ILTLP Self-Access Learning Modules: Pedagogies of Intercultural Languages Learning

Self-access module 3

PERFORMANCE IN INTERCULTURAL LANGUAGES TEACHING AND LEARNING

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Acknowledgment

This work was funded by the Australian Government Department of Education, Science and Training under the Australian Government Quality Teacher Programme (AGQTP).

Performance in intercultural languages teaching and learning

This is a self-access learning module.

It is designed as an additional pathway for exploring intercultural language learning for teachers to work through by themselves or with groups of other teachers. It refers to modules provided as part of Phase 3 of the Intercultural Language Teaching and Learning in Practice (ILTLP) project, and assumes familiarity with the knowledge and skills gained through participation in the ILTLP. It is not intended as a stand-alone professional learning programme.

It is recommended that you work through this module individually, or with a group in a professional learning context, relating the module both to the materials explored in Phase 3 of the ILTLP and to your work with your students.

Overview of module

‘Performance’ interactions offer exciting participation and analysis possibilities for students in intercultural language learning programmes. A range of learning modes can be embraced, and a wide variety of linguistic forms can be encountered, modelled, analysed, experienced and ‘lived’ through the inclusion of performance elements considering a range of intercultural concepts. Performance can provide ‘ways in’ to another language and culture that extend students’ understandings of visual and written materials, through active involvement and ‘embodiment’ of the target language and culture, where, crucially, ‘observation’ of cultures and languages can become ‘participation’ in the ‘doing’ of cultures and languages. In this way, students understand themselves as not only participants in but also observers of the language learning process. As a resource for languages teachers, performance offers potential for a level of engagement for students where language learning skills are actualised, where ‘rote’ learning is replaced by meaningful repetition with a clear and identifiable purpose, and where ‘experiencing the other’, in a cultural sense, is made easier through the requirement of active participation and reflection about oneself that engagement with performance necessitates.

This module explores how ‘performance’ can be understood in a number of useful ways for intercultural language teaching and learning. These perspectives include:

• performance as intrinsic to communication
• performance as intrinsic to learning to communicate
• performance as locating identity
• performance as intrinsic to a culture
• performance as a resource for use in intercultural language learning

These five perspectives identify the crucial role that ‘performance’ has in the process of language acquisition and use and demonstrate the inextricable link between language and culture that is at the heart of an intercultural language teaching and learning orientation to languages teaching and learning.

As you work through the module, you will explore ways of using performance in languages and cultures teaching and learning, looking at examples from current practice and considering a number of conceptions of performance. You are invited to consider ways of incorporating or extending uses of performance into your own intercultural language teaching and learning environment and to identify, analyse and reflect on the value of doing so. Learning interactions are provided to support the understanding of the concepts and to provide opportunities for you to experience and to analyse these five conceptions. Suggestions for useful ways to incorporate performance in intercultural languages teaching and learning are also provided, together with a range of examples from current practice and from materials developed by teachers in Phase 1 of the ILTLP project, that you may choose to use with your students, or use as a guide to developing appropriate processes and interactions for your classroom practice. A range of views on the potential benefits and possible ‘pitfalls’ of including performance in languages classrooms is also included, along with multiple references to readings and source material that may be useful.

Module Objectives

In this module you will

• consider a number of conceptions of ‘performance’
• participate in interactions that explore your own conceptions of performance
• investigate ways to use performance in intercultural language teaching and learning
• consider examples of performance used in language teaching and learning

Performance as intrinsic to communication

‘Enactment’ in its various forms is used in every cultural group to make meaning and to demonstrate understanding of meaning to others within the group.

Geertz 1973

We speak with our vocal organs, but we converse with our entire bodies.

Abercrombie 1963

Key Ideas/Learning

Every act of communication is a performance. In each communicative interaction one is, at the same time, a participant (an actor) and an observer (the audience). The performance is modified dependent on other participants and the events that occur during the interaction in the process of communication. Developing awareness of oneself and of others as participating in a performance in each act of communication allows self-reflection and analysis of language choices, physicalisation, vocal tone, social hierarchy, etc. as well as enhancing one’s capacity to view, respond to and analyse the intercultural interactions taking place.

Reviewing a simple act of communication through the frame of the five principles of intercultural language learning allows the opportunity to reflect on the importance of performance in communicative acts using language. It positions participants to become more aware of their roles and the roles of others in communicative language acts, as self-reflexive and increasingly intercultural learners.

