classroom to my principal, and she loved the idea! I also did a tiny lesson on pragmatics with some of my ninth graders, and they seemed to enjoy it. A few weeks after the lesson, a special needs student was able to connect pragmatism to another lesson we were doing. There are powerful things for students to learn in this play!

This is why we keep putting out books. It’s always inspiring to hear that they are having an impact on teachers and on students alike. And learning more about pragmatics, thanks to my time working on this project with Alice Savage, has impacted my life as well. I had never given so much thought to the ways our daily communication are affected by the social rules about how to act in different situations and contexts.

Or the broad range of communicative tools we use beyond grammar and vocabulary! We use tone, intonation, allusions and references, poses, facial expressions, body language, and rhetorical strategies when we speak, We often do this unconsciously, so we are far more aware of pragmatics when we have to interpret it in other people. And interpreting someone’s intentions through their verbal and nonverbal cues is as important as communicating. But every day, to paraphrase David Crystal, we make choices of what we will say and how we will say it. We make these choices in order to get certain effects based on our understanding of the context, our relationship with the speaker, and our needs and wants. All of this is pragmatics, a kind of hidden language of communication.

Pragmatics is about Choices

Imagine a few different scenarios.

• A teenager wants to borrow $20 for a video game from their mother the day after crashing the family car into a telephone pole.
• A teenager wants to borrow $10 for a book from their father who is often indulgent.
• A worker wants an advance of $500, about 50% of next week’s pay check, just after the company announced it was going to be keeping a close eye on finances.
• A worker wants a raise of $50 a week (about 5%) after getting an excellent annual review.
• A 20-year old whose birthday is coming up wants to ask their uncle, whom they rarely see, who sometimes gives a gift and sometimes doesn’t, for $100 toward a racing bike.

Each is a situation of a person asking someone in a superior position for something. But the relationship, current situation, and context are very different in each. The stakes are also different. And that means the way these people will ask will be very different. In some cases, they can be very direct. In other cases, they need to be more indirect, and persuasive. Perhaps they will need to be manipulative or cajoling. We make these choices automatically. But a student from another country and culture, one with different rules, may have trouble understanding how to navigate these different situations in their new context. Particularly as they are also working on using the right words and grammar!

That’s why methods used to teach children, who are also new to the world and less steeped in social and cultural rules, are often a good place to look for how to teach pragmatics to ESL or EFL students.

Why Do Strangers Smile at Me?

For example, when my son was 6 years old, he asked me why strangers sometimes smile at him when he does or says something cute in public. It seemed like such an odd question. Of course we smile at small children. We do it all the time. So I told him people tend to like children and smile when they see a child doing something cute. It’s meant to be positive.

“But do I have to smile back?” he asks. Now, this is an important question. It’s not enough to just interpret other people’s meanings. You also have to know what is expected of you in a social situation.

“No, you don’t have to do anything,” I tell him, “They’re just being nice. You can smile back or wave, if you want. But you don’t have to.”

“Are they laughing at me?” Another important question. How do we know when people are being insulting? At what age do we expect to be treated seriously? How do we balance a child’s need to be recognized as a being with legitimate needs and feelings with the reality that children can be (and should be) childish sometimes.

“Probably not,” I tell him, “Not in a mean way. Maybe they secretly wish they could do the things you can do because you’re a kid.” I’m reminding him that relationships and context matter. Adults can’t act like kids. Husbands and wives can’t treat each other like strangers. A boss can’t talk to employees the same way she talks to her children, or nephews, or neighbors.

This question reminds me of my students who sometimes ask why Americans smile all the time. In many places, smiling is a sign of enjoyment. It’s only done in social situations when people are happy and having fun! In the US, it’s often a kind of greeting. We smile to show that we are friendly and open or to take the edge off of our words. Students who misinterpret this think Americans are silly. They may even think that someone smiling at them is a sign of romantic interest. And when they fail to smile as they greet someone, they can come off as cold. So pragmatics really does matter. And it really does have to be taught

Our line of drama textbooks that teach pragmatics through plays

Teaching with Stories is Teaching Pragmatics

I’ve also noticed my son’s school used to teach manners and classroom behavior (i.e. pragmatics) through social stories. Social stories are simple descriptions of good behavior and the reasons for them. They read a bit like the Gallant side of Goofus and Gallant from Highlights.

