Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Table and Figures
- Notes on Contributors
- Foreword
- 1 What Makes Good Teachers Great?
- Part 1 The Teacher Paradox
- Part 2 The Learning Paradox
- 6 Taking Advantage of Structure to Improvise in Instruction
- 7 Breaking through the Communicative Cocoon
- 8 Improvising with Adult English Language Learners
- 9 Productive Improvisation and Collective Creativity
- Part 3 The Curriculum Paradox
- Index
- References
8 - Improvising with Adult English Language Learners
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Edited by
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Table and Figures
- Notes on Contributors
- Foreword
- 1 What Makes Good Teachers Great?
- Part 1 The Teacher Paradox
- Part 2 The Learning Paradox
- 6 Taking Advantage of Structure to Improvise in Instruction
- 7 Breaking through the Communicative Cocoon
- 8 Improvising with Adult English Language Learners
- 9 Productive Improvisation and Collective Creativity
- Part 3 The Curriculum Paradox
- Index
- References
Summary
My interests in improvisational theater (improv) and language learning and teaching go almost hand in hand and first surfaced during my undergraduate teaching experiences (Perone, 1994). Since then, I have been learning about and performing improv and integrating my improv experiences with my experiences as an adult educator. As a result, I have considered the rules and activities of improv to be a mechanism and an instructional tool for fruitful and developmental learning environments.
In this chapter, I describe my experiences using improv activities in formal learning environments with adult English language learners. For my purposes, improv is “a form of unscripted performance that uses audience suggestions to initiate and/or shape games, scenes, or plays created spontaneously and cooperatively according to agreed-upon rules or structures” (Seham, 2001, p. xvii). In what follows, I first describe several rules of improv that are shared by the professional improv acting community.
- Type
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- Information
- Structure and Improvisation in Creative Teaching , pp. 162 - 183Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011
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