Taking literature off page! The effectiveness of a blended drama approach for enhancing L2 oral accuracy, pronunciation and complexity

This article intends to add to the rising discussion related to the employment of authentic plays and drama within a high school compulsory curriculum for enhancing learners' foreign language (L2) oral skills. In particular, it examines the pedagogical use of authentic contemporary plays for developing learners' L2 oral production in terms of (1) complexity - syntactic and mean length of AS-units (MLAS) and (2) accuracy - global and pronunciation accuracy. For this purpose, a class of 10 final year high school students with a lower-intermediate to upper-intermediate level of language in an Italian context was exposed longitudinally to a blended-drama approach - the use of literary play scripts, drama games and techniques, and a full-scale performance - conducted over two terms for a total of 40 hours in-class lessons. A control group was taught through a traditional approach over the same period. Quantitative data were collected through a pre-test/post-test design with three tasks under different conditions regarding status and interaction: oral proficiency interview (OPI), story-retelling and guided role-play (GRP). Findings revealed that drama significantly improved learners' pronunciation accuracy, syntactic complexity and MLAS. There was no significant statistical result on global accuracy between the two groups. Pedagogical implications for teaching practice will be discussed.