Theateraktivitäten im Fremdsprachenunterricht: Kreativität fördern, funktional-kommunikative Kompetenzen entfalten

Abstract

Creativity is considered as a key competence for the 21st century. There is a close link between creativity, language, and performative arts. The article explores these connections by focusing on theatre methods in language teaching and learning. By doing so, empirical findings, including studies from neuroscience on creativity-induced brain activation, are taken into account and connected to earlier theoretical findings on learning processes. Building on that, the potential of improvisation for the foreign language classroom is delineated. As a tool in the classroom, improvisations make it possible to address creativity and to train spontaneous communicative skills, including, amongst others, active listening, gap bridging, deciphering of verbal and nonverbal cues. The article sets out to demonstrate the value of improvisation techniques for the development of functional communicative competences in conjunction with creativity. It closes by offering a set of selected activities for the foreign language classroom.