The Effectiveness of Drama as a Pedagogical Tool in Language Teaching

Highlights:

• Theatre helps develop communication skills, through the expression of emotions while delivering dialogues, as well as writing and thinking skills through the generation of scripts.
• Theatre is an efficient way to include every student and ensure that each of them participates and has a role in the drama.
• Dramatization of the lessons in a textbook enables children to understand the lessons in a clear manner and learn it while having fun.

Purpose of this article:

This article presents my reflection on the idea of how drama can be an effective means to teach English language in the classroom. I would like to corroborate my idea through the example of my students of Class 5, who enacted the lesson titled ‘Who Will be Ningthou’ from Unit 10 of the Class 5 textbook. The story is a tale from Manipur which talks about the qualities that make a good ruler.

Objective of the lesson:

My objective to perform this exercise was to enable effective learning of the English language amongst my students through the performance of a drama pertaining to a textbook lesson. We are quite aware of the contribution that theatre has towards the development of communication skills. The oral production of language is facilitated through the performance of a drama. Students learn to express their emotions while narrating the events and delivering the actions. They also get to develop their writing and thinking skills when they engage in writing the script of the drama. Moreover, drama proved to be an useful means for me as well in ensuring the participation of all the 25 students in my class.

My planning to achieve the objectives:

While picking the lesson, I noticed that it was in the format of a narrative. It contained dialogues and had self-talk amongst the characters as well. This is quite evident from the passage from the lesson, which has been provided below:

Making every student participate:

It was, thus, quite easy to convert the narrative into a drama. However, I noticed that if I converted the whole narrative into a drama, then only a few students would get the chance to perform in it—there was only 7 – 8 characters in the story. So, I decided to keep the narrative element of the story as well while performing the drama. This allowed me to find the scope for engaging all the students. I divided the narration part, i.e., telling the audience where the action is taking place, the emotions and the feelings of the characters, to each of my students. While some students performed the role of the main characters, others enabled the continuation of the narrative.

Elements of performing a drama:

I was determined to make my students understand the story clearly by making them participate in the discussion pertaining to the drama in class. The students were made to sit in 4 groups, and I posed the following questions to each group:

• Where is the story taking place?
• Who are the characters in it?
• What are the events/actions that are being narrated in the story?
• What are the characters saying or thinking?

Once all the groups presented their responses, I explained the features of the drama–setting, characters, actions, dialogues, scenes— to my students.

Developing the script:

I developed a script for the drama from the textbook itself. I simplified the language of the narrative so that the students would be able to orally deliver the language with confidence. Similarly, I also simplified the dialogues for the students who would be performing. I broke the long sentences into shorter ones, as I felt that it would be easier for my students to remember it.

There were a number of Manipuri words and phrases that were used in the text, such as, “Ningthou”, “Leima”, “Kongnang”, “Meeyam” (for persons), “Shagol thauba nupa”, “thouro”, “phajei” (for exclamatory remarks), etc. I had explained all these words to my students while taking the class. However, in the drama, I only retained the Manipuri words for the characters of the king (“Ningthou”) and queen (“Leima”), changing the exclamatory words like “Thouro”, “phajei” to their corresponding English words—“bravo” and “wonderful”.

Casting for the drama:

I assigned roles to the students based on their boldness, grasping ability, way of delivering, facial expressions, expressive emotions, and other such factors. We had several dialogue-delivery and performance auditions to finalize the assignment of the roles of the main characters. Similarly, I made the students, who took the role of the narrators, deliver their narrative with proper emotions, gestures, pace, and have clarity of expression.

The final performance and the preparations for it:

My students were so enthusiastic about the idea of a drama that they made the props required for the drama—sword, crown, birds, etc.—in groups, using chart sheets, color papers, and other cheap materials. The students brought the costumes for the different characters from their homes. I felt that the performance of the drama had an indelible impression on my students.

My reflections:

I could see very clearly how theatre is an effective means towards developing the communication skills of the students, giving them ample opportunities for the production and oral reproduction of the language. Dramatization of the textbook enables children to understand a lesson in a clear manner and encourages them to learn while having fun. It also ensures collaboration and co-operation among children, as they work in groups and take responsibilities for setting the stage, delivering the dialogues, bringing the costumes, etc. Besides improving language skills, dramatization incorporates values in the children and changes their attitude towards areas that include trust, self-acceptance, acceptance of others, and empowerment, which is the aim of education.

Teacher: Lalitha, GPS Seliamedu