Your language teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to use improv games to work with novice language learners.
I want to be very clear that this is not about learners who haven’t done improv before (though these games are useful for that too!) but for students who are in the beginning of their interactions in the target language. That is to say, you can do improv with learners starting on DAY 1 of language class!
Image source: https://www.bbbpress.com/2013/10/drama-game-gibberish-conversation/
I’ve put links to videos explaining common improv games ( Zip, Zap, Zop and Gibberish) and included in the summary how to adapt specifically for a language class. All of these games come from Perone’s 2011 article “Improvising with adult English language learners” with some additional notes from Piccoli’s 2018 article “Improvisation: A creative theatrical technique to engage English language learners.” Though, as I’ve mentioned before, these games are hard to attribute to anyone in particular!
Names and Motions/Names and Sounds: Each person says their name and does a spontaneous physical motion or sound. The group then repeats the name and motion/sound back to the person. Perone (2011) notes this was helpful in establishing a judgement-free environment and discouraging friendly teasing or negative feedback.
Zip, Zap, Zop: The sounds “zip”, “zap”, and “zop” are passed around a circle. Piccoli (2018) comments that this is an “excellent game to get the students excited about playing, to pay close attention to their classmates, and to stay in the moment” (p. 6). Perone (2011) adapted this game to include category-specific vocabulary, such as passing around “mother”, “father”, “daughter”, or creating sentences, such as “I”, “have”, “a”, “daughter”.
The Ball: An imaginary ball is passed around. One can focus on names and sounds (see above) or vocabulary words confined to a certain topic. If doing the latter, the category (i.e., numbers, family members, or symptoms and illnesses) can be changed at any time. Perone (2011) explains that he made an effort not to help with translations but encourage learners to support each other in order to remind them that “We all have English”. Piccoli (2018), in describing a similar game, notes that “is fast-paced and less stressful than obliging students to create full, grammatically correct sentences” (p. 6). You can also follow up with the game “Pass the Ball” which focuses on repititon of the same vocabulary or phrases with different volume, pace, expression, etc.
Gibberish: Students utter nonsensical sounds in order to convey meaning through non-word means. This is great for focusing on the non-word aspects of communication, like gesture, tone or pitch. Perone (2011) chose to use this activity when students were “overly focused on grammatical accuracy, judged the accents of one or more learners in the class, or deliberated too much on what to say or write during an improv activity” (p. 178).
Word Cards: Students have a collection of index cards that are blank or have words. The teacher says a sentence or question aloud and the students find (or create) the cards to form what they heard. Students can also embody the sentence or question by standing with the index cards in their hands, in order. This activity can also be used to create emergent scripts where students create sentences by putting together their respective cards in order. Perone (2011) notes that he modeled communicative competence by focusing on the collaboration of making sentences and questions rather than focusing on grammatical rules. This is also similar to Soup, which is the same as words cards, but with individual letters on index cards instead of words.
References:
Perone, A. (2011). In R. Sawyer (Ed.), Structure and improvisation in creative teaching (pp. 162-183). Cambridge University Press.
Piccoli, M. W. (2018). Improvisation: A creative theatrical technique to engage English language learners. TESOL Journal, 9(4). doi:10.1002/tesj.390