Does increasing hours of Drama lead to the improvement of students' English as a Foreign Language?

 By Doménica Tobar 

Teach English 

Drama Tool

Drama is an interactive way to learn the English language, where students are actively engaged. Therefore, increasing hours of Drama activities like plays, poetry, role plays, dramatizing texts, and so on help students improve pronunciation, fluency, improvisation or characterization, grammar, and vocabulary. 

Drama: An Educational Tool

What is Drama?

Firstly, the term drama comes from a Greek word meaning "action". Drama is an educational tool that empowers learners and motivates them to study a second language. Moreover, drama is a tool in which learners are involved in a social context and communicate not only using language, but also gestures, mimics, body postures, and intonation. Furthermore, drama is seen as an active approach in which learners are engaged in fictitious or realistic contexts, so they could experience new emotions, movements, and share knowledge among them.

Why apply Drama?

With the implementation of drama, teachers will give opportunities to foster new experiences and creativity of their students because it is very different from a conventional class. Here, students can feel free to create their material, collaborate in groups, make a discussion of agreement, and design their stage.

Why it is important in Education?

When drama was used for educational purposes such as formal or informal education, participants were involved in an interactive environment. It could strengthen the emotional and psychological appeal of messages and provide an interesting way to explore a language.

When should drama be used?

Drama is an effective tool to teach English and could be used in any part of the lesson. However, the most important thing is to give enough time with the purpose that students can express or exchange ideas and emotions. For example, if the teacher wants to present a new vocabulary, students can dramatize a dialogue that contains new words.

Are there reasons to incorporate drama in a classroom?

Drama is suitable in any subject to focus on a topic from the unit. Learners are motivated in the content of the subject and relaxed during the learning process. Moreover, students always use the language for solving problems in real contexts. Teacher and students can make a close-knit community in which they feel comfortable to try sensitive topics.

 

Acting is a form of communication, and communication is the transmission of information from sender to receiver, who for our purposes now is actor and audience. (Guliyeva, G. 2011)

Look at this example of how drama is used at schools

Drama in English as a Foreign Language Classroom

Drama in EFL classroom makes the teaching-learning process more meaningful and memorable for learners. The intervention of drama in the teaching language has been successful. Drama is considered an effective learning tool because students play many roles of other characters in other contexts, so they will not only learn the language more effectively but will also learn to communicate with others. Learners engage in the lessons because they have the freedom to try out many things. They can develop language skills, critical thinking, and imagination. The whole drama class is encouraged to:

 

Drama sustains interactions between students within the target language, creating a world of social roles and relations in which the learner is an active participant. (Kao and O'Neil 1998, 4)

Some benefits of use Drama in the English language Classroom:

 

Some items thatTeachers need at a drama class :

Books of games,
Box of Costumes,
Quality speakers,
Organizational Storage,
Performance space,
Inspirational Posters, and
Notice board.

8 Tips for the Educator in Drama Class

1. You should start with a warm-up or icebreaker in order to create a good drama class. Your students are going to connect with the new knowledge as early as you include a funny activity.

2. You should give clear instructions. For example, introduce the topic of the play, the material needed, and ask them to be sure they understand everything you said. You have to start doing a model in order to demonstrate the activity. Besides, learners can make small groups in order to clear doubts.

3. You should give enough time for preparing ideas or rehearsals to your students because of the lack of time causes that students perform in poor quality. Students will do a great job dividing the time for all the things that they want to finish.

4. You should provide feedback when students present their performance. Students have to reflect on what they do, for that reason, providing feedback is an excellent way to communicate their progress or what they have to improve.

5. You should prepare the formation of groups. Sometimes students could have the chance to select the members of their group, however, teachers can recognize the skills that students need to develop and designate peers to be successful in the performance.

6. You should explain the aim of each activity. If students know exactly what is the purpose of the drama activity, they will try to practice and practice to reinforce their knowledge.

7. You should monitor the preparation of students because they can ask you about something from the performance or the ideas that they have.