Performance as intrinsic to communication: the concept

• When teaching chan and kun endings for young girls’ and boys’ names, a Prep girl who was out the front starting giving hints to the class saying “ch….,ch….,ch……no not kun –that’s for boys!”

Jill Bignell, Tasmania[1]

The central message of this module is that every act of communication is a performance. As languages teachers, we need to be mindful of this so that we can maximise the meaningfulness and value of each interaction with language our students have, through recognising the performance choices and implications that flow from these choices, in all communication. This key idea provides a foundation for conceptualising the role of performance in intercultural languages teaching. Each time we approach another person or people, speak to them, listen to them, participate in dialogue or conversation, we perform. Performance is integral to the expression of language in the spoken form. Every utterance is nuanced by physical stance, vocal tone, register, volume, pace and ‘attitude’. In the snippet of reflection provided by Jill Bignell, above, from Phase 1 of the ILTLP project, speaking of her Prep/Year 1 class, one can instantly visualise the child, bursting to share her knowledge without giving the game away completely, performing her act of communication to her classroom fellows. We recognise the act of communication through the child’s performance, and her use of performance to communicate her meaning.

Within each performance in which we engage, we embody a sense of the identity we wish to portray to the person with whom we are communicating, our ‘interlocutors’ or ‘audience’. Each of us, in communicating, is an ‘actor’, and represents the embodiment of a set of values, an identity. With different audiences, we alter our performance, we adapt that identity to portray aspects of our character or self that we feel are appropriate for the particular communication. We adjust our speech, in its tone, volume, register, choice of words. We adjust our physical position, our posture, placement, gestures. We integrate these two elements: speech and action. We indicate a relationship to the other person through this process, and we ‘enact’ that relationship, we play a part in a performance in which the other person or people, too, are playing a part or parts. As any communicative act proceeds, we make further adjustments, in response to the performance of the other, in the natural course of the interaction. We are responsive and self-reflective without necessarily being conscious of these processes. We critique our performance, and that of the other person or people, and we shift our continuing performance accordingly, in the attempt to make our meaning clear and engage with the other person.

Not only do we bring a sense of identity to each interaction or communication in which we participate, but it works the other way, too, as the interactions themselves, the communication, work(s) reflexively to help shape and confirm identity. We become what we communicate, we are what we say, what we act. In this sense, I suggest that ‘performance’ is fundamental in the conception of self and identity, and that this process is universal, in that it applies within any (every) cultural group.

Within the context of intercultural language learning, we take as our starting point that language and culture are inseparable, and that as learners from one (or multiple) cultures, we aim to use our own languages and cultures, sense of identity and our intraculturality to participate in and interrogate the new culture, through its language. We do this so that we might notice differences, points of connection and range of views, for example. In doing so, we are moved to make comparisons, analyse differences and similarities and reflect on who we are, how we define ourselves and how knowledge of the other has altered, modified or enriched our understanding of ourselves and of the other.

Through participation in performance, we are forced to make choices, judgments and decisions about vocabulary, pronunciation, tone, stance, register, volume, attitude etc. as well as about relationships to other performers, actions that are or are not appropriate and so on. The interaction and active participation required necessarily compel one to consider these questions and powerfully locate the ‘actor’ to consider ‘otherness’. Critically, a ‘stepping out’ ‘de-centring’ of self occurs, so that one becomes another, while always being him/herself. Self-reflection occurs naturally and inescapably through this process, as we make judgments and justify them.

Participation includes not only being an actor, but being the audience. There is no communication if an actor has no audience, and the audience is not passive. We don’t simply ‘receive’ the performance. We make judgments about it. In communicating, we are usually both actor and audience at the same time. Even when we attend a formal performance, we are not passive as the audience. There is always interaction, as responses happen and communication occurs. From a critical literacy perspective, we might ask about a performance: who speaks, why, what place the art form has within the culture, etc.? We notice, we react, and we interact. We then reflect, and review our own sense of self (identity) from this new perspective. This is the process that occurs in every theatre experience. The audience participates in the drama through identification with the other, while not actually being the other. Our fascination with the other, as providing an insightful means of looking at ourselves is being satisfied, which is exactly the process we are seeking through intercultural language learning.

