First post

Hello and welcome to my first ever blog! My name is Mary Cassidy and I am a lecturer at Hammersmith West London College. I am currently completing my MA in Applied Theatre and Drama Education at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London as well as teaching in the ESOL department at Hammersmith College. I am particularly interested in how I can use drama and vocal techniques in the ESOL classroom and I would welcome your comments, suggestions, or thoughts.

I have just been teaching on the EFL summer school course at Hammersmith and have used my two week block of teaching to look at the use of phonemes to help with pronunciation. In the first few days I recorded the students voices as they recited the phonetic chart. I have then included a short vocal warm up at the beginning of class each day and built up the various sounds through vocal exercises and simple games, adding new sounds day by day. At the end of the second week I intend to re-recorded the students voices and listen for any improvements. More on this later.....

I have also used some drama techniques with the ESOL summer school and also my Level One 16-19 tutor group from September 2007 to July 2008. I would particularly like to hear from any past or present students of mine who have experienced my use of drama techniques. What did you think? Did they help? In what ways?