“Walton washes his hands when he comes inside after playing. His hands have dirt on them from all the things he touched outside. He doesn’t want to spread that dirt inside. And sometimes dirt can make us sick . . . “

The children read these stories, talk about the choices the characters make, and the reasons for those choices. Then the teacher reminds them of these stories at appropriate times of the day. After recess the teacher can say, “Time to wash hands. Do you remember what the boy in the story did? He counted to twenty while he rubbed.” There are even TV shows like Daniel the Tiger that make these social stories a lot more entertaining and turn these little lessons into unforgettable songs (Seriously, they are earworms from hell, but quite effective!).

Sometimes at school, the teacher even acted out the social stories with toys. I know this because my son used to ask me to act these things out with his toys! His bears have broken each other’s toys without saying sorry, refused to play with each other, and even told mommy they don’t want to go to the store today. Once they wouldn’t eat dinner at all, not even one little bite. It’s a great way to model what to do in difficult situations and give students the lamguage they need to navigate difficult situations as well as the kinds of variables we look for in difficult situations (Maybe the boy who snapped at you was tired or angry about something else, or you hurt his feelings without realizing it.)

Unless you teach young children, you’ll want to do roleplays, not act things out with toys. Awareness of pragmatics can even spice up your roleplays, even the most mundane ones. And prepare students for real-life situations where things can break down! Textbook roleplays always feel too dry and efficient and realistic to me! And a good roleplay is not only a great teaching tool, it’s genuinely engaging. It’s a play, because you’re creating a real situation. And it’s pragmatics. It’s teaching the reasons we make the social choices we do.

Play with Pragmatics

Now, the social situations our students are navigating are often more complex than what to do when you accidentally break a friend’s toy. But plays have a message in them. And that message is put into everyday language. In fact, plays are perfect for the language classroom because most plays are a series of conversations. The goal of a playwright is to leverage pragmatics effectively so that the dialogue sounds natural, the characters act like normal people would (with perhaps a little bit of heightened drama), and the resolution is satisfying (or unsatisfying for good reason).

So when we do plays with students, we’re teaching them how to act in certain situations. We’re showing them why people do the things they do (and those actions and reasons can be very different in different cultures) and we’re giving them the language to navigate these situations. And as our reviewer said, students really respond to it.

Looking for more?

Browse all our free resources for doing drama in the classroom at Plays and Drama Resources for Students. 

Slides from TESOL 2019 Presentations

It was an honor to present at the 2019 TESOL Conference and spread the word about using drama and video in language learning. Our author, Taylor Sapp, also presented on using his story prompts to help reluctant writers write and I hear it was very well-received. Patrice Palmer presented on teamwork skills and is getting ready to release a book on teacher self-care later this year! In case you’re looking for our slides from TESOL. I have put them on the TESOL schedule website/app. But I’d also like to share my presentations to make sure everyone gets a chance to take a look.

And please do leave comments, questions, and critiques in the comments!

Slides from TESOL

• Videos are a powerful tool for language learning because they engage and motivate students, reach beyond the classroom context, and provide rich verbal and nonverbal input. Learn about a new video and course book series, about a private investigator with a mysterious past, that teaches language, particularly pragmatics and communication skills. Slides from Using Video to Teach Language [PDF]
• Because plays are written to simulate natural conversation in realistic settings, they’re a wonderful resource to teach speaking. Plays let students practice using intonation, voice, rhetorical devices, and conversational strategies to make meaning. Experience activities from our scripts that exploit plays to improve students’ communication skills. Slides from Speaking Skills and Scripts [PDF]
• Unfortunately, Alice Savage couldn’t be at TESOL this year, due to a medical emergency. She’s fine now, but I did have to step in and try to give her presentation. I can’t share her slides from TESOL, but we do have a nice handout:Theatre offers a staging ground for developing conversational skills. Participants use plays to explore pragmatics elements of interactions including intonation, body language, backchanneling, conversation repair, transitions and expressions that signal intentions, emotions and other implicit meanings. Participants work with scripts and come away with lesson plan options and resources. Teaching Pragmatics with Theatre Handout [PDF]

What do you think? Did you learn anything interesting at TESOL this year?

Looking for more?

Browse all our free resources for doing drama in the classroom at Plays and Drama Resources for Students.

How to Put on a Play in Class

The benefits of drama in the English classroom are surprising. Students learn and practice a variety of acting skills, using their bodies and voices to make meaning. When they put on a play, what to say is given to them so they can focus on how to say it. Speaking with emotion and attitude are skills we don’t always find in our coursebooks. And when students act a role, it’s a sort of safe space where they can make mistakes. Plays are also usually written in natural language so they are a wealth of idioms and conversational expressions. They are also a wonderful resource for pragmatics, showing how we use different rhetorical strategies in different situations. In fact, acting in a play can be a sort of rehearsal for real-life interactions, as students test out various strategies and gauge the reactions. And of course, they do so within the target culture, which can be different from their own. For example in every country, A direct criticism is received differently in different situations. Students need that kind of cultural knowledge.

