Teaching a foreign language for adults: a motivating approach? Today, our world as never before is opening up to many things: facilitated access to travel, mobility, professional exchange, communication and access to information via the World-Wide-Web, voluntary or forced migration, has seen an often urgent need for adults to learn a language other than his mother tongue. A multitude of establishments for foreign language training are created every day. Are the offers really suited to demand? It would be interesting to know the number of people who, having subscribed to training but abandoned it along the way, just as it would be useful to measure the relevance of the results. After a year of training, to what extent does the person feel more able to communicate? Are the capable of using their new found acquisitions and put them into practice? Did they really find what they were looking for? Assumptions about the dropouts along the way: Lassitude when faced with a method too academic, suffering fatigue from infinite lists of vocabulary, bouts of indigestion from grammar rules, misunderstanding and depersonalization of teaching in front of a screen, isolation, or even inappropriate pedagogy where adults are sent back into a “childhood state”, stuck behind their desks, facing an all-powerful master who refuses any sort of interaction for fear of falling off his pedestal. The list is non exhaustive. Adults are singular students, with their own history, their own experience and their own thirst for learning. Hypothesis about the results: In front of an upsurge of initiatives of all kinds from expats so that the autochthons can practice a foreign language (pub evenings, dining, sightseeing, etc.) it seems that the people who have been trained wish to maintain their gains and put them into practice. Which is a pretty good point. And there is also a high demand for artistic workshops in a foreign language. How else would you explain this phenomenon by giving artistic activity its place when learning a foreign language, or as we say in France, “a living language.” What better way is there to hold and develop knowledge than through movement, interest and passion? Theatre, a vector of choice? Theatre, is a text, a writing, an idea, a union of words, expressions, pulled from a sheet of paper, embodied in reality. Emotions expressed and interactions that are played between the protagonists of a moment. The text, first dissected to reveal all its meaning and its implications, must be stored or memorized prior to be interpreted. Played: the secret is finally exposed, play, like a child, think and believe it is true and keep that memory implanted. Learning through theatre is a wonderful method in the literal sense of the word: Students do not feel the constraints of learning and do not suffer from slow and often tedious methods. It is active. Their bodies start to move in accordance with their senses, their minds. They act. Thus, plunging themselves into a procedure without even wondering if they have the basic knowledge to get there. The theatre opens up a whole new universe for language teaching by making it accessible to all, any category of age, from all classes, educated or less educated. For many school teachers, there is no doubt that their curriculum has brought them sufficient educational variety within the realms of classic teaching methods. But not all teachers especially for adults are from teacher training... So what can be done? What do they need if they want to use this fabulous tool called theatre? And how to help and persuade those who would like to but dare not through lack of experience in this area, or lack of knowledge? Throughout this project, we propose to compare the different conceptions of language learning in the institutions concerned and finally offer an original method which would help in the fight against academic failure through the training of L2 teachers by leading them to a more motivating approach when needed. Specifically, it will be to identify good practice in each context, compare them and share them. At the same time, we want to develop training modules within the partner network, after having experienced them in centralized and decentralized seminars. This is about freeing the body to release the word among teachers, and through them, among students. The objective of this project is to find the answers to these questions. It is “next step” to the continuation of a previous project: The Grundtvig project (2013 - 2015 - PLALE, PLAying for LEarning), we put to the test applied theatre for the teaching of a foreign language for adults. During a period of two years, professionals from the world of theatre, teachers and students took up the challenge and the result was convincing. After our experience, it was evident: PLALE was only one step in the right direction, a first.
The SIMELTA project was not decided at random. It is the result of a previous project Grundtvig, PLALE (Playing for Learning, 2013–2015), in which six European partners had studied the impact of gesture / body language through theatrical practices in the teaching of a living foreign language in adults. The objective was to test this tool on targeted groups of adult learners. Undoubtedly, theatrical practices had worked in all groups; this pedagogy had been welcomed by all those who had experienced it and the results had been conclusive. The teachers themselves were attracted and enthused by this approach. But how to prolong the effect, how to extend this innovative teaching method and make it available to as many people as possible? The teachers we saw during PLALE had told us that they felt a little helpless, without too much assurance to be able to continue on their own. They lacked training, they wanted to be shown the way. At the end of the project, some of the partners decided to embark upon a new objective: to create resources for foreign language trainers. Moreover, given the European challenge for the integration of migrants, the project had to devote a large part of its work to developing solutions for the trainers directly involved. SIMELTA – Studying Innovative Methods of Education for Languages through Theatrical Activities – was launched in November 2017. Three of the partners who participated in the previous project were back: the English Com’Eddy Theatre of Bordeaux – France, the city of Pavia represented by the CEM – Italy and the school Escola Fernão Mendes Pinto of Almada – Portugal. A fourth partner came to join the group, the University of Latvia, in Latvia. In each country, the partners worked to find participants within each entity or by developing partnerships: teachers or trainers in foreign languages who did not know or who wanted to deepen the pedagogy put forward in this programme. Whatever their audience of learners, these teachers had to be able to seek answers and material from the partners, whether in the form of observation, participation in seminars or training events. The latter would be in charge or their coaching, for the appropriation of the tools. In the first year, the partners focused on teacher profiles. What were their teaching methods? What were their possibilities of adopting new pedagogy into their classrooms? What were their apprehensions and obstacles? During seminars, questionnaires and various meetings, the partners listened very closely to all this information. They were going to be helpful in the development of the resources. Great care was taken in disseminating the project to the various existing media, the emphasis being put on the Internet and its ability to reach a wide audience; from the beginning of the project, SIMELTA has set up a website, a Facebook page and a YouTube channel. The partners were not without experience in teaching through gesture / body language. So, from the first year, they organized three days of training for trainers in Almada. There, workshops led by theatre professionals, but also professionals in music and dance, were put in place to discover different but valid techniques that apply to the teaching of languages. The arts were on trial. Subsequently, workshops were set up in the four countries, involving local teachers and their students in real immersions in singular contexts. Training modules were also given, this time for the trainers alone. Paris, Bordeaux, Almada, Pavia, Milan and Riga, the locations were often chosen according to demand. During a five-day trip to Italy, the partners attended and participated in several workshops specifically dedicated to teaching the language of the host country to migrants. Here again, rich and numerous exchanges have contributed to the reflection and work of building resources. The SIMELTA project has come to an end. Tutorials, documents, testimonials, training are now available for language trainers who wish to add an extra method to their actual way of teaching. The different Internet vectors are maintained and on each of the sites of the partner institutions, the resources or links are searchable. The partners remain available for any information and assistance requested and training sessions are still ongoing. Perhaps the SIMELTA project has not succeeded in revolutionizing the world of language teaching, but it has certainly helped to expand the possibilities.