The Influence of Classroom Drama on English Learners’ Academic Language Use During English Language Arts Lessons

Abstract

Teacher and student academic discourse was examined in an urban arts-integrated school to better understand facilitation of students’ English language learning. Participants’ discourse was compared across English language arts (ELA) lessons with and without classroom drama in a third-grade classroom of English learning (EL) students (N = 18) with Spanish as their home language (L1) and English as their second language (L2). Students used significantly higher rates of L2 academic language forms as measured by linguistically specific and complex literate language features and language-facilitative speech acts during classroom drama, as compared with conventional ELA lessons. The classroom teacher used more dialogic discourse, as measured by increased rates of requestive and responsive speech acts during drama, as compared with conventional ELA lessons. The findings indicate that the contextualization of ELA content through classroom drama contributed to participants’ dialogic use of specific and complex academic discourse forms over a conventional ELA setting. The implications of arts-integrated instruction for education practice, research, and policy are discussed.