In their book entitled Childrens's Writing, Dahl and Farnan pointed out in the final chapter the importancof researching "the relations that exist between writing and other media, such as writing and drama owriting and the visual arts." (1998: 138) In the same year, David Booth and Jonothan Neelands edited collection of classroom projects in which drama and writing were connected. It was also the year 1998 iwhich Cecily O'Neill and Shin-Mey Kao wrote the book Learning a Second Language through ProcesDrama. It is pure coincidence that these three books rendered most insight for my study. And yet, it is
surprising that it was only so recently that researchers seem to have focused their attention on the vitaimportance of the interplay between speaking, reading and writing in connection with drama work.

Booth and Neelands argue in the following way for the benefits of linking drama and writing:

- Reflective writing afterward provides opportunities for children to revisit and rethink the issues and concerns raised in the drama. (1998: 29)

- When writing is embedded in a context that has personal significance for the writer, writing skills will be enhanced. (1998: 31)

- The best drama, and the most effective opportunities for linking writing with it, emerges over extended periods, during which children have time and incentive to work their way into a unit, to refocus and change direction; and to edit and present their creations to trusted and understanding others. (1998: 31)

- Through the process of writing, participants can give form to their feelings and ideas and learn not only to express their views but to re-examine and reassess themselves in light of the reading audience and its needs. (Booth and Neelands 1998: 31-32)

Over the years, my teaching experience has shown that students put considerable effort into their texts but very little progress can be observed in the actual development of their writing unless most careful attention is paid to their process of improvement. It may be due to the fact that they fall back into habits of L1 acquisition which makes the following quotation about elementary pupils of English seem true for teenagers learning English in Switzerland: "Some beginning writers see writing as fixed and nonnegotiable." (Dahl and Farnan 1998: 58). Mechanical reproduction of a written text that includes the teacher's marking has little learning effect. As Dahl and Farnan suggest: "Writers benefit from prompts about revising a series of questions for the writer to consider both during and after writing." (1998: 68) And: "Teachers' comments, it appears, can have a profound effect on student writing, as long as they are focused rather than diffuse, and as long as they are accompanied directly by instruction that includes student revision." (1998: 128) The authors also point out how important it is that students and teachers share an understanding of the writing. With reference to Langer and Applebee, they list the following five components that make up this shared understanding:

- Ownership: Students must have a sense that the task has value to them, and they must know what the value is.

- Support: Students must understand how a given writing task supports what they are learning.

- Appropriateness: The writing tasks must be ones that students have the knowledge and skill to complete.

- Collaborative: A collaborative role for the teacher supports the writing-learning connection through acts such as modelling, questioning, and providing feedback. The role of the writing teacher is more collaborative than evaluative.

- Internalization: Students must internalize the strategies available to them for writing to learn, and they must come to see writing as a natural part of the thinking and learning process. (1998: 73)

As fluent English speakers, we teachers of foreign languages are always taught drama in a situation that completely dissembles that of our students: When we are in role, we work as if we were native speaking students with the full competence of the language to develop the drama work. However, it is of vital importance to keep in mind that adaptations have to be made, primarily on the level of language input. The desired and necessary language to be used in an L2 context must be carefully planned and introduced to the students in order to prevent frustration and to guarantee development in their linguistic skills. O'Neill and Kao (1998: 126-27) list the modifications that have to take place when drama is done in an L2 rather than an L1 context: cognitive appropriateness, cultural differences, potential for further development, evaluation of the quality and quantity of the target language to be used.

I share a strong belief with all those drama teachers who make the link between drama and writing, reading and speaking. Using drama in teaching foreign language and literature opens up a variety of possibilities for teachers and students to work and to develop themselves: "One strength of process drama is that many new directions for further work are initiated, and another strength is that the impact of participating in drama is powerful and motivating for the cognitive development outside the classroom."
(O'Neill and Kao 1998: 129)

The drama project described on the subsequent pages was carried out with the effort of bringing the prescribed context of a coursebook closer to the students' life, of inspiring their creativity and giving them ownership for the various writing tasks that were aimed at making them familiar and fluent with new vocabulary, grammatical structures and ways in which to improve their sentence fluency.