Using theatre to improve English as an Additional Language learners’ communication skills

Book section : Chapter

Children with English as an Additional Language (EAL) grow up in an English-speaking country but use a language other than English at home (Murphy, 2014). It is often reported that children with EAL are behind their monolingual peers in terms of communication skills at the start of school. The gap between bilingual and monolingual children could be bridged through targeted intervention, but intervention research on this topic is limited. An underexplored medium that could be used in the context of an intervention focusing on communication skills is theatre. The present paper reports on a feasibility trial, conducted to gauge the potential of conducting an intervention that uses theatre as a medium for triggering an improvement in EAL learners’ communication skills. The trial was carried out with ten 7- to 11-year-old EAL pupils in an Oxford primary school over the course of three weeks. Feasibility was assessed based on seven dimensions: recruitment capability, design procedures, social validity, practicality, integration, adaptability, and effectiveness. The findings suggested that the planned intervention has high recruitment capability, social validity, integration and effectiveness but requires amendements in terms of design procedures, practicality and adaptability. Moreover, its data collection procedures, implementation and generalisability should be assessed in a follow-up study, as the breakout of the pandemic and the present trial’s protocol did not allow for their evaluation. Overall, conducting a feasibility trial proved to be a useful step towards the development of an intervention, and is recommended as a practice to education researchers working on similar projects.

Authors: Faitaki, F; Murphy, VA

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Dykinson
• Host title: Addressing Future Challenges in Early Language Learning and Multilingual Education
• Pages: 241-248
• Place of publication: Madrid
• Publication date: 2022-01-01
• Edition: 1
• EISBN: 9788411228022
• ISBN: 9788411228022
• Language: English
• Keywords: English as an Additional Language; communication skills; theatre; feasibility; intervention; SBTMR
• Subtype: Chapter