There are two program-wide oral assignments during the year: the dialogue in the first semester and the play in the second. They will be graded as both oral and writing assignments. Because of the time spent on these two oral assignments and the fact they are integrated with the writing component, they should be taken and will be graded quite seriously. All students in the FENM program will be working on these unified assignments at approximately the same time.
The first semester dialogue is a real life conversation between two or three people based on a specific topic. Students will write their own dialogue in class and then perform it in front of the class. Students should create their own original stories based on the topic. These dialogues will only be performed in class.
In the second semester, students will create plays in small groups of four to seven students. These plays will be original stories by the students based on agreed-upon topics. The purpose of these seven-to-ten-minute plays is to use the English language for real-life communication. Therefore, the focus of the exercise is on correct language usage and not on slapstick humor or casual entertainment (although entertaining plays do encourage communication).
