Theatre as TBLT: The implementation of theatre in a high school EFL Oral Communication course in Japan

Task-based learning and teaching (TBLT) has garnered growing interest from educators in EFL contexts around the world, particularly in East Asian classroom contexts such as Japan where prominent entrance examinations can exert a strong influence on pedagogy (Wada, 2002; Stewart, 2009). Aiming to increase communicative practice during class in such contexts, implementation of TBLT has yielded mixed results and some have questioned the ability of TBLT to achieve its objectives given the institutional constraints present in those contexts (Carless 2004, 2007, 2009; Butler 2011; Sato 2010, 2011). Most of these studies explore pedagogical tasks of a more conventional nature and overlook how holistic activities from other disciplines outside of language teaching can function as legitimate examples of TBLT. The current study nominated theatre as one such holistic activity and examined the implementation of theatre as a form of task-based pedagogy, following the study of Carson (2012). The theatre tasks were designed to fulfil the criteria for creative tasks, as described by Willis (1996) and the present study investigated to what extent theatre could promote language learning within such a task-based approach (e.g. Ellis 2003, 2009; Shekan 2003; Samuda & Bygate 2008).  The main study was quasi-experimental in design and investigated whether two types of theatre tasks could function as viable instructional packages. The theatre tasks were either a theatrical adaptation of an existing story (Adapted Play) or an original story based on one of three provided themes (Original Play). These two tasks were distinguished by the different amounts of conceptual creativity that they required, with the Original Plays identified as more difficult due to their greater creative demands. Three aspects of these tasks were analysed: 1) the process of collaboratively devising a play; 2) the effects of task difficulty on the language produced in the task performance; and 3) the students’ reflections on their engagement with the tasks.  The implementation of these tasks occurred during regularly scheduled Oral Communication (OC) classes at a high school in Japan. With a counterbalanced design, groups of six to seven students performed one of the tasks in the first study and then, after a period of ten weeks, performed the other task. Either task consisted of approximately 100 minutes of planning and rehearsal, spread out evenly over four class periods, and culminated in a staged performance during a fifth lesson. The data compiled for analysis was taken from audio and video recordings of both group work in class and the final performances of each group, as well as post-task surveys administered to each student individually after each study.  The main findings of this analysis were: (1) students in the Adapted Plays produced more fluent and syntactically complex language while students in the Original Plays produced less complex but more accurate language; (2) the Adapted Plays featured more use of overt narration which influenced the fluency and complexity of those plays; (3) student reflections from their post-task surveys indicated that the collaborative element of the tasks increased intrinsic motivation for completing the task; and (4) less initial demands on conceptual creativity in the Adapted Plays appeared to free up time later in the process to compose longer stories, though the frequency and quality of language related talk did not differ noticeably between the two play types.  Based on these findings, two points can be argued. Firstly, the Original Play tasks put increased demands on students’ conceptual creativity. In relation to this, the provided content of the Adapted Play tasks acted as an ‘embedded scaffolding’ (Shapiro, 2008). Secondly, theatre, envisioned as a creative task within a TBLT framework, satisfied the criteria for a task (Ellis, 2003) but raised issues regarding the constructs of planning and report found in the ‘task cycle’ of Willis’ (1996) pedagogical framework.