Translanguaging and product-oriented drama: an integrated pedagogical approach for language learning and literacy development

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study investigated the translanguaging practices of 12 students and a teacher rehearsing a German play as part of an extra-curricular UK university theatre group comprising different European nationalities. Our aim was to understand how these practices support foreign language and literacy development in the context of a script-based, product-oriented approach to drama. The final three full rehearsals were audio-recorded and transcribed. Following functional analysis to identify translanguaging instances, discourse analysis was applied to selected extracts where learning was inferred or shown to occur. Rehearsals provided a rich learning environment in which participants were affectively engaged, with specific opportunities for contextualised language learning and literacy development. Translanguaging enhanced these learning opportunities, enabling students to engage with the German script as bilinguals drawing on both their linguistic and multimodal repertoires to build meaning. The integration of translanguaging and product-oriented drama offers a linguistically diverse and embodied pedagogical approach to language education and a wealth of learning affordances less readily accessed in monolingual environments.