Unleashing the power of improvisation: adapting a television game show for the foreign language classroom

This paper focuses on improvisation (also known as improv), which is one of the dramatic techniques that teachers are using in language classrooms nowadays. Teachers and researchers have found that improvisation is valuable for a multitude of reasons, including increasing student motivation and lowering foreign language anxiety, creating a positive learning environment, and generally increasing the level of enjoyment for foreign language students. There are numerous possibilities to use improv games as a main component, or as a supplement, to the standard curriculum in foreign language classes. However, there is always space for new inventions that would be effective and exciting for students. Based on my personal interest in improvisation in general and the Russian TV show “Improvisation” in particular, I decided to choose this show as material for analysis in my master thesis. Therefore, my aim is to evaluate all the improv games of the shows, decide whether these games are suitable for a language classroom, and then adapt them for a language classroom. The adaption is necessary because, in the TV show, the primary goal of activities is to create humor, provoke laughter, and generate jokes. In a language classroom humor is secondary, the main role of improvisation here is to help students develop their abilities of spontaneous speech in a range of different contexts. In the last part of my work, I share my lesson plans on the basis of adapted activities and the results of trying out them with students in order to confirm or deny the effectiveness of proposed games (case studies). In order to be able to achieve my aim, I need a solid theoretical background. That is why the first part of my thesis considers a brief history of improvisation and improv implementation in language classrooms among educators of past and present from all over the world.