The Future of Education

There is a body of literature that espouses the use of drama activities in language learning (e.g. Celik, 2019; Carson & Murphy 2012).  This paper offers an explication of the “Talking Heads Challenge” that uses drama as one of the support activities offered to EAP students at Leeds University during the current health crisis.  In the summer of 2019 Leeds University welcomed over 2500 international students onto pre-sessional courses in English for Academic Purposes.  In addition to subject oriented courses in English and academic skills, students enjoyed a range of extra-curricular activities as well as experiencing day to day activities through the medium of the English language.  As we shift the taught aspects of these programmes into on-line formats, the informal aspects are easily lost.  The Language Zone at Leeds usually offers conversation activities and drop ins and has replaced these with various on-line chat sessions.  The Talking Heads Challenge aims to augment this by offering a structured, but informal, asynchronous, fun speaking activity.  Students are offered a choice of poems and short monologues each week as the basis to create their own “talking head” video.  Student videos are recorded and shared on the Flipgrid platform with a weekly league of the most popular views.  It is anticipated that this activity will help to mitigate the loss of informal language learning and informal socialising that occur as the summer pre-sessional courses move on-line.  This paper will discuss the rationale and setup of the project along with initial findings from the pilot study running in term 3 (Apr-Jun).

Keywords: EAP, Drama, Flipgrid, Asynchronous. 

References:
[1] Carson, L. & Murphy, D. (2012) Design and implementation of dramatic tasks in an English for Academic Purposes programme. Language Learning in Higher Education. 1 (1) 127-142
[2] Celik, B. (2019) The Role of Drama in Foreign Language Teaching. International Journal of Social Sciences & Educational Studies. 5 (4) 112-125