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立 政 治 大 學
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N a tio na
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Most students in remedial classes often lacked interest and confidence within the realm of English learning. Hence, in addition to the cognitive teaching goals, teachers of remedial English classes were expected to adopt creative and various teaching methods and materials, including songs, chants, storybooks and so forth to arouse students’ interests. There were no fixed materials and schedules in remedial English lessons. Teachers often reviewed lessons of regular English textbooks in the first 40 minutes, and then did extra activities and used supplementary materials in the remaining 40 minutes. In this study, students received review lessons during the first period, and RT instructions during the second phase of remedial lessons.
3.2 Readers Theater Intervention
3.2.1 Instructor
The researcher, Claire, was also the teacher, because she had relevant experience and knowledge. She held an English RT summer camp for elementary school students in 2013. In terms of English teaching profession, she is now a graduate student in TESOL, and has been teaching English for six years. In addition, she has been part of a non-profit theatre club since 2008, and has taken a course named Introduction to Theatre Practice: Acting, directing, and producing during her master degree TESOL program. Hence, Claire had a sufficient, relevant knowledge about Readers Theater as the instructor.
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立 政 治 大 學
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N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
3.2.2 Material
The RT scripts were modified from the mini dialogues of students’ textbooks.
According to the book, Integrating Readers Theater into EFL classrooms (Hsu, 2011), materials revised from students’ textbooks contained several advantages. Because students were familiar with most of the words and content, the teacher could devote more time and effort to sharpening students’ oral expression, and students could benefit from analyzing characters and plots more easily. Those advantages were especially important for remedial students, because they had limited English vocabulary. The adaptation of familiar materials prevented them from struggling with words at the expense of reading fluency.
The series was called Hello, Darbie!, and it was published by Kang Hsuan Educational Publishing Group. Lesson one and two were about Hua Mulan, which was a well-known ancient Chinese story in which Mulan pretended to be a male solider for her father. The two lessons were modified into two RT scripts (see Appendix 1&2), which were based on the principles of suiting students’ ability, repeating important vocabulary, and causing dramatic effects (Hsu, 2011). To make sure of the quality of the scripts, they were proofread by a professor in the English Department and a graduate student of Linguistics at NCCU.
3.2.3 RT procedure
The program lasted for eleven weeks. It went from March 10th to May 26th. Each lesson lasted for 40 minutes, and there were 11 classes in total. Kevin received 8 lessons, because he missed 3 classes on March 31st, April 21st, and May 12th. He still learned
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concepts for classes he did not obtain, since the teacher reviewed and practiced key concepts taught previously each time. Table 3.1 shows the schedule and lesson plans of RT instructions. Students learned two scripts. Script 1 had four lessons, and the fifth lesson was their presentation day of script 1; script 2 had five lessons and the sixth lesson was their presentation day of script 2. Script 2 had one more lesson than script 1 because script 2 was more difficult for students.
Table 3.1 Schedule & Lesson Plans of RT Instructions Date Script Lesson plan
RT concept: Introduce RT with videos March
17th
Script 1:
What subject do you like?
Script: read with big and small volume, choose characters
Reading skill: express different emotions (guessing game)
Reading skill: intonation (read English letters with various intonations)，pausing & punctuations, characters & tone (role play)
Rehearsals
Reading skill: voice projection (shooting game)
Rehearsals
Post discussion (watch video recording & give feedback)
April Script 2: We Script: become familiar with lines
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Script: read with big and small volume, choose characters
Reading skill: tempo (musical game), linking sounds
Reading skill: phrasing (unscramble sentence activity)
Reading skill: intonation, stress
Performance skill: sound effects
Rehearsal May
19th
Script 2: We love winter!
Script: read with appropriate prosody and read accurately
Reading skill: character & emotion (role play)
Performance skill: imagined props
Presentation of Script 2
Post discussion (watch video recording & give feedback)
Appendix 3 was the sample lesson plan of March 24th. The teacher usually reviewed important reading skills the students learned previously at the beginning of each lesson. For instance, the teacher reviewed emotions on the emotion dictionary handout, so students could apply those emotions in later activities (see Appendix 4).
Subsequently, the teacher designed a small activity to raise students’ interests for that day’s (today’s) lesson as a warm up. The second phase was usually the main focus of that day’s lesson. For example, one of the teaching objectives was to let students speak
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
in character, so the teacher first discussed with students how different characters speak.
Then they did a role-play game to practice how to vary their characters’ voices. First, each of them received one role card (see Appendix5), and each role had two cards. Two students took the same role, and they had to act it out with their voice to show their characters’ features, instead of describing their role correctly. Students who found their pairs first were winners of the game. In the third phase of rehearsal, students then practiced integrating those reading skills into their scripts. On top of that, they also practiced how to enter, exit the stage, hold their scripts properly and so forth. In the fourth phase, students then wrote their reflections on that day’s lesson and considered what they had learned, and which part of the lesson they enjoyed most or least and why, in their student diaries. Finally, they had to read their lines individually to the teacher, and that was the examination of that day’s lesson.