And putting on a play in English class is the ultimate group project as students work together to organize rehearsals and give feedback to each other, decide on blocking and staging, or even collect props and costumes. Some students even report using the organizational skills they learned putting on a play to do other class projects.

But it isn’t easy putting on a play, so I wanted to share some advice from Alice Savage, author of the Short Plays for English Learners series and the Integrated Skills Through Drama series. The information here is adapted from the Production Notes that accompany every play in the Short Plays for English Learners series.

How to Put on a Play

1. Read the play first. Make sure students understand the vocabulary as well as the story, relationships, and why the characters do what they do.
2. Do table work. As a class, discuss the play. What themes arise in the play? How does it end and why? Which characters change and how do they change? How do the characters feel in the different scenes talking to each other? Discuss the pragmatics of the scene and the play.
3. Think about logistics. Will you need to divide the class into multiple casts? Or will each group do a different play?
4. Feel free to adapt. Do your students want to adapt the play at all to reflect some of their cultural values (for example, Saudi students sometimes rewrite plays slightly to ensure that the genders do not mix inappropriately for them). Or maybe students want to write a prequel or sequel!
5. Assign roles. Consider the talents and personalities of your students.
6. Make notes. Make sure students note their lines on the scripts and even jot in the margin ideas about how their character is feeling, ways they want to move, or other important information to help them act effectively.
7. Schedule lots of rehearsal: Students should have lots of time to memorize their lines and also to get comfortable with each other. Students should be practicing both in class and on their own, alone and with other students. Be sure that you are giving feedback and that students are giving feedback to each other as well. Include not only feedback about errors, but also ways they could portray the scene more effectively: Is your character very angry here or just annoyed? When you raise your voice, you sound pretty angry!
8. Mark thought groups, word and sentence stress, and intonation
9. Practice speaking fluently so that it sounds like the actors are responding naturally
10. Decide how you will perform the play: reader’s theater, a full performance, a scripts-in-hand performance, a video, or something else.

Looking for plays for students? 

Check out the pages for our Short Plays for English Learners series and Integrated Skills Through Drama series which are full of free resources as well as scripts.

Even more resources to do drama in the classroom

Browse all our free resources for doing drama in the classroom at Plays and Drama Resources for Students. 

Using Video to Teach Natural Conversation

Video is a powerful resource to teach natural conversation to students. Students can benefit from listening to conversations between fluent speakers. In particular, natural, fluent speech provides models of pronunciation and intonation, and how we use our voices to express emotion and emphasize important words. Rhetorical markers such as “uh” can be pronounced a variety of ways depending on whether we are pausing to think, indicating we disagree, interrupting someone else, or showing disapproval. So audio can do a lot of things a written script can’t.

Nonverbal Communication in Natural Conversation

However, videos of conversations provide all the benefits of audio and more. In real life, when we are talking to someone, we are also reading their facial expressions, body language, and gesture. These non-verbal cues are a vital part of communication, showing how we feel and what we think about what we are saying. If you are speaking to someone who is shifting their weight from foot to foot, it might be a clue that they are annoyed or don’t have time to talk to you right now. When we want to sound authoritative or powerful, we stand straighter and we may cross our arms on our chests or put our hands on our hips.

You may have heard of Professor Albert Mehrabian’s 7-8-35 rule of personal communication, which highlighted that body language plays a key role in communicating effectively. This “rule” has been misinterpreted to mean that our message comes only 7% from our words, 38% from our intonation, and 55% from our body language. In fact, Mehrabian was pointing to the fact that when our body language is out of sync with our words and/or intonation, people tend to believe the body language more. That’s why it is so vital to help students learn how to read and also use body language, particularly as body language is often culturally determined.

What is more, in an authentic conversation, we sometimes respond non-verbally. We may shake our heads no, or nod yes. We may silently roll our eyes to indicate someone has said something silly. If we are discussing a rumor, we may raise our eyebrows and nod slightly to say, “That’s unbelievable.” In fact, when someone is speaking to us, we are constantly reacting to them and they are watching our reactions and tailoring their speech to those reactions. Videos are a powerful way to show students this and give them models to practice.

