DRAMA

 Welcome to this blog designed for the subject of Itinerario!

Here, you will find relevant, useful, and essential information about drama in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) contexts, and some activities about drama for you to develop in your classes.

Introduction to drama 

According to Watson (1963) drama is considered as a story acted on a stage for an audience. In other words, drama is any dialogue or script represented by living people on a stage for a target public. 

Moreover, some characteristics of drama have to do with movement, action, and dynamics. The ideas of the author of the script, story, or dialogue are transmitted to others through emotions, gestures, facial expressions, and oral performance (Azerbaijan, 2021). 

                                         

Drama in the EFL classroom 

The English language has grown at an incredible pace in the last few years. Therefore, the search for new strategies, methods, or techniques that can contribute to English learning or acquisition is essential. In this sense, the integration of literary works or activities in the classroom seems to have a great impact since it contextualizes the language and exposes students to real situations. 

Benefits of drama in EFL 

Angelianawati (2019) states some benefits of drama in EFL classroom are:

- Language is contextualized for communicative purposes.

-Writing and speaking are enhanced through the use of drama. 

- Creativity, teamwork, critical thinking, risk-taking, and leadership. 

-Imagination is stimulated for students to explore issues and get new experiences. 

-Communication is encouraged through real situations or contexts. 

-Students don't remain seated, they have to move to perform the activities. 

-Acquisition of contextualized vocabulary.

-Social awareness and cooperation are enhanced.

Challenges of drama in EFL 

-Teachers cannot have complete control of physical and verbal language when preparing the drama.

-Drama can cause disorder since students have to be constantly moving. 

-Some students are afraid of performing in front of others. 

Drama activities 

Freeze frame

🌺 Image “flashes” or “bites”

The groups create a series of images. (The number of images depends on the age of students, but in all cases, there must be at least three). In this activity, teachers have to assign the role of director to a student. The director will be in charge of giving instructions to the audience about closing or opening their eyes. Therefore, to start the activity, the audience will be with their eyes closed. While the audience keeps their eyes closed, the staff is going to perform the first image. Once they have represented the image, the director is going to ask the audience to open their eyes. Then, with the second image, it happens the same, the director will ask the audience to close their eyes while the staff is performing it. Once they have represented the image, the director will ask again to the audience to open their eyes. This process is going to be repeated in the transition of images until they are finished. The idea here is that the audience only sees the images and not the preparation process (The audience has to finish with their eyes closed). 

 Example: 

 • Image 1: She picks up the cellphone. 

• Image 2: She holds her cellphone to the ear. 

• Image 3: She puts down the cellphone and still has her hand on it

🌻Guess the scene

Select 8 to 10 scenes from a story that students know, or they have recently read. For example, Cinderella, Beauty, and the Beast, etc. Divide the class into two or three teams or according to the number of people needed for each scene. Each group of students must have a director and the rest of the students are the actors. The teacher will take each director of each team. Then, the teacher shows each director a description of a scene but does not show it to the actors of the team. The director of each team should manipulate the actor’s bodies to form the freeze-frame vignette. The teacher only can give physical commands in English, like “Move your leg”, “Raise your left hand”, etc. Each group has one opportunity per student to guess the scene that their classmates are performing. The first team that guesses the scene will earn a point. In case that students have problems guessing, the students of the team who is presenting the scene can participate in the process of guessing. If the students of the teacher who is presenting the scene guess what scene is, the other team cannot earn a point. The point will not be awarded to any team. Finally, the same process will be followed by the other teams.

Roleplay

Role-plays are considered activities in which students have to perform specific situations or roles. This gives the student the opportunity to practice the language. Role-plays help students to become more interested and involved, especially by applying knowledge to solve problems. Furthermore, role-plays allow students to use the language themselves, directly, without the manipulation of their teacher. Incorporating role-play into the classroom adds variety, a change of pace, and opportunities for a lot of language production and also a lot of fun.

Examples of role-plays:

🌹 Booking a Hotel

This will allow students to practice a specific type of language. Usually, this will be formal language as it is a business conversation. This can also be done in the format of a telephone conversation, or it could be someone approaching a text. There is a wide range of opportunities here for the students to learn new forms of vocabulary.

🍁Teach Me!

 In this role play, one student will play the ‘instructor’ and one student will play the student.

The instructor should guide the student on how to complete a task, and the student should follow the instructions and act out what the instructor is saying. For example, the instructor could be a chef and could teach the student how to make spaghetti. There are endless possibilities for this kind of role-play and students will love having their classmates follow their instructions.

Mime

This kind of drama offers the learners the opportunity of expressing themselves in a non-verbal way. Consequently, they will have to make use of their hands and body movement to convey a message avoiding mentioning a word. Then their classmates have to understand and the information by observing the mime of their peers. This process is important because it is helpful to encourage students to develop their acting and imitation skills in terms of using their body language such as postures, movements, gestures, among others. This process will also help students to understand the importance of communication by using the body to give the audience an idea of what is really happening in the play. 

References 

Angelianawati, L. (2019). Using drama in EFL classroom. Journal of English Teaching, págs. 125-134. Obtenido de https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1266171

Azerbaijan, B. (2021). Characteristics of drama genre and language. 79-83. Obtenido de https://bulletin-philology.kaznpu.kz/index.php/ped/article/view/341/713

Freeze Frame - The Comprehensible Classroom. (2021). Retrieved 2 July 2021, from https://comprehensibleclassroom.com/2014/10/24/freeze-frame/

Watson, G. (1983). Drama: An introduction. Hong Kong: The Macmillan Press LTD. Obtenido de https://books.google.com.ec/books?hl=en&lr=&id=1kBdDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP2&dq=what+is+drama&ots=PJu7d2hCVd&sig=j7ZQ5lxkVixLN7OA7_yo9nLJ83U&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=what%20is%20drama&f=false

Nanda, D. S, & Susanto, S. (2021). Using Drama in EFL Classroom for exploring students' knowledge and learning: Journal of English Education. 9(2), pp.59-66. https://doi.org/10.25134/erjee.v9i2.4353