AURAL SOUND
Performing

Level: Summer ESL+Dr/ Beginner to Low-intermediate

Language Focus: Creative writing + sentence construction (Subject/object concordance + adjective, noun, verb, adjective, noun), semantic/pragmatic meaning
*High-frequency vocabulary

Drama Focus: Improvisations and performance

Time: 5 hours 25 min (5 h. activities + 25min. break/debrief)

Prep time: 3 hours

Lesson Description:

In this lesson, ESL+Dr students write and perform a collaborative poetry piece in the form of a dramatic monologue. Using DaDa Poetry as method, students team up to produce and perform an authentic poetry piece. The teacher provides a specific poem for each team to deconstruct and reconstruct into an authentic piece as a way to introduce sentence construction and semantic/pragmatic meaning, from words and phrases to complete sentences.

Dramatic Monologue: in poetry, also known as a persona poem, shares many characteristics with a theatrical monologue: an audience is implied; there is no dialogue; and the poet speaks through an assumed voice—a character, a fictional identity, or a persona. Because a dramatic monologue is by definition one person’s speech, it is offered without overt analysis or commentary, placing emphasis on subjective qualities that are left to the audience to interpret.

DaDa PoetryVagina Monologue

FOR TEACHER:

Readings:

• The Exquisite Corpse: Chance and Collaboration in Surrealism’s Parlor Game (Book review by Virginie Pouzet-Duzer “Papers of Surrealism” issue 9, Summer 2011)
• “Context, community, and authentic language.” Henry G. Widdowson. TESOL Quaterly, pages 705-716

Visual Aids:

• Several poems as options to pick one to use, taken from Poetry Soup
• Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler 

FOR STUDENTS:

Readings:

• “Stage Presence: What it Means, Why it Matters, and How to Improve it” 
• “How you Sound.” 

Handouts:

• Stage presence and improvisation techniques
• Poetry Vocabulary

Worksheets:

• High-frequency words + sentence structures