Contribution in an anthology

Appeared in: Structure and improvisation in creative teaching

Editor list: Sawyer, Robert Keith

Publication year: 2011

Pages: 131-161

ISBN: 978-0-521-74632-8

eISBN: 978-1-139-10130-1

DOI Link: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511997105.008

Abstract: 

In this chapter, I provide specific examples of how I have used guided improvisation in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms in Germany. Very few attempts have been made to examine the potential of improvisation for learning and teaching foreign languages in schools. I demonstrate that improvisation provides a unique way to balance the teaching paradox: Improvisation is not only related to directionality, competence, performance, and design, but to spontaneity, intuition, and chance as well. Thus, it contrasts with the traditional view of teaching as transmission of knowledge and skills, that is, of delivering a prescribed curriculum, attending to a particular methodology, following a specific procedure, actuating a lesson plan, and interacting in pre-arranged ways. This traditional view avoids the teaching paradox altogether, but at the cost of removing all student creativity. Moreover, because improvisation encompasses attunement to a situational context, involving “an opaque stock of past experience” (Ciborra 1999: 79) as well as spontaneous decision making and problem solving, openness and unpredictability, it also contrasts with current educational trends that place tremendous emphasis on standardization, predictable improvement, outcome-orientation, and testing.

Harvard Citation style: Kurtz, J. (2011) Breaking through the Communicative Cocoon. Improvisation in Secondary School EFL Classrooms, in Sawyer, R. (ed.) Structure and improvisation in creative teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 131-161. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511997105.008

APA Citation style: Kurtz, J. (2011). Breaking through the Communicative Cocoon. Improvisation in Secondary School EFL Classrooms. In Sawyer, R. (Ed.), Structure and improvisation in creative teaching (pp. 131-161). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511997105.008