What does improv have to do with learning a language?

"Introduce yourself." "Tell us a few words about yourself." "Tell us about your hobby."
Do these sentences ring a bell? How did they make you feel? Because if it was that familiar knot in your stomach, it means that... you're human ;) We all know it, some of us more, some less: you're sitting in a circle, it's nearly your turn, and you already know that you don't know what to say. The same question again and again, and again you have to come up with something special, something interesting, something that won't sound dull, but not too far-fetched either.

When we feel stress and pressure just before we speak, that's when the block appears. And when learning a foreign language, it's even stronger. Because not only do we feel pressure to be interesting, we also want to say it correctly. Two burdens at once. "Say something interesting" plus "say it without mistakes". No wonder a child (and often an adult too) simply goes quiet.

And this is where improv takes the stage.

Imagine turning those same instructions into something completely different.
Instead of "Introduce yourself" → "Each of you has a card with a character on it. Imagine you are that character and tell us your name."
Instead of "Tell us a few words about yourself" → "We have a dog. His name is Dragon. Now each of you, in turn, will say one sentence about him." Instead of "Tell us about your hobby" → "Imagine you have a really strange hobby, for example you collect the bones of the fish you've eaten. Tell us about it."

Sounds strange? It certainly does. But it works! When we make things up and get into someone else's shoes - Kevin's, the dog's, the peculiar fishbone collector's - the language block loosens. We stop talking about ourselves and our own lives, so our reputation isn't at stake. And a character can say anything, with mistakes or without. Nobody takes offence, because it's just a game of being someone else. Improv in foreign language learning: it loosens the block, lowers stress and takes the pressure off.\

And that's just one of the ideas we use when teaching English and Polish at our school.