Context Matters

Finally, in real-life we know where we are and we can see the people we are talking to. And in videos we can see the people and their settings. However, audio passages or written scripts may include awkward and unnatural dialogue to establish things that the listener cannot see, such as, “Welcome to my pizza restaurant!” In real life, we point. We say, “What’s that?” We hand people at stores a credit card without saying, “Here is my credit card. I am giving it to you because I want to pay for these items now.” We give directions by saying, “The library? It’s right over there. You can see the roof from here. If you go that way, you’ll see the entrance.”

Acting! Brilliant!

Now, some people draw a line between authentic conversations and scripted dialogues that are acted out. How can acting be natural and authentic? I certainly agree that there is a lot of benefit of listening to real, unscripted conversations. I think videotaping yourself speaking with another teacher or fluent English speaker can be an amazing resource of everything mentioned above. But, we shouldn’t forget that it is literally an actor’s job to study and employ body language, gesture, and movement (as well as voice and intonation) in order to communicate effectively. If actors feel inauthentic sometimes, it is because they are perhaps exaggerating these communication tools. And yet, that makes it all the easier to draw students’ attention to those very tools.

Here’s a great example of a conversation from Fortune that would have a completely different meaning if students couldn’t see the participants. In this clip, private investigator Jimmy Fortune is taking his client Daniel to a safe house. Jenny is Daniel’s wife, who has been kidnapped.

Here’s the script:

Daniel: Where are we?
Jimmy: Somewhere that I know you’ll be safe.
Daniel: How long do you expect me to stay here?
Jimmy: Until I find Jenny.
Daniel: I can help you.
Jimmy: The best way for you to help is to stay out of sight….Take a shower….Stay out of trouble.

From the words alone, you can gather that Daniel doesn’t want to go into hiding. However, when you watch the clip (or have students watch it) notice the body language. Both men are stiff. Jimmy barely makes eye contact with Daniel. It’s clear that Jimmy doesn’t particularly like Daniel. His comments about staying out of sight, and staying out of trouble have a new resonance. We suspect Daniel has a tendency to make trouble and is not as helpful as he may think he is.

It is helpful for students to be able to read this kind of body language. When is someone being polite with them and when is someone displaying unfriendliness? Perhaps they have overstepped a line without realizing it and the person is trying to subtly show them that. Or perhaps the students want to signal that they do not want to be friendly with a fellow student or work colleague. This video is a good place to start in teaching how to be standoffish (although I don’t think we’d want students to copy Jimmy’s gestures exactly).

If you’re looking for more ways to use videos to teach natural conversation, check out the rest of the Fortune series. It’s very well-thought out course, 30 classroom hours, built around a 6-episode video drama about Jimmy Fortune’s search for Jenny. Students enjoy it and it helps them understand similar TV dramas they may be watching at home anyway. You can check out a free sample by signing up for our mailing list below. You’ll also get free teaching tips like this post sent straight to your email, along with product updates, discounts, and sales.

Want to learn more? Check out all our video learning resources.

How to do a Play with ESL Students

Producing a play in class can be an amazing learning experience. Drama is more than just a way to cover a book or a fun treat! Plays are a powerful too for teaching speaking skills, particularly natural, authentic English conversation. And producing a play is a great group project, a fantastic example of project-based learning. However, doing a play can be a challenge. So our author, Alice Savage has provided her extensive and valuable experience in how to do a play with ESL students!

She produced her own original play, Rising Water, with her community college students. You may need to find plays of different levels and topics to take into account your students’ age and level. But the basic process of producing a play in class is the same! And the payoffs are just as rich!

Why do a play in the ESL classroom?

Thunder claps, lightning strikes, and rain begins to fall as two high school students approach the bus stop. Magnus is a model child with good grades, Ajax is a bit of a misfit But as an ordinary autumn rain turns into a natural disaster, the issue what kind of people we’ll really need in the future is called into question in a new way.

In the production of this exciting play, the audience responds viscerally to the action and the performances of the students. When a play goes well, something miraculous happens. The actors’ classmates, teachers and friends are following the plot. They understand the pronunciation, and they empathize with the characters. These ESL actors have brought a story to life, and they have done it in English. Plays are not only powerful stories and speaking practice: they are great group work opportunities.

To being the group together, however, they had to do some work. In this elective, an integrated skills through theater class, students took on the ultimate group project, a play. In this post, we will share Alice’s process and her advice for how to do a play with ESL students. It’s not as difficult as you might think!

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Middle School ESL Drama Activities

In honor of Alice Savage‘s post on Middleweb on exploiting scripts and using role plays in the classroom, I dug up this draft article we worked on together for something or other. There’s some overlap in the two articles so it’s worth checking out both. What I really love about both is the variety of activities to do with plays and scripts. Sure, we can approach plays as literary works and teach communication skills with them. But we can also do grammar and vocabulary work with them. And so much more. Check out the post below and don’t forget to click over to Alice’s post on Middleweb as well.

