Process drama and foreign language learning: A case study of preservice teachers learning French

Abstract

This study examines the usefulness of a Process Drama approach for supporting the development of linguistic and communication skills of preservice teachers learning French as a world language in an Early Childhood Education licensure program. Process Drama is an interactive approach to teaching language in which the teacher and students carry out a series of improvisations in the classroom, in which students perform in different types of situations while working on different subjects of the curriculum (Bowell & Heap, 2017; Glass et al., 2013) Through a pretest–posttest design and a qualitative analysis of a questionnaire, findings indicated that preservice teachers improved their pronunciation, intonation, fluency, and nonverbal language in the target language. In addition, they had positive perceptions regarding the experience and the gains they made. Finally, preservice teachers believed that this approach could be implemented with Early Childhood Education students.