ABSTRACT
In lectures students are passive; in tutorials they are supposed to be active. Lectures present the basic background information; tutorials discuss wider implications, applications, and so on. Students’ experience of lectures is often characterised by solitude, passivity and, after twenty minutes or so, somnolence. To change this experience to one of lively social activity requires something more than ‘talk among yourselves’, which usually results only in desultory and aimless chat. The choice between lecturing and asking students to read is not an all-or-nothing one. Frequently lectures are a combination of basics (found in textbooks) and elaborations, which are more or less personal, or combinations of original sources and commentaries. In the theatre various devices are used to engage the audience more directly and actively, rather than leaving them as passive onlookers. Beyond direct appeals and rhetorical questioning is a range of methods which may require physical action or verbal interaction with the actors.
