Acting and roleplay in English (online)

Presentation

Keywords:
Discussion, Listening, Speaking, Vocabulary, Pronunciation

THIS COURSE WILL BE COMPLETELY ONLINE.

In high school, did you do roleplay to practise English for different situations? In this class, we will play acting games, including roleplay, and learn basic acting techniques. The focus will be on developing skills in pronunciation, and clear expressive speaking.
This is an active class for you to learn to appear more confident and interesting when speaking English, particularly in online environments. You will make friends and have fun.

You will learn the basic rules of intonation and stress, and how to apply them to expressing your meaning clearly.

You will be aware of the gesture, facial expressions and other non-verbal language necessary to communicate clearly.

You will be aware of your individual challenges in communicating in an online environment. You will have some strategies to overcome them.

You will learn basic acting techniques that can be applied in presentation, job interviews, teaching, performance and media.

Weekly homework activities & small assignments: 70%
Final performance project: 20%
Choose-your-own credit*: 10%

1	Hi! Welcome to the course. This will be an introduction to the course, the instructor and each other. We will look at how a participatory course like this will be offered online. This course will be held completely online. The first class will be held using Zoom. The URL will be emailed directly to students who register.
2	What am I saying? (1) First look at pronunciation, stress and intonation - no more katakana English!
3	What am I saying? (2) Using intonation and other vocal elements to express emotion and meaning.
4	What am I doing? Basic physical skills for doing role plays online; expressing yourself through body language, especially over a computer connection.
5	Where am I? (1) Moving around our room and creating a "world" on Zoom - no more sitting down!
6	Where am I? (2) Where are we? Creating a "shared roleplay world" with someone across the barriers of Zoom.
7	And now we put it all together..... (1) Acting skills with basic scripts
8	And now we put it all a bit more together..... (2) Acting skills with basic scripts
9	But wait, there's more! Adding more people and elements to roleplays.
10	Choosing and rehearsing a final roleplay (1) Picking partners and roleplay for your final project
11	Choosing and rehearsing a final roleplay (2) Rehearsing the roleplay for your final project
12	Final performance! An online roleplay mini-festival. You will perform your roleplay for an audience of your classmates.
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I'm excited that you are thinking about this class. There are many methods for teaching performance and story-telling online, and we will work together to find the best ones for our group. Being online will be a challenge, but we will master the technology and the new environment together. You can be active and work together with your classmates, even though we will not be in the classroom. I hope you will join this adventurous experiment.

*Choose-your-own credit will allow you design your own assignment or other way of getting credit, so you get a chance to show me what you are really good at. We will discuss this in the first few weeks of semester.