The Drama Approach as an inclusive tool to learn English as a foreign language: a learning unit for two third-year middle school classrooms with a gifted student

In recent decades the Drama Approach with its countless drama techniques has become a powerful tool to motivate learners studying English as a foreign language, and to improve both oral and written skills. In the field of educational linguistics, the Drama Approach embraces most of the features of the Humanistic and the Communicative Approaches: the playful aspect with the acceptance of mistakes, the cooperative learning and the motivation of both students and teachers. Moreover, the needs of the students become the main focus, considering all their different features. In particular, gifted students have peculiarities that make their learning noticeably different from their peers, above all in foreign languages. Therefore, teaching gifted students turns into an everyday challenge which needs to be won in order to avoid demotivation and school abandoning. In the current study, a learning unit has been tailored and proposed to two third-year middle school classes, using some drama techniques to involve and motivate all the student, in particular, a gifted one.