Ways to Teach English with Plays in Middle School

When we chose plays to do with our students, we often think about the literary merits of the work. I was recently reading a message board thread on plays to use with eight graders and the suggestions were mostly literary gems, many of which I love dearly and remember from my school days: Our Town, The Diary of Ann Frank, The Crucible, The Taming of the Shrew, The Cherry Orchard.

What we forget sometimes is that plays are more than literary works of art. Unlike other forms of writing, plays are meant to be read out loud. So they are the art form most likely to imitate natural language that is used in real life. And as in real life, a play script that is written in natural language presents characters speak to achieve goals and they chose certain words and strategies based on those goals and their relationships with the other characters. In other words, they speak like real people in real life. ]

And so plays are a wonderful opportunity to practice making meaning through intonation, body language, word choice, and rhetorical strategies. Plays can reveal insights into the way speakers use fixed expressions, intonation, and gesture to convey feelings or wants, and to navigate relationships. And, importantly, producing a play can bring a motivating and much-needed sense of fun to the classroom. Producing a play, even in readers’ theatre format (with script in hand) also helps students loosen up and feel more confident “playing” with English and its many possible meanings.

So here are four ways to use the language in a play you are reading in class to teach communicative strategies. These are meant to supplement any activities down about the content of the play, which is also a valuable goal. And of course, feel free to pick and choose, adapt, and modify. This list is just a starting point.

SPEAK BODY LANGUAGE

Write a list of gestures that can reflect feelings on the board, such as:

• Folding your arms across your chest
• Slumping your shoulders
• Putting your hands on your hips
• Raising your eyebrows
• Filling your cheeks with air, then blowing the air out
• Covering your face with your hands
• Making your mouth into an O shape

You can also have students suggest gestures. Demonstrate these actions or have students demonstrate them.

Next, put pairs of students in small groups and have them take turns performing the gestures in poses. Then have the class discuss what emotion the pose communicates and where in the play you are working on they could use those gestures.

Extend the activity by having two students face each other and take turns gesturing and responding with a different gesture. For example, one student stands with hands on hips. The other slumps their shoulders. Or the first student shrugs and the second student raises their eyebrows. Students can improvise these gestures or base in on scenes from the play.
Have the rest of the class discuss what they think the students are communicating to each other with their gestures. This activity is a great way to make students become aware of body language.

As a final step, if you are planning to perform the play, discuss the poses and gestures that would be appropriate for characters in the play you are working on. Or set individual actors to assign gestures to their scenes.

GET STRESSED

Do a mini-lesson on sentence or word stress. For example, you can demonstrate how emphasizing different words in a sentence can change the meaning by reading the same sentence with different emphasis and discussing the change in meaning:

1. HE didn’t need to do that = Someone else would have done it.
2. He didn’t NEED to do that = It wasn’t something that was required.
3. He didn’t need to do THAT = He could have done something else.

After the lesson, have students look through one scene in the play. Individually or in groups, ask them to mark the stress in their scripts, take roles, and practice reading. The rhythms of a play often feel more real than course book dialogs and can be practiced several times. As you work through the script, you can also activities that raise their awareness of other pronunciation choices such as intonation, linking, and reductions.

PLAY WITH INTONATION

Write a list of emotions such as happy, worried, frightened, and reluctant on the board. Make sure the words reflect distinct emotions and that your students understand the meanings. Then select a few lines from a script. Choose lines that reflect commonly used phrases and expressions and that can reflect different attitudes. Phrases such as, “I just want to say one last thing,” “I can’t help it,” or, “That’s hard to believe,” work well.

Write the lines on the board or give them a handout with the lines on it. Model the activity by reading a line with one of the emotions and having students guess the emotion from the list. Improvise additional lines as necessary, e.g., “I can’t help it, when I see her do that, I have to say something!” Model as many times as necessary for students to grasp which intonation patterns go with which emotions.

Then put students in groups. Have them take turns delivering a line with a specific emotion, without saying what the emotion is. The other group members then guess the emotion the speaker is trying to convey. Students can then discuss different ways to express emotions.

Extend the activity by having students read longer exchanges from the script with appropriate emotions. Or, as a fun variation, have them chose inappropriate emotions

FIND HIDDEN MEANINGS

Sometimes people cannot say what they want directly, so they use implicit communication. This is very common in plays. To help students investigate these hidden feelings and understand the strategies that people use to communicate, read a short scene or exchange from the play, preferably one with only 1 or 2 main characters and a very clear purpose for the dialogue.