The example below, from another ILTLP Phase 1 participant, illustrates the point of performance being intrinsic to communication. In a languages classroom setting, a ‘barrier’ game is used as means of communication between students. One student is required to view a picture and describe it to the other, who recreates the picture from the words into a new picture. Both students become acutely aware of the need for accuracy in the performance of the language and the choice of words used. Both students also are engaged in an interaction where each relies on the other, with the performance of language being the only tool available for communication. The student describing the picture makes choices about what words and phrases would be meaningful to the other student, so that he/she has the maximum opportunity for understanding. The ‘performer’ also makes decisions about how to physicalise this description, with hand gestures, etc. The ‘observer’ interprets the information communicated, and, within moments, when the barrier is removed, both can see whether the interpretation was accurate, as the original picture is revealed.

Barrier game majalah

Using Indonesian ‘youth’ magazine, learners choose a picture of an Indonesian person, and use Indonesian to describe it (clothing and colour vocab) to a partner who cannot see the picture. The partner must try and draw what is being described.

Kim Daymond, Karatha WA

Interaction

The following interaction invites you to seek out another person willing to trial a simple act of communication with you. This person may be another teacher, a friend, partner, or colleague. The person does not need language teaching skills or experience, and neither of you needs drama teaching experience. If you both speak the same ‘target’ language, however, you could conduct the interaction in that language.

Within a five minute time limit, discuss with this person the morning routine you undertake on a usual working day. Describe what you do, in what order, the time constraints, needs of children, partners/housemates, preparation of lunches, what happens with your pets, transport arrangements and so on. The other person also describes their routine, to you.

When the five minutes is up, each of you makes written notes of the following:

About yourself:

How did you sit/stand? What representation of yourself did you give? Did you use casual or formal speech patterns and vocabulary? Did you feel comfortable disclosing this information? Did you leave out any bits that you wouldn’t want a stranger to know? Did you add or alter what you were saying in response to signs from your partner? What feedback did you give? Did you feel comfortable? Did you have a sense of self-awareness, of yourself as a ‘performer’?

About your partner:

What did you notice about him/her? How did he/she sit? Did your partner use similar speech forms and vocabulary to you? What cues, signs of understanding did your partner give (nods, words of agreement, laughs, etc)? Did you feel comfortable hearing about his/her life?

About the interaction:

Who spoke first and how did you decide this? Did you speak one after the other or was there more exchange, as in a conversation or dialogue? Did you feel any points of connection, or difference? Did you modify, add to or wish you hadn’t said certain things after hearing your partner? Did you find the interaction satisfying? Would you have said the same things about yourself to someone you knew better/didn’t know as well?

Discuss what you found out with your partner and ask your partner to discuss what they found out to you. See if you agree with each other’s interpretation/representation. Consider the following:

How has the interaction changed in the ‘reporting’ stage? How do you position yourselves? How has the shift from having a discussion to reporting altered the interaction (physically, vocally, in tenor/tone/formality)? Do you have a sense of how being the audience is different from being a participant in a discussion? Do you use a different voice when reporting from when discussing? Did the expectation that the other person would evaluate your rendition of their routine affect how you thought about and talked about the material you were presenting? How would you summarise the differences and similarities in the roles you have played in these communicative acts?

Now complete the following reflection sheet, noting which principles of intercultural language learning explored in Module 2 of the ILTLP professional learning materials (active construction, making connections, social interaction, reflection, responsibility) were ‘at play’ in this interaction, and how.

Reflection

Intercultural language teaching and learning principles / Were these involved in the communication act? How?
Active construction
Did you and your partner build on existing knowledge and develop understanding of the others and your own identities?
Making connections
Did you make connections between yourself and your partner? Did you relate to the information you gained from your partner? Did you mentally or verbally express these connections, in terms of similarities, differences, points of identification?
Social interaction
How would you describe the social interaction in this act of communication? Were you able to relate to the other person and their use of language and narrative style? Did you value their contributions? Did they value yours? How do you know from the ‘performance’ you both gave?
Reflection
Did you need to think back over what your partner had said before reporting back to them? Did you need to think over what you had said when they reported back to you? Did you reflect on your performance as a partner in a discussion, a reporter and a listener?
Responsibility
Did you take responsibility for respecting the other person’s values and differences in their responses and communicating style? Did you behave with a sense of allowing the other person their space to perform as they saw fit? Did your language and body language reflect your true thoughts and feelings?

Consider how the above interaction would have been different if at least one of the participants in the above interaction was not speaking their first language. How would it have been different? If you used a common ‘target’ language, how did this affect the interaction? Given these considerations, ask yourself how important ‘performance’ is in acts of communication?