Drama and Dramatic Activities
Benefits of Using Drama to Language Teaching
Using drama in a language classroom is a good resource for language teaching. It is through the use of drama that learners become familiar with grammatical structures in contexts and also learn about how to use the language to express, control and inform. The use of drama raises the students’ awareness towards the target language and culture. In this context, the use of drama as a tool rather than an end gains importance in teaching a foreign language. Yet, there is one obvious danger: cultural imposition should be severely avoided since it results in the loss of language ego and native language identity in many cases . To put it differently, language learning should be culture-free but entirely not culture-biased. For this reason, the new language and the context of the drama should fuse into a language learning process with high interest, relevance and enjoyment. Learners should make use of drama to promote their comprehension of life experiences, reflect on particular circumstances and make sense of their extralinguistic world in a deeper way. The educational benefits of drama, according to (Lenore 1993), are as follows:
• stimulates the imagination and promotes creative thinking,
• develops critical thinking skills,
• promotes language development,
• heightens effective listening skills,
• strengthens comprehension and learning retention by involving the senses as an integral part of the learning process,
• increases empathy and awareness of others,
• fosters peer respect and group cooperation,
• reinforces positive self-concept,
• provides teachers with a fresh perspective on teaching.
Some other educational benefits of using drama in a foreign language class can be listed as follows:
• bringing authenticity into the classroom,
• exposing the learners to the target culture as well as the social problems a society may be undergoing,
• increasing creativity, originality, sensitivity, fluency, flexibility, emotional stability, cooperation, and examination of moral attitudes, while developing communication skills and appreciation of literature,
• helping learners improve their level of competence with respect to their receptive and productive skills,
• providing a solid basis for the learners to bridge the gap between their receptive and productive skills,
• offering students the space and time to develop new ideas and insights in a range of contexts,
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• enabling students to develop new understandings and forms of knowing not accessible in other more traditional ways of learning. In other words, the use of drama seems to be an effective technique in today’s communication-based, student-centered foreign language teaching. Since it is an authentic material, it helps students to promote their comprehension of the verbal / nonverbal aspects of the target language they are trying to master. Particularly, teachers, who wish to make language learning more colorful, motivating and interesting, can make use of drama in their language classes. Since drama is the reenactments of social events, students improve their personality and code of behavior. Thus, they can achieve more meaningful and realistic teaching from which students can benefit to a great extent.
Drama is one of the peculiar manifestations of literature with potentials for language teaching. Drama can be fundamental in establishing better communication, because it shows many aspects of life and includes also elements related to creativity and fantasy. Thus in EFL teaching , we can use drama, although until recent times it has not had got enough recognition, perhaps due to ignorance, losing in this way aspects as important as expression or sensitivity. At the same time, using drama, we can help people to develop language skills in general and oral skills in particular. Drama is very effective in teaching speaking because it can provide the learners with useful chunks of language and it prepares the grounds for a longer interaction. The reason is that drama can be interpreted and understood differently by different learners and accordingly it can cause many exchanges.
Drama and Dramatic Activities
A composition, in prose or poetry, accommodated to action, and intended to exhibit a picture of human life, or to depict a series of grave or humorous actions of more than ordinary interest, tending toward some striking result. It is commonly designed to be spoken and represented by actors on the stage. Drama is an art form that explores the human conflict and tension. The generally takes the form of a story presented to an audience through dialogue and action. The story is conveyed using the elements of the theater: acting, costumes, props, scenery, lighting, music, and sound. Demand has an emotional and intellectual impact on both the participants and audience members. It holds up mirror for us to examine ourselves, deepening our understanding of human motivation and behavior. It broadens our perspective through stories portray life from different points of view, cultures, and time periods. Drama has been defined as any activity which asks the participant to portray himself in an imaginary situation; or to portray another person in an imaginary situation. Drama is thus concerned with the world of 'let's pretend'. It provides an opportunity for a person to express himself through verbal expressions and gestures using his imagination and memory. In this paper, drama refers more to informal drama (creative dramatics) as it is used in the language classroom and not on stage. The participants in the drama activities are thus learners and not actors.
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