After going over the scene, put students in small groups to talk about:

• What the characters want
• How they try to get it
• Why they can’t they say what they want directly
• Strategies they use to persuade or influence the other person

Follow up with a role play in which students try to influence each other. Some scenarios that work well include a student trying to find out what’s on the final exam from a teacher, a person trying to get out of an invitation to a boring party, or a coach trying to get a student who doesn’t like sports to join a football team.

There are countless ways to exploit plays in class and help your students learn new communication skills. The most important thing is to have fun and encourage students to play with language. After all, there’s a reason we call them plays!

How to Do Reader’s Theater

What is Reader’s Theater?

In its simplest form, Reader’s Theater is an activity where students read a play aloud with the scripts in hand. They often do so without having memorized the script. They may not have props, act out the action of the play, or even move. There doesn’t need to be an audience besides the readers themselves.

Reader’s Theater can be used with scripts or stories or even poems. Sometimes the teacher or students rewrite stories in play form for the purpose of doing Reader’s Theater. This can be a great way to get students writing creatively.

Why Reader’s Theater?

When using scripts written for the classroom like those in the Integrated Skills Through Drama series, the advantages of doing a script as Reader’s Theater are:

• Learners experience both language and communication strategies in conversational contexts. They are able to feel the language from the inside and reflect on how expressions, words and phrases are used to attain conversational goals.
• Pronunciation and intonation work is purpose-driven as actors work to communicate the emotional intention of their characters
• The script is already prepared, giving students a language experience that can be practiced and then adapted to other contexts.
• There’s no need for props, sets, costumes, or even a stage making it easier and quicker to produce.
• A Reader’s Theater performance supports success by allowing actors to refer to a script. This saves time, which can be spent on ancillary skills work or even discussion of the themes of the play.

Considerations

As written above, Reader’s Theater can be as simple as putting students in a circle, assigning parts, and having them read a script. However, it can be a lot more involved than that as well. Here are some considerations and decisions to make:

• A play is a story that reflects human experience and can thus lend itself to rich discussion. Spend some time talking about the story. Have students listen to the play and/or read the script first and talk about the message. Share experiences and insights into the world of the play.
• Also consider working on the characters motivations. After students are assigned roles, have them work out the back story of the character by answering Wh- questions. Who is the character? Where did they grow up? What are they good at? or where do they struggle in life? Importantly, what do they want? How are they trying to get what they want? This can help with the pronunciation/intonation work and how they use their voice.
• Decide how much practice time to give. A good rule of thumb is students should be able to look up from the script half the time. Aaron Shepherd refers to this as “half-memorizing.” And to let students think about what intonation, rhythm, word stress, and volume they will use for each line, they’ll need time to read and mark up the script. For example, students may want to:
  • Add descriptions of action
  • Add lines
  • Practice motion
  • Note emotions and intonations
  • Highlight their part
• Another helpful preparation activity is to use the characters and contexts to do role plays. Students can borrow language from the script and adapt it for new purposes.
• As you prepare for a performance, you may want a narrator who can describe the scene and the setting. The narrator can even describe the action of the play if you do not want students to move or act out the action of the play. This may require writing in a narrator part or expanding an existing narrator’s lines.
• Decide if the students will move while they read or remain stationary. If they will be stationary, will they sit or stand. And who will sit where? Often in Reader’s Theater, major characters are positioned in the middle while narrators sit on the ends.
• If you want the students to move, decide how much they will move and how much of the action will they act out. This is called blocking. As noted above, if the readers are not going to be doing much acting with their bodies, the narrators will need to describe the action.
• Because in Reader’s Theater, the students are on stage at all times, you need a way to show which actors are not acting in a particular scene. Students can turn their backs on the audience or look down, for example.
• You may want students to have small props, particularly if the prop is important to the story. For example, a character who is always fiddling with their phone might hold an actual phone even if other props are omitted. If you aren’t using props at all, give students time to work out how they will mime using certain objects or doing certain actions.
• Consider how students will hold the scripts if they are moving. Will they hold in one hand? How often will they need to look down and read? Are there any long speeches?
• If there are scenes with specific settings, such as sitting in a car or speaking to someone who is up on a balcony, you might want to think about how to suggest that setting. For a scene in a car, students could pull two seats forward in front of two other seats. For a balcony scene, one student could stand on a chair or the other students could squat on the floor, for example.

Performing Reader’s Theater

Students can read for each other or for an audience from another class.

You can break the class into two halves, have them read to each other, and then discuss where they made different choices.

