Application of Improvisation to Communicative English Classrooms

Students often hesitate to speak out in communicative English classrooms at Japanese universities, even though they have a basic knowledge of English vocabulary and grammar. They can be out of practice, afraid of making mistakes, not actively involved, and/or just being shy. In this paper, using improvisation games in communicative English classrooms as ‘active learning’ is suggested as an effective method to allow students to ‘wear masks,’ to lessen the fear of making mistakes and to overcome shyness. In fact, it has been shown that people participate in group activities more by pretending to be someone else. That improvisation can be an effective training tool, is supported by studies of humor in education. These studies show humor increases flexibility, creativity, and thinking outside of the box, and that it can increase student’s self-esteem, as well as motivation, and has been shown to decrease anxiety, stress, and help students to learn more in classrooms. In this paper, the authors provide some background of improvisation, its links to humor, and actual improvisation games which can be used as effective active learning tools for the communicative English classroom.Articledepartmental bulletin pape