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Specialist in Drama in English Language Teaching

Acting Skills for Language Teachers to Develop Classroom Presence

Why are performance skills relevant to us? Probably more than any time, our
teaching is constantly being assessed either formally or informally (tutorials, course
evaluation feedback, observations etc). Far more importantly though, certain
‘performance skills’ are relevant because most of us genuinely want our learners to
share our passion for language and communication. We genuinely want to see our
learners make progress and be successful. So, certain ‘performance skills’ are
relevant because they help:

- make our lessons enjoyable – give our students a positive attitude towards the
subject and will hopefully make the learning experience more memorable
because anxiety is low

- we want to be viewed positively by our learners ie. we want them to like us – a


natural, human instinct which also usually increases motivation and again will
promote a more positive attitude towards English

- us develop strong relationships with our learners

What skills do actors have that teachers can learn from in order to make a lesson a
memorable and enjoyable experience? Just as actors have stage or screen presence,
we as teachers can develop classroom presence by transforming certain skills for the
classroom:

- Classroom presence. Take a ‘confidence’ playing card. Ace is high. Walk up


to the chair, sit down and introduce yourself to the group according to your
number. Can everyone guess which number you had? What behavioural
aspects determined your choice? In your opinion, which of these demonstrate
high confidence and which demonstrate low?

• a broad smile
• relatively slow speech
• a long ‘er’ (compared to a short one!)
• keeping your head still when you speak
• eye contact
• any others?

Eye Contact

How important is making genuine eye contact with your students? How long should
you make eye contact with someone without making them feel uncomfortable? How
do you share eye contact? On stage, it is essential you make genuine eye contact
with your co-actors in order to provoke a spontaneous, natural reaction as well as to
convince your audience that the actor is “in the moment”. Occasionally, it is
necessary for an actor to speak directly to the audience, as with Shakespeare’s
soliloquies. With a small audience, making genuine eye contact does not pose too
much of a problem but with large audiences it is more difficult, but nevertheless still
possible to make people feel seen. Some actors divide up the auditorium and move
from one section to another giving the impression of making eye contact. Think of

Mark Almond, email: mark.almond@canterbury.ac.uk


something you could quite easily talk about continuously for a minute and play The
Eye Contact Game!

Other acting skills that can be transferred to the classroom …

- spontaneity and readiness to improvise e.g when a lesson lags or a student


becomes disruptive (actors sense from audience reaction and adjust).
Sometimes in this situation, we need to go up a gear or sometimes just leave
an activity and move onto something else. What is certainly true is that we
need to stay awake! We need to be tuned into our students and have our
sensors turned on all the time. We need to be experts in ‘reading a situation’
and responding appropriately

- setting up anticipation/intrigue/arouse curiosity e.g putting a visual aid or


piece of realia (a paper bag of something) at the front of the class at the
beginning of the lesson which you’re going to use later on. Sometimes if
appropriate, let each classroom activity be revealed one at a time to create
suspense and surprise.

- conveying enthusiasm and energy (being “fresh”) – David Raven’s 4,575


performances in The Mousetrap. Teaching the present perfect as though it’s
for the first rather than millionth time. Smile, be wide-eyed and pretend
you’re enjoying yourself! It’s amazing how easily a lacklustre teacher devoid
of energy can send a class to sleep. Stay sharp and on the ball – even after a
heavy night – you have to sometimes dig deep to find the energy

- creative and spontaneous use of gesture and facial expression. Just before I
go into class, especially first thing in the morning, I briefly (and secretly) go
through the following routine:

• Give yourself a vigorous face massage concentrating on your forehead,


cheeks and jaw
• Open your face as widely as possible stretching eyes, cheeks, mouth
and chin. Now scrunch up your face as tightly as possible. Repeat
• Move your eyebrows up and down. Try to move one at a time
• Break into a big grin with wide eyes
• Now tighten your eyes

Work in small groups. Perform a couple of the following facial expressions for
your partner to guess. Can you feel the different muscles in your face being used
to create these expressions?

frown gawp gaze glare grimace leer pout scowl smirk sneer wince
mouth shrug

- creative use of movement and space. If it’s difficult to reconfigure the layout
of your classroom, what can the teacher do to vary his/her movement and
position? In theatre, determining where an actor moves or stands on stage is
called blocking. Blocking is vital in establishing relationships between
characters, maintaining audience interest and controlling audience attention.
In the same way, teachers should vary the way space is used in the classroom
and how different positioning can help maintain interest and motivation
during the lesson.

