Abstract
Multiliteracies competence has emerged as an important research field, yet it remains a great challenge for primary EFL teachers in China to develop students’ multiliteracies competence. With the implementation of educational reform in K12 education in China, the importance of cultivating multiliteracies competence for primary school students has become increasingly prominent. Meanwhile, in the current K12 education curriculum in China, the practice of offering English drama courses caters to the needs of enhancing students’ multiliteracies competence. This qualitative study aims to exlore: (1) how are dramas taught in primary EFL classes in China? (2) how is students’ multiliteracies competence developed through learning drama? The participant of this longitudinal narrative inquiry is an EFL teacher at a primary school in Southern China. Data include two-semester-long observation of the English drama classes in the school, weekly meetings on drama teaching, workshops with foreign drama experts and interview narratives, as well as documents such as the participants’ lesson plans, journals and students’ feedback. Findings show that EFL drama teaching in the primary school adopts multiliteracies pedagogy, drawing on a range of media and aiming to develop students’ all-around skills. Findings also reveal that students’ language competence and multiliteracies competence are indeed greatly enhanced through drama teaching and learning. Implications for further teacher development are discussed, including offering English drama education in pre-service programs, enhancing acting skills mentoring in internship and in-service training, and observing and reflecting on one’s own and their peers’ drama teaching practices and raising their multiliteracies awareness and intercultural awareness.
Highlights
With the gradual advancement and deepening of the reform of college entrance examination and the implementation of core academic literacy, there is a trend of foreign language teaching reform in K12 education in China
Based on the classroom observation, the teaching group, the participating teacher Jenny has conducted the course upon the multiliteracies pedagogy, involving situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing and has obtained transformed practice to some extent
The teacher carefully studied the story and made teaching plans centered upon the multiliteracies pedagogy
Summary
With the gradual advancement and deepening of the reform of college entrance examination and the implementation of core academic literacy, there is a trend of foreign language teaching reform in K12 education in China. EFL teaching focuses more on developing students’ competence in language use, cultural awareness, critical thinking and learning ability, aiming to guide students to understand the real world in a multimodal environment, understand various experiences and construct their own values on the real world. According to Zhu [1], it’s vital to “enhance students’ awareness of creative learning in multimodal environments, promote critical thinking and logic reasoning, help them understand virtual reality and design images and audiovisual files that simulate reality, do scientific simulations which make it possible to create virtual multimedia, such as various scenes, to change the traditional teaching scenarios and achieve more positive results”. This study, drawing on classroom observations and the International Journal of Literature and Arts 2020; 8(2): 46-51 participant’ interview narratives, based upon the case in a foreign language school (W School) in Guangzhou, China, examines how the drama course is carried out and how the students’ multiliteracies competence is developed through the drama course
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