Performances on the stage

There is usually not enough time or space for stage performances during English lessons.

Performances on the stage are recommended for “English clubs” or “extra-curricular days”, where simple, short and funny plays can be staged by the child actors and actresses.

The supportive audience can help encourage the children to act and role-play. Therefore, short plays can be performed at school events or class meetings.

There are many possibilities of including the performative character of a dramatic text into teaching, e.g., by watching a recorded theatre productions or a film based on a play, by

imagining it being performed on stage while reading and interpreting it, or through the students acting it out.

Performance or theatre is an excellent approach to developing speaking competence in the EFL classroom. These approaches are effective if the students are expected to eventually stage a performance. This form of drama must be made appropriate to the grade level. It is dependent on which and how the strategy is utilized to make it work for the students (Fonseca and Arnold 2004).

According to Torgeson (2001), Miller (2009) and Mellou (1996), a ‘dramatic play’ refers to all types of pretend play, like symbolic, imagination, fantasy, make-believe, socio-dramatic and role-play. A dramatic play is a type of play where students receive and act out roles.¹² The students are engrossed in a play that fits their needs and interests, while the teacher is designing a space, and providing costume pieces, structures and props. An example of such a drama is “Let Us Pretend”, which is important for kindergarten to Grade 1 students (Williams and Lutes 2010). A dramatic play is a child-oriented activity and includes imitation, simulation, role-play, interpersonal interaction and verbal communication. These elements of a dramatic play can be helpful in a primary school students’ language learning process (McCullough 2000).

In conclusion, drama directly involves the students (Bas 2008). It arouses the students’

interests and builds their personalities (Luyegu 2011). Students who are interested in a learning activity generally perform better than those who are not. The conventional teaching system is often focused on the textbook and the teacher, but in drama, the focus is on the students. Drama is seen as a teaching tool that puts the student’s interests first.

The use of drama is essential in the foreign language classroom because it offers students an opportunity to use their imaginations and enhances their ability to imitate and articulate information. During a drama activity, the students are expected to use their previous experiences to fit into and understand their roles, and to give responses just like in reading and writing. It offers the students an effective way to master a language. Through drama, students are encouraged to modify their communicative competency and fluency.

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The suggestions by Billíková and Kissová (2013) about how to apply drama in a lesson plan were used in this study, and implemented in two main phases: drama-based lesson plans and performances on stage.

During the first phase, drama-based activities were used in the drama-based lesson plan, with the aim of creating a space for learning by playing and being involving in the lesson.

The structures of the drama-based lesson plan are described in more detail in Chapter 8 and Appendix C.

In the second phase, the performance on the stage helps the students to acquire grammatical competence, discourse competence and pragmatic competency through the scripts, but also lets the students practice speaking and to be a character in a simulated play. Furthermore, the performance on the stage might raise their motivation levels.

In the next chapter, the methodology will explain, in considerably more detail, how the drama-lesson plan was designed to meet the need for developing speaking competence through drama activities.

104 Chapter 7: The Implementation of Drama in the Communicative Approach

Table 10. The percentages for each Item in the Attitudes and Motivation test.

105 Chapter 7: The Implementation of Drama in the Communicative Approach

Table 11. T-tests for the Attitudes and Motivation Items, comparing the control and experimental groups pre- and post-intervention (i.e. lesson plan).

Asterisk (*) denotes a significant difference at p < 0.05 and N/A means not applicable.

The advantages of a performance on stage are that it involves the whole group, incorporates movement and carefully planned language usage to create the best speaking practice for real life. By watching the episode and reading the scripts during the pre-performance, the students learn the grammar rules and discourse markers, imitate correct pronunciation, memorize new words about numbers and games, and learn how to make coherent and meaningful sentences.

During the performance, the students have the opportunity to act and exhibit what they have prepared. Therefore, they were excited and motivated. The applause from the audience is also another extrinsic motivation factor. After the performance, the students evaluated themselves and realized what their strong and weak points were. If they did well in the performance, they will be motivated for the next performance. If not, they will draw from the experience of this lesson to make the next performance even better.

Item Number

P-values

Control vs. Experimental Pre-intervention vs. Post-intervention Pre-intervention Post-intervention Control Experimental

1 0.804 < 0.001* 0.19 < 0.001*

2 0.928 0.6 1 0.600

3 0.933 < 0.001* 1 0.002 *

4 0.778 < 0.001* 0.637 < 0.001 *

5 1.000 < 0.001* 0.496 < 0.001 *

6 0.935 < 0.001* 0.589 < 0.001 *

7 N/A N/A N/A N/A

8 0.367 0.002 * 0.122 0.004⁴ *

9 0.950 < 0.001* 0.9 0.002 *

10 0.658 < 0.001 * 0.461 < 0.001*

11 0.845 < 0.001 * 0.85 < 0.001 *

12 1.000 0.03 * 0.281 0.001 *

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