4D - Literature Review (3)

 LAMDA examinations

Teacher support material

Graded examinations in Communication  p4-7   (September 2014)

I had read through the teacher support material sometime last year while preparing students for the LAMDA examinations in Communication: Verse and Prose. I thought that because of the line my inquiry is taking it would be worthwhile to go back and look at the text again. It is support published by LAMDA for teachers and ‘learners’ who are preparing from the exams. I was hoping that it would help me to see LAMDA’s recommended way of preparing students.

First of all I like the fact that they call the students ‘learners’. However, it is interesting that they are not called performers as it is a performance based exam. I think this could be that because as well as performing verse and/or prose selections (depending on level) the ‘learners’ have to prepare for some theory knowledge questions. These questions are related to things you would learn in English and the support material for that is in a separate document, worth me looking into.

In grade one and upwards ‘learners’ have to perform two pieces. One has to be one of the LAMDA recommended pieces and the other is your own choice. It is quite open as to what kind of piece that you pick providing it is appropriate to the level being prepared for. LAMDA does stipulate that they own choice should, ‘go beyond easily recognisable events’. They say that this is,

“so that the learner can begin to explore emotions, moods and atmosphere outside their immediate experience,”

I think that this is important for young people to develop their imagination and also one of the reasons I have been thinking about methods. The point is to push them outside of what they know, therefore they can’t always be drawing on their own experiences to be able to convey the mood. This is where Brecht’s idea of attitudes, which I mentioned in a previous review, would help me to get those feelings and emotions out of my students. LAMDA also says that the vocabulary should show ‘variety’ and be ‘expressive’. Again this is to improve their English language skills.

It is recommended in the support material that as a teacher you build up a ‘portfolio’ of pieces that you can use with different ‘learners’ over time. The choices should show variety and be age appropriate. LAMDA do also give some advice on how to keep your students engaged,

‘capture your learner’s imagination by selecting verse which presents colourful word pictures and/or powerful imagery.’

They also recommend when picking prose to use novels that young people may have studied at school. So they do make reference to engagement. This is something that can worry me. If students get bored they don’t try. This is where the different teaching methods would come in, how to make it interesting.

In the text it says that, ‘the learner must bring it to life’. They have to use their voice, movement and body language to show the mood of the piece. One thing that I found interesting is that they say the performer should share the text with the ‘imagined audience’. I don’t remember hearing that before. I usually prepare the students for the exam or audition style performance. So performing for one or two people – does the ‘imagined audience’ mean that they should be performing as if they are on stage. There is a difference. The students have never had any negative comments about this during exams, but it could be something that we could try. Even as a way to get them more expressive and confident.