Drama in English Language Teaching

Drama is a part of literature that refers to the performance of written dialogue and stage action. It is meant to be performed in front of audiences. Drama can be used as a tool for learning English. When I was in senior high school, my teacher told me to use drama in learning English. My teacher asked me and my friends to do a role play of Indonesian tale in front of the class. We played the roles and tried to convey the message contained in the story well. Before that, we need to read the script in order to understand the story. At that time I acknowledged that drama helps us to learn English in a fun way. My reading and listening skills are increased by watching a drama. My vocabulary also increases because I’m totally curious whenever I hear a new word that I didn't know before and I end up looking it up in the dictionary. In addition, drama gave me more knowledge about life and how to deal with its problems. Oftentimes, drama teaches us to see a matter from a different point of view. Thus, drama can be a means of learning of English because of its obvious learning values.

Drama is one creative form of learning English. It is an effective way to help students in learning because it provides many benefits. Using drama in the classroom is highly recommended. It will help students to develop their reading comprehension, vocabulary building, and also negotiation skills in real situations (Guliyeva, 2011). As students need to read the script of the drama or will watch it enthusiastically, the message will be conveyed well. Additionally, drama will teach students about linguistics creatively. A rich resource of linguistic creativity will be gained in playing a drama —especially improvised— because it requires students to do or read an oral text. (Maley & Kiss, 2017). Students will learn how to pronounce the words contained in the text of the drama. Since students are required to act while playing a drama, it is obvious that they will build their confidence and develop their communication skills (Owen, 2017). They are encouraged to express their act in verbal communication by showing their facial expression or doing body language which all fit to the characters.

Well, in teaching English, I will apply some of my ideas. The first idea is for the elementary students, named “Guess me!”. First I will ask two of them to come to me. I will give each of them a role to explain some kind of work profession. The one will be given a paper of a poem, he/she will be a narrator, and the other one will act on what he/she says. Then, the whole class will guess who he/she is. By reading a poem accompanied with gestures or acts will help students to learn grammar patterns or even intonation (Lazar, 1993). Not only fun, this kind of activity will also enrich their vocabularies, improve students’ reading skills and pronunciation. The second one is for junior high school students. I will ask them to make a group of eight. They will conduct a drama based on their daily lives in expressing something; such as giving, asking, apologizing, etc. They will perform it in front of the class and each group will be given no more than 10 minutes. Before they conduct a drama, the groups have to make a simple script. The other groups will become examiners in the form of peer review. Then for high school students, I will do an activity based on basic competence, namely understanding narrative texts. They will also present a drama about Indonesian folklore. They are divided into at least 6 students per group. Before performing in the class, they need to choose the kind of story they want. Each group will be given 15 minutes to perform. Those methods will help students to think creatively, collaborate, and generate new ideas (Owen, 2017). By doing a peer review, they will learn about critical thinking. It is clear that students will also be able to communicate with each other and make a group discussion to solve the problem.

The Template of Peer Review

References:

Guliyeva, G. (2011). The role of drama in language teaching. In 1st International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (pp. 521-524).

Lazar, G. (1993). Literature and Language Teaching: A Guide for Teachers and Trainers. Cambridge University Press.

Maley, A., & Kiss, T. (2017). Creativity and English language teaching: From inspiration to implementation. Springer.

Owen, S. (2017). The Benefits of Drama and Play. Pyjama Drama. Retrieved from <https://www.pyjamadrama.com/benefits-of-drama-and-play>