Learning Programming Languages by Pantomime

It is challenging to teach students new programming languages by lecturing while retaining interest and student engagement - direct lectures on syntax are inherently dry, and the benefits of more hands-on approaches to allow learners to make mistakes and experiment are well documented. This paper is based on a year teaching two languages, C and Haskell, inspired by the concepts of both cognitive apprenticeship and team teaching. Both of these languages are widely considered to be difficult for new users to learn, and the classes in question have in the past been deemed as challenging and unpopular by students. We describe our approach, then demonstrate that the application of these methods led to these previously unpopular classes becoming well-regarded by students. We support this by way of a survey, and provide some analysis of the source of this improvement and give some qualitative insights and other incidental benefits.