8. You should encourage your students to use L2 persistently.

Drama: Activities

Drama is a powerful tool that gives students the opportunity to solve problems, develop skills, strengthen target language, express themselves, and many other benefits. Moreover, drama can make students active because of the use of many enjoyable activities.

Role plays

Role-play originally tried out in industrial and managerial training. It now connotes activities in the teaching of English as a foreign language. It is a speaking activity when students empathize with the role of a person or object. It is really fun and motivating because students get the chance to express themselves. Moreover, role instructions tell the student how to interact and it also looks for imagination.

Drama game

It uses many elements and techniques from theatres, such as role-playing, improvisation, pantomime, and dramatization. Therefore, drama games are a creative procedure, one that offers group participants instant fulfillment, satisfaction, and gratification.

Mime

It can be used to practice vocabulary, grammar points, or sentences. Miming games are interesting. For example, the charades game where students use actions to describe the word. They are not allowed to speak or spell the word in the air.

Simulation

These activities have the purpose to make students reflect on a real situation. Students in small groups can discuss a problem. Some dialogues that students could play are greetings, introductions, partings, complaints, and compliments. Besides, students learn to negotiate and solve problems.

Poetry

It is a form of literature that has been used to engage students in learning a second language. Students can improve their pronunciation and spelling.

Listen to this poem and practice with your students

A Pizza the Size of the Sun by Jack Prelutsky

 Steps:

1. Students will listen to the audio about this poem.

2. Teacher will emphasize in the pronunciation.

3. Students ask for vocabulary that they do not understand.

4. Teacher and students imitate with a good tone of voice.

Drama activity is a tool for encouraging students to use the English language. These activities are flexible and it could be adapted according to students’ needs.

Detailed Examples of Drama Activities

Frozen Image Building

Time: 25 mins

This activity is focused on creating a story, an idea, or event in some frozen images with the body. Learners act on a series of frozen images to tell the story without movement. Creativity is really important because learners have to represent emotions or other abstract things. This activity could be developed individually, in groups, or with the whole class. The participants might rehearse the frozen image or it can be spontaneous.

Description

The teacher introduces a story and also creates small groups in the class. Learners could act on the main three frozen images that represent the story. Learners use their bodies to represent either characters or objects. When learners make their performance, the audience is paying attention. The teacher also could ask the audience what they can see in the frozen image or guess the title of the image and discuss the characters.

Very few resources are needed to make the communicative experience more 'real' for the students. Perhaps if teachers think of the drama activities in the terminology of the popular ELT methodology such as 'communication games', or 'tasks' they could better comprehend the goal of using them. (Gray, J. 2002)

 

Reader's theater

Time: two sessions of 30 minutes.

This enjoyable activity is focused on developing reading, fluency, or pronunciation through a written text called “script”. A number of scripts come from novels, poems, plays, stories, or books. The main difference among traditional theater is that this only needs the script, easy gestures, and dynamic voices in order to bring the story alive. Each learner performs a character from the script.

Description

Before the performance, the teacher must introduce and read the script to the whole class. The teacher pays close attention to the pronunciation of words. Also, the teacher has to organize groups or establish which students are going to read the script according to the number of characters in it. The teacher has to facilitate a copy of the script to each reader. Learns also have time for rehearsing their lines and it does not require that learners memorize them. During the performance, learners perform the story in front of the class in order to keep eye contact with the rest of the class. They use a voice that simulates that they are talking and good intonation. After the performance, learners discuss in a circle their performance, and the teacher gives some feedback to readers. Then, students do activities related to the topic.

Other Funny Activities

Puppet Plays: learners use puppets in order to express themselves.

Masked Drama: It is an advantage to use masks becasue learners feel less inhibited to perform.

Imaging Taste 

Time: 15 mins

The purpose of this activity is making others' mouths water.

1. One student has to describe something to eat; this students has to exaggerate the smells, tastes and textures of the food.

2. Next, the other students in groups describe and talk about this food.

 

In drama activities, the teacher has to ensure that students:

practice together

has a role in their group

understand the instructions of the activity.

use L2 constantly

The role of the teacher:

1. Facilitator

2. Guide

3. Spectator

4. Participant