This session was the buzz of the conference the first day. Michele was a little nervous, I think, to present this topic because it is so "out there" to her. I didn't think it was that strange and really wish she had had three more hours to share ideas with us.
What in the heck is PDL? I don't really know what it stands for because I didn't write it down. Something about psychodramatic language or something like that. Apparently, a guy in England runs 60 hour classes using this method of language teaching. I don't quite know how it is used to TEACH language, but I think that it is great for practicing language, improving confidence, and inserting some novelty into the classroom.
In these classes, they start every day with relaxation. In the beginning, every phrase is said in TL/English/TL, making a kind of sandwich. Students close their eyes, get comfortable and take just a couple of minutes to get to a happy place. Another teacher who has tried some of these methods says that she even sprays lemon oil in the classroom to help with the relaxation.
Once the relaxation is done, they do some sort of warm-up exercise. These warm-ups are designed to help the student's muscles (particularly the mouth and tongue) get ready to speak the TL and for the ears to prepare to hear the TL. In one such warm-up, Michele had us all stand in a circle looking at an imaginary object in the middle of the room. Michele then talked to the object in Russian and we copied everything she said. We tried to copy the pronunciation, the inflection, the gestures, etc. We didn't have any idea what the heck we were saying, but that wasn't the purpose of the exercise. At the end, she would ask if anyone had any questions. You had to remember a specific word to ask what it meant...you couldn't just say "What were we saying? What did that mean?" You would have to say "What does nyet mean? I heard you say that." Then, she would give the translation and move on.
Another warm-up was called Echo through the mountains or something like that. We were placed into 4 groups and she said a phrase to group 1, who repeated it pretty loudly. Group 2 repeated a bit softer, group 3 softer than that, and group 4 in an almost whisper. Again, we had no idea what we were saying, but that wasn't the purpose of this activity.
We spent the most time on a method that I think can really only be used with upper levels. This method is called The Chairs. Michele placed three chairs facing each other in the middle of the room. We took turns giving possible scenarios where those three chairs would be like that: a Dr. office, marriage counseling, support group, etc. Once we had a good list, we voted on which scenario we wanted to see. Then, we placed students in those roles. For our example, it was two parents trying to have "the talk" with their child. The rest of the class was divided into three groups to be the support for that actor. First, the teacher interviewed the three actors: What is your name? Why are you here? How do you feel? Once that was completed, they were allowed to start. AT ANY TIME, the support group could help feed the actors lines or creative ideas. The actor could turn to the support group AT ANY TIME for help and the teacher was also there to fill in any essential vocabulary that the whole class was lacking.
That's the basic idea, but Michele said that her class did one of these Chairs activities for like 3 months (not exclusively, of course). Once they had the discussion on one day, she would write up the dialogue and then they would read it. She would change the actors the next day. She would ask them to get in their support group and strategize points for the argument. She would have the students choose a character and write a letter, article, blog, from that actor's point of view. She would bring the characters back and flash forward to their lives 2 months from now.
In this case, the 3 chairs was the jumping off point. She briefly told us that another idea would be to take famous paintings from the target culture and have students imagine themselves as the people in the paintings and start acting out what happened in the scene after what we see.
I am definitely going to start using this at least with my upper levels and I like the idea of prepping the muscles for speaking in the TL. Could be a great primer for storytime to get them in the mood.
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