Drama pedagogy in foreign language learning: investigating the impact of theatre texts and theatre performance on L2 speaking accuracy and complexity

This paper investigates the pedagogical use of authentic plays for developing learners’ L2 oral skills, measured as global accuracy pronunciation accuracy, syntactic complexity and mean length of AS-units (MLAS). The study was conducted with final year high-school students (N = 10) in an Italian compulsory curriculum. A text-based approach (TBA) followed by a performance-based approach (PBA) were implemented. Quantitative data were collected by means of an oral pre-test, mid-test and a post-test. The results regarding accuracy and complexity along with the pedagogical implications will be discussed.