Mark Almond, email: mark.almond@canterbury.ac.uk


Lots of us do this already but sometimes, we need to consciously decide to
adjust our position to vary classroom dynamics

• teaching from the back of the classroom making the back-row students the
front-row students and vice versa
• kneeling or crouching down between desks
• crouching down at the front of the room
• sitting behind a vacant desk amongst the students
• sitting on the teacher’s desk
• sitting on a student’s desk
• sitting on the floor
• leaning on a student’s desk entering his/her personal space
• weaving slowly between the students’ desks
• standing in the doorway
• standing on a chair or table

- creative use of voice

“Teachers continue to take their most precious asset, their voice, for granted”
“There is virtually no systematic training for teachers in the effective use of the
voice”

Alan Maley, The Language Teacher’s Voice (2000)

• Do you agree with the above? Is it true for you? Does it reflect your own
training?
• Do you use your voice to its full potential in your teaching ie. your full vocal
range? How?

Practising correct diaphragmatic breathing is a good place to start. Try the following:

Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart and stand tall. Place your hands on your
lower ribs (the diaphragm is located underneath). Breathe in deeply through your
nose for four seconds, hold for four, then breathe out through your mouth for four (if
you are relaxed, your abdomen should expand)!

As above, but say the days of the week, the months of the year, then the alphabet –
all in one breath.

Now in small groups, choose one of the quotes below. Try modifying your voice while
saying them. You can modify your voice by …

• clenching your teeth


• putting your tongue behind your top teeth
• curling your tongue back
• using a falsetto voice to sound like a stereotypical old person
• contracting the back of your throat to give yourself a husky voice
• putting your tongue behind your bottom teeth
• speak ‘through your nose’ as though you have a bad cold (aim to make
your nose vibrate as you speak).
• put your chin down (no strain in the throat) and speak in a deep, booming,
authoritative voice

Mark Almond, email: mark.almond@canterbury.ac.uk


• slightly tightening the back of your throat and speaking in a breathy stage
whisper (think Marilyn Monroe)

… and add an emotion (tone):

irritable suspicious outraged vicious lustful weary shy loving


bemused

… and vary the pace, pitch and volume. You can use pauses too for even more
dramatic effect!

So what effect did you achieve with each? How might these ideas be used in class?
This is just to demonstrate that we don’t realise how versatile our voices can be and
how this versatility can be put to effective use in our teaching

• Curse the blasted, jelly-boned swines, the slimy, the belly-wriggling


invertebrates, the miserable sodding rutters, the flaming sods, the snivelling,
dribbling, dithering, palsied, pulse-less lot that make up England today
• Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a
new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men
are created equal
• You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not
mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court.
Anything you do say may be given in evidence
• You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad
breeding and a vulgar manner. You are a modest little person with much to
be modest about
• I am glad thou canst speak no better English, for if thou couldst, thou wouldst
find me such a plain king that thou wouldst think I had sold my farm to buy
my crown. I know no ways to mince it in love, but directly to say 'I love you’.
Henry V

- appropriate use of humour

When or why might you use these theatrics?

- pretending to faint
- pretending to have laryngitis
- feigning a heart attack
- blame the board pen
- an over-the-top wipe of your brow
- snoring
- quacking and popping
- pretending to get something out of your eye or wiping something off your
clothes

Recommended Reading

Almond, M (2006), Teachers Acting Up – From Stage Presence to Classroom


Presence, English Teaching Professional, Issue 45

Mark Almond, email: mark.almond@canterbury.ac.uk


Almond, M (2005), Teaching English with Drama, Modern English Publishing, ISBN 1-
904549-12-8

Berry, C (1994), Your Voice And How To Use It (Virgin)

Maley, A (2000), The Language Teacher’s Voice, Macmillan Heinemann

Tauber, R & Mester, C (1994), Acting Lessons For Teachers, Praeger

Mark Almond, email: mark.almond@canterbury.ac.uk

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