Crossing Borders

ESL students at all levels struggle with language proficiency. Drama can encourage language learners to explore and express ideas and feelings in new ways, and provides meaningful and creative tasks that honour the complexity of language and social interactions. This research project shows how using drama supported the development of listening, reading, speaking and writing skills of ESL students in a university course on the humanities. The book provides drama strategies designed to examine issues of immigration and multiculturalism, and to create a context for reflecting on the narratives of ESL learners' own experiences. The use of both verbal and non-verbal communication, collaboration, interpretation of information, imagination and risk-taking in the safety of fiction supported students' significant engagement through drama. Results of the study show that the integration of drama helped students to cross borders of cultures, identities and literacies in the multicultural second language classroom. This book provides insights for educators in general, and second language teachers and researchers in particular, about what happens when drama is used in second language classrooms.