Using drama to teach written and spoken English is, of course, not a new pedagogical method. In the mid-1960s, the National Council of Teachers of English noted the renewed emphasis on oral communication skills in the secondary English classroom in an article authored by Research Associate Robert V. Denby (1969) titled, “NCTE/ERIC Report: Oral/Dramatics Approach to Teaching English.” Denby reviewed texts that discussed how drama and public speaking taught self-realization, identification, democratic ideals, and classical rhetoric as practical discourse. Of these short reviews, one teacher/scholar stands out—James Moffett (1967) and his book Drama: What Is Happening: The Use of Dramatic Activities in the Teaching of English. Whereas the other authors focused on how drama teaches an individual morals or a good citizen ethics, Moffett connects drama not only to the advancement of language skills but also to the development of thought processes. His focus is not on critical thinking skills (although I am sure his approach does this as well) but rather on how the brain thinks. Although he works from the discursive notion that “thought is inner speech” and therefore made up of unuttered words, his emphasis on acting, interpreting, and creating drama points to his recognition of multiple ways of making meaning and developing thoughts.
Unlike others who used drama in the classroom, Moffett (1967) views drama as a tangible way for students to learn the concepts of rhetoric—one person (the performer) attempting to illicit an emotive response or to persuasively act on another person (the audience). Viewing performance as rhetorical makes the relationship between drama and the real world reactionary, or rather allows “art and actuality [to] illuminate each other” (p. vii). Similar to my approach of experiencing modes through theater’s connection to the body, Moffett teaches rhetoric through the embodiment that drama provides. For instance, reading a novel or essay fails to allow students sensual contact with the words because students are unable to physically interact with them. Drama, on the other hand, links words (the discursive) to motives, emotions, thoughts, and actions (the non-discursive). In this way, students are sensitized to rhetoric; drama makes rhetoric actually physical by connecting the words, the body, and the emotions. Although Moffett recognizes drama’s ability to physicalize rhetoric and actualize art, his focus remains on language development, and he never discusses the body’s specific role. Textual analysis of the dramatic script provides the performer with a context and foundation by which to form a complex character, but it is how the actor moves, gestures, or performs actions that truly allow for the embodiment of rhetoric. When the actor becomes the character, it is not the words alone that reveal meaning, rather the actor’s use of non-discursive gestures that reveal to the viewer the new levels behind and in addition to the spoken words.
Gestures are deeply connected to thought and emotive processes; so much so, that researcher Goldin-Meadow (2003) argues the brain’s ability to form ideas is closely bound to the movement of the body. She describes one of the first studies, conducted by Graham and Argyle (1975), analyzing gesture and thought. The study recorded speech patterns of participants first with and then without the use of gesture. Without the use of gesture, participants’ speech contained more spatial relationships, fewer demonstratives (i.e. “this” and “that), and more pauses (Goldin-Meadow, p. 78). It was the increase in pauses that researchers found interesting, and they speculated that the inability to gesture “added to their [the participants’] cognitive burden” (p. 78). More than twenty years later, Goldin-Meadow (see Iverson and Goldin-Meadow 1998, 2001) conducted her own study to determine if speakers gesture out of a need to communicate or if gesture was an intimate part of thought processing. With her research partner, Jana Iverson, they asked twelve blind-from-birth speakers to converse with each other and twelve speakers with sight to converse. They found “that all twelve blind speakers gestured as they spoke[,] …. gestured at the same rate as the sighted group, and conveyed the same information using the same range of gesture forms” (p. 142). Clearly, people gesture not just out of need to communicate or for expressive purposes, and it would seem gesture relates intimately to thought. Goldin-Meadow goes on to demonstrate how “gesturing reduces rather than increases cognitive load” (p. 153) and can actually aid in enhanced memory (p. 155). Although Goldin-Meadow’s work scientifically uncovers the gesture-thought connection, she concludes that gesture only effectively enhances thought if the gesture represents specific information (p. 160). In other words, specific gestures enhance specific thought processes. No matter how revealing her study, she never grants that gestures can function completely non-discursively. Instead, gesture’s connection to thought is product-focused. While she solidly argues for the body and mind’s combined affect on thought, gesture’s non-discursivity, its purposeful ambiguity falls outside of her scope.
Patricia Dunn (2001) discusses pedagogical uses of the connection between movement and thinking in Talking, Sketching, Moving. She argues for the value of incorporating multiple literacies and exploring diverse intellectual pathways in the composition classroom. She challenges composition instructors to use principles in addition to language to produce and analyze language, which means utilizing imaginative play, dialogue, sketching, physical movement, and even dramatization to bridge the gap between thinking and writing. Moving can be “the act of physically moving … [note] cards around” to make the “abstract job of organizing … into a visual, oral, and kinesthetic task” (p. 63), or it can be bodily moving around a room “in ways that best represent the direction of their ideas” in order to “stimulate thinking” (p. 87). By making the writing process physical, Dunn works to help students reconceptualize their writing and link their senses to their thoughts and to the computational system used to record them. Dunn encourages her students to embody language through the physical movement of their bodies, but she does not approach the more specific relationship between gesture and inarticulate meaning because her focus—no matter what intellectual pathway or which literacy—remains on the development of writing. Her pedagogical examples illustrate movement simulating written organization and movement representing patterning in written structure. This process is similar to Goldin-Meadow’s (2003) argument for specific thoughts being enhanced by specific gestures. Both of these arguments codify movement/gesture and force it into a causal relationship with language/thought. For instance, this movement stimulates that writing process, or this specific gesture reduces that specific cognitive load. Utilizing dramatic performance in the writing classroom, however, enables the body to function both as an expression of and as a catalyst for the mind’s thoughts.
After reading Dunn’s (2001) book, I decided to explore her argument that physical movement ties closely with the writing process in my own classroom. Students were working on a lengthy rhetorical case study, and each student was in a different place in the writing process. During a class workday, I set up various stations around the room and each focused on its own problem area. Among the stations, there was one for transitions, conducting and integrating research, claim development, etc. I instructed students that they must physically move to each station for the area they felt they needed the most help. This movement around the room was meant to physically signify the student’s new focus or perspective on their draft. On another day, I attempted Dunn's note card-organization activity to help students physically organize such a large essay. After the final essay was submitted, I asked students to analyze their writing process and examine what worked best for them in this project. Many students mentioned that these physical sessions were some of the most helpful activities while working on this extensive project. That said, I noticed students’ reluctance to physically move or change location in the room. Their hesitation to move in a classroom—a space they have been programmed to only sit in—does not prove movement and thinking aren’t connected; rather, it demonstrates how thoroughly students have removed the body from their words.
I critically analyze on the treadmill. I brainstorm on a power walk. I verbally revise my claim on a leisurely stroll with my spouse. And I reorganize while weeding a flower bed. The connection between bodily movement and brain stimulation is vital to my writing process, and just as important as traditional writing activities like freewriting, outlining, or editing. I guess that means I write discursively and non-discursively. When I suffer from writer’s block, I jump up from my desk and move. In fact, I hit a mental road block writing the opposite paragraph on Dunn (2001), so instead of experiencing the agony of pushing myself through the block, I took a power walk around the library. When I returned to my waiting computer, I wrote with a clearer sense of purpose. Educators have spent years calming students and encouraging them to remain immobile; however, thinking with your brain requires your body. Helping students recognize the mind-body connection in their own writing process should be taught as another tool for their writer’s toolbox.
