Two practical benefits of teaching English using short-episode drama series, beyond language learning (and how our original Chasing Time English series might help teachers accomplish these)
Mia Tarau
This article was born from my observations of my learners’ behaviours, particularly over the last two years of teaching on both foundation programme courses and university courses in Australia, with most of my learners aged 16-20. The foundation programme courses employ a mix of full-length movies and shorter clips from social media, with the latter proving much more effective in the learning process. Similarly, the university course that partly inspired these musings incorporates very short clips to illustrate concepts or learning points; these prove just as popular with the learners and effective as the shorter forms of media we use in the foundation courses. Lately I have been thinking a lot about how learner behaviours are evolving, and on how effective the use of ‘traditional media forms’ is in the classroom. Below, I offer two benefits of using short-episode drama series in the classroom which go beyond language learning, and which build critical thinking skills that students can apply in multiple areas of their lives.
The ‘virtues’ of using drama in (language learning) classrooms have long been outlined in literature (Davies, 1990; Lindsay, 1974). Those early foundations have been both consolidated (Green, 2012) and (more recently) challenged by the consistent and rapid evolution and proliferation of media forms, with students today being bombarded with media and communication to the extent that their attention spans and enjoyment of media have diminished to concerning levels (Carstens et al., 2018; Pochmara, 2023). For that purpose, using traditional drama series, especially with younger learners, might pose challenges in terms of maintaining learner engagement with standard-length episodes or full-length movies. This is where Chasing Time English original drama series, accompanied by teaching and learning materials, might come in handy, especially with younger language learners. Our series, now offered through the new Academy platform (https://chasingtimeenglish.com/academy), are aimed at all levels of English language proficiency. Each series consists of four to six short episodes, and each episode builds an exciting and varied world that learners can relate to. The series offer a multitude of benefits related to learning, two of which I will outline below in relation to existing literature.
1. Benefits related to developing media literacy in creative ways
Since our learners are heavily exposed to media from so many different cultural contexts in their daily lives, Green (2012) emphasizes the need for them to develop media literacy; in other words, to understand the ‘social and cultural factors that influence [these media texts]’ (p 42) in order for them to be able to ‘read’ them, and to then ‘return to the real world with more understanding and insight’ (Cremin, 2015, p. 25) as a consequence of a creative learning process.
How our series teach this:
In our series, learners are presented with ample opportunities to interact with and develop an understanding of the multitude of dimensions involved in each of the short episodes. They are exposed to a variety of accents, often in the same short episode (see Skippers Pass series); they see different ways of life, as many episodes illuminate the New Zealand ‘way of life’ in addition to the New Zealand ‘accent’ (see My Name is Lucky series); and they can live through many emotions that they can relate to (witness characters falling in love in Days Crossing, or people living with guilt over the loss of young love in Skippers Pass: Homecoming). In addition to developing language skills, students also look at pragmatics and epistemics, for example, while being provided with ample opportunities to discuss what they see from their own perspectives and through their own cultural understanding, thus making meaning together and relating their own lived experiences to what they see in these episodes. This multi-modal and multi-dimensional journey through our courses fits in with both Cremin’s (2015) and Green’s (2012) principles associated with using media creatively in order to develop media literacy in (language) learners.
2. Benefits related to critically engaging with different ‘worlds’
A very interesting article by Delsandro (2017) advocates for the use of the Downton Abbey, a TV series set in the twentieth century and portraying the lives of both the British aristocracy and their servants, as a ‘cultural forum that opens up a cultural, literary, and historical period that would otherwise remain distant’ (p. 513). Delsandro (2017) then used this series as the basis for developing a curriculum collating other novels set in that time period that could teach students critical reflection skills related to that specific past.
How our series teach this:
Similarly to how students explore England and its aristocratic past in Delsandro (2017), our courses often transport learners to a context seldom portrayed in traditional media, much less popular on social media, and rarely ever present in language learning materials: New Zealand. Granted, Delsandro’s university course design which has Downton Abbey as a starting point is far heavier than what our materials can provide to our students in relation to New Zealand. And yet, over 75,000 learners from all over the world have engaged with our courses over the past three years, on a variety of platforms. In this novel ‘cultural forum’ they were able to see, discuss, and compare the way in which our characters dress, travel, interact, feel, speak, and live in New Zealand to their own cultural contexts, which is a solid basis for developing critical thinking skills while engaging with this ‘different world’.
To relate these benefits back to my introductory musings, in addition to offering learners the opportunity to learn to ‘read’ media in a creative way while thinking critically about the world, Chasing Time English courses enable these journeys in easy-to-digest short media forms. As a bonus, these bite-sized media forms are linked into series, each creating its own exciting world for learners to explore.
To find out more about our series, head to our platform on https://chasingtimeenglish.com/
Happy learning!
References:
Carstens, D. S., Doss, S. K., & Kies, S. C. (2018). Social media impact on attention span. Journal of Management and Engineering Integration, 11(1), 20-27.
Cremin T. (2015). Teaching English creatively (2nd ed.). Routledge.
Davies, P. (1990). The use of drama in English language teaching. TESL Canada Journal, 8(1), 87-99.
Delsandro, E. G. (2017). What would Lady Mary do? Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Culture, and Composition, 17(3), 513–523.
Green, A. (Ed.). (2012). A practical guide to teaching English in the secondary school. Routledge.
Lindsay, P. (1974). The use of drama in TEFL. ELT Journal, 29(1), 55–59. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/29.1.55
Pochmara, A. (2023). “I don’t think I have an attention span for real life anymore”: Excessive stimulation, sense of meaninglessness, and boredom in Sam Levinson’s Euphoria. European Journal of American Studies, 17(4). https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.19092