Saturday, October 15, 2011

Monologues for second and foreign language acquisition

Coursebook Listening Activities

Audio tracks from coursebook.


monologues

MONOLOGUES

Monologues for Auditions -that is, memorizing a piece of text and reciting it with the proper pronunciation, entonation and stress- is obviously intended for movie and theatre casting selection; however, its application in second or foreign language acquisition can have amazing learning advantages.

Fresh monologues to surprise your audience are not easy to come by -or else try to google it. Publishers expect future stars to buy them; nevertheless, our coursebook and workbook provide perfect monologues for our practice and enjoyment.

First, memorize at least two sentences from any speaker; once you've learnt them by heart, listen to every detail carefully and play with words, emphasizing different parts. Try to assume you are not you, but an actor or actress auditioning for a play.

From a psycholinguistic perspective, the entonation pattern learnt out of those few sentences will be unconsciously applied to any speaking output. It won't happen overnight, but it should if done systematically. Besides, it makes sense to test your speaking skill for accuracy instead of fluency and vocabulary as we normally do.

First rehearsal will be next Monday and Tuesday, October 17 and 18.

Break your leg!




No comments:

Post a Comment