Because theatre is inherently dynamic, each cast will produce a unique production.

Extending Reader’s Theater

Reader’s Theater can be the culmination of the study of any piece of literature. After analyzing and reading the story, you can make a Reader’s Theater performance a kind of final celebration or showcase of the student’s understanding of the text.

Reader’s Theater can also be a prelude to a full performance. It can be a part of the rehearsal process in fact. Many performances of plays, TV shows, and films start with what’s called a table read where the actors read the script for the first time sitting around a table. They make notes of how they might read their parts as well as what parts of the script might need rewriting or adapting.

In fact, consider inviting actors to adapt scenes or add new scenes to reflect their changing understanding of the story. Perhaps they can improvise with situations that they want to explore. Ask what if questions, put the characters in new combinations, send them back in time or forward to see where decisions are likely to lead. In this way, Reader’s Theater offers a way to take language from the page and move it into the real world.

Teaching students to be honest: the pragmatics of brutal honesty

We’re not making this up. It’s National Honesty Day and we have some ideas for and ESL lesson about honesty using pragmatics, or the social and cultural rules that determine how we communicate effectively. People seem to appreciate honesty these days, but what are the pragmatics of brutal honesty? How do we act direct questions and say potentially hurtful things without hurting peoples’ feelings?

Brutal honesty can be broken down into how to ask direct questions and how to give give honest answers. And because those things are sensitive and the rules of how we handle them vary from culture to culture, context to context, even person to person, the pragmatics of honesty are complicated. But brutal truth can be a great topic for an ESL lesson precisely because it’s something students may need to do AND it’s important to do it in a way that follows social conventions. The conventions of English may be very different from students’ home environment!

Being “brutally honest” can be quite hurtful to the other person. So in English there’s a whole host of conversational strategies we use to mitigate that, depending on our relationship with the person we are talking to. We may use hedging language, or humor to soften the tone, criticize ourselves as well, give the other person an out, offer a pre-emptive apology, and/or surround the potential criticism with compliments. In other situations, we may revel in being brutally honest and talk about the benefits of getting honest, objective feedback. So how can we teach students to navigate these pragmatic challenges?

Using drama to teach students to navigate any sensitive situation is a great strategy. First, acting out a scene adds some distance. Second, the play can be a kind of practice role-play to prepare students to be brutally honest in real life. Students can explore language choices and rhetorical strategies to see what works, while picking up natural conversation!

The Incredible Jessica James

Find a script with a scene where one character is telling another character a direct truth or asking a direct question. Choose a scene where the truth may be hurtful to the other person, where being honest may be difficult. For example, there’s a wonderful scene in the movie The Incredible Jessica James where two people agree to be honest on a blind date that neither of them are enjoying if you can find a transcript.

1. Share the scene with students. If possible, show them a recording of the scene, then let them read a transcript themselves.
2. Ask them to identify who is trying to be honest. What potential harm could the honest truth do? Could it hurt someone’s feelings, for example, or reveal a secret?
3. Ask students to highlight the lines in the script that the character uses to introduce the truth in one color. What strategies does the speaker use to tell the other character he or she wants to be direct?
4. Now ask the students to highlight the lines that try to mitigate the damage in another color. How does the speaker try to make the listener feel better or accept what they are saying?
5. Finally, take a look at the result. Is the speaker successful at changing the listener’s mind? Why or why not?
6. While students are analyzing the language be sure that they keep in mind the relationships and context. Dialogues between close friends use different language than dialogues between a boss and an employee.
7. Now students can write and act out, or improvise, depending on their comfort level, their own scenes.  They can act out a similar scene but in a different context or the same scene but with different strategies and outcomes.

An ESL lesson about honesty from the play Her Own Worst Enemy by Alice Savage.

In this scene, two friends are discussing their futures. One of them, Aida, is a talented actress but she wants to pursue a career in science. The other, Vanessa, thinks she should consider acting. Here’s a short excerpt:

Aida: There’s no way I’m going to be an actor

Vanessa: (Surprised) Seriously? You really don’t want to?

Aida: Nah. It was fun. But I’ve got other plans. Anyway, how do they know if I have any talent? I’m their daughter. Of course they think I’m amazing.

Vanessa: Can I say something without you getting upset?

Aida: I don’t know. What is it?

Vanessa: I think you’re good, too.

Aida: Now don’t you start.

Vanessa: Yeah, yeah…I get it. You’ve got other plans. But I can’t help thinking. What if you get famous? Wouldn’t it be great to be in the movies?

Example of Teaching Students to be Honest

Vanessa warns Aida she is going to say something that Aida might not like. Because of their relationship as good friends, we can assume it will be something honest and something Vanessa thinks Aida needs to know.

What damage could Vanessa’s opinion do? Well, Aida might get angry.

Vanessa tries to mitigate this by 1) asking her not to get upset and 2) focusing on the positive-what if Aida becomes really famous?

It’s interesting to note that Aida is immediately defensive and she signals this by saying, “I don’t know.” She doesn’t say, for example, “of course you can tell me anything!” In thee same vein, at the end of the page, we see that Aida has not been totally convinced by Vanessa. She calls Vanessa’s speech crazy and is trying to persuade Vanessa that she won’t be a good actress.

Once students have analyzed this scene, they could imagine a similar scene where someone is trying to convince someone else they have talent or ability:

• a teacher is trying to get a student to enter a science competition
• a parent wants their child to play a sport
• one student wants another to write for the school newspaper

They could also rewrite this scene so that:

• Aida is persuaded by Vanessa
• Aida gets angry and Vanessa has to calm her down
• Vanessa tells Aida she’s not a good actress and Aida gets upset

So, if you weren’t planning to celebrate National Honesty Day in class, I hope I’ve changed your mind and given you an idea for an activity teaching students to be honest, and strategies to employ to tell a direct truth, then mitigate the damage. Leave a comment if you try this activity in class, or any other activity to teach the pragmatics of honesty!

Looking for more drama and pragmatics lessons?

• Check out our series of plays and dram activity books.
• Browse our blog posts on teaching with plays including this article on using scripted dramas to teach speaking skills,
• Check out our other drama-based activities: Teaching Students the Pragmatics of Honesty, Ten Ways to Teach English with a Play, Wearing Someone Down, How to Praise Someone , Wedding Party Simulation, and Intonation Sensation.

Why Do Drama in the Classroom?

Speaking lessons are my favorite lessons to teach. I love writing a really interesting role play and having students go at it. At their best, students get so absorbed in the role and the situation that they start speaking fluently. They don’t overthink their grammar or stress about their mistakes. And they are so motivated to get an idea across, they start talking over vocabulary gaps, using so much language. Then afterwards, they are so hungry to learn the real words! So drama in the classroom can be fun and motivating for students. And it teaches them fluency.

But drama can be so much more. Here’s a great blog post from Alice Savage, creator of the Integrated Skills for Drama series on Building a Better Role Play Through Drama. It’s worth reading to see how a good role play can help students learn and practice pragmatics. As Alice writes,

Pragmatics is the art of choosing the right language and delivery strategies to achieve your purpose. And this purpose is often far more interesting than a simple exchange of information. People, especially family members, may want to make you feel guilty, do something you do not want to do, influence your decisions, extract information or beg for permission. They may also want to express gratitude or praise, but even seemingly positive goals still entail responding with expressions and gestures that affect the future of the relationship.

In fact, the complexities of pragmatics may in part explain why so many people prefer texting. Texting simplifies communication whereas the pragmatics of a real-time, face-to-face conversation can be exhausting even in L1. At the very least, it takes experience, skill and cognitive energy to attend to all the layers and intentions.

The upshot is that to prepare students to converse successfully in a new language, teachers must move beyond grammar rules and vocabulary substitutions to include the hidden language of pragmatics. The benefit is that when it surfaces, as I witnessed between Irving and Idamis, the actors feel it. The language stops sounding artificial and the vocalizations, echoing (repeating back), backchannelling (uh huh, erm, yeah,) and “Yes, buts” sustain something that approximates the real world.

The Power of a Model

Alice also discusses the power of giving students a model role play and drama is a wonderful place to find models. When students read or listen to a play, they already have words and grammar they can follow, adapt, or use. They see structures that might only come out in certain situations. Do we ever say, “I don’t want you to take this wrong way, but . . .” unless we are criticizing someone we care about? Do we repeat words over and over the same way we repeat “Never, never, never” when we are admonishing a child or (maybe) a subordinate at work? It’s so rare that these situation-specific language features come out in the classroom. So a play is a great way to expose students to them—and if you have the audio or video, they’re also getting the delivery, intonation, emphasis, and body language.

Note that students don’t have to perform their role plays necessarily. They can even read a script, as a sort of reader’s theater, while still working on using their voices to convey meaning and emotion.

Free Lesson Plan

Sign up to our mailing list for a free lesson plan that uses the scene from Her Own Worst Enemy that Alice is blogging about. Audio and the script of the scene are included. We’ll be sending out more activities and resources like this one! You can also visit our page on resources for doing plays with students.