Doing Drama
Drama
Introduction
Drama does not have to be complicated or stressful, it is a performing activity in which art is developed, this is an outlet for self-expression in which people show how, and what they feel, it is also a way of learning. This technique is an effective learning tool because it involves students in an intellectual, physical, social, and emotional way. Besides, there are various activities such as improvisation, playmaking, role plays, and pantomime, these activities are useful to develop creativeness in participants and develop critical thinking.
Drama is one subject that can be very helpful while teaching the English language. In these classes, you have the freedom to try different things, roles, any idea you may have.
Drama in the EFL Classroom
Why use drama in the EFL classroom?
Drama techniques are helpful to encourage students to use their entire bodies. In this way, learners can think and use their bodies at the same time while developing a wide range of activities. Besides, it allows learners to be creative with their roles in totally different ways. These kinds of techniques are helpful for those students whole learn better by practicing or by doing things. It has relationships with a hands-on approach in which students put into practice what they are learning or what they have learned by using their bodies.
Drama is helpful to learn the language because it can build confidence in shy learners, so those who are shy to speak English are given a fun way to communicate more easily, by promoting the fact that language is not just about memorizing vocabulary and words it is also about body language.
Advantages.
- It increases students’ motivation, participation, confidence, and fluency in spoken English as well as communication through body language.
- It extends the emotional range of expressions.
- It develops creativity and spontaneity in students.
- It provides opportunities for group and self-expression.
- It promotes confidence, trust, cooperation, and group cohesion.
- It provides opportunities for group and self-expression.
- The acquisition of meaningful and influent interaction in the target language
- Acquisition of new fully contextualized vocabulary and structure.
- Activities are artificial. The situations are sometimes and irrelevant to the learner’s need.
- Activities are difficult to monitor both physically and verbally.
- It causes embarrassment and awkwardness, in some situations, especially among adult learners.
Drama Activities
Title: Cheating Out Challenge
Description: This activity is good for teaching actors to always try to face their audience (i.e., “cheating out”). First set up a simple, goofy obstacle course on stage. Actors must complete the course while facing the audience the entire time. To add to the challenge, have them sing a familiar song as they do the course to see if they can project their voice while moving and keeping their audience as their main focus.
Title: Taxi Cab
Description: Set four chairs in two rows of two (like a car). You can divide your group into four. Actor one is the driver. The driver creates a unique character and begins the scene. Person two gets “picked up” and interacts with the driver as a new unique character (for example, someone who just got their wisdom teeth removed). The twist is the driver must take on the character of who they pick up and they begin to interact together (as in the example, now they are two people who just got their wisdom teeth removed). Then the third person gets picked up with a whole new character and the two people in the car become that character that just got picked up and again for the fourth person. After a minute or two (and the comedy unfolds), the fourth person gets “out” of the cab and the three remaining characters return to the third person’s character and so on until only the driver remains and ends the scene in their original character.
Title: Miming words
Description: This is an activity to consolidate meaning and revise Vocabulary. All the students and the teacher stand in a circle. The teacher has prepared vocabulary cards with the target language which are in a box in the middle of the circle. The teacher takes a card from the box and returns it to her spot in the circle. She reads the word aloud. Then she acts out the meaning of the word. The student on her left must do the same action. The next student on the left must repeat. This continues until all the students have done the teacher’s action for the word. This should be done quite quickly to maintain interest. When the action has gone around the circle, another student chooses a vocabulary card from the box and the activity starts again.
Title: Story, Story, Die!
Description: Choose four students to be storytellers and one pointer. The pointer picks one person to start the story and then randomly switches between people. The goal is to continue telling a cohesive story, picking up where the last person left off. A participant “dies” if they make a continuity error or if they hesitate too long before picking up the thread of the story. The audience can be the judge and participants can “die” an exaggerated stage death for more fun. The last person standing wins.
Title: Miming scenarios.
Description: Show your students a video clip of a scenario – two friends chatting in a coffee shop, a husband and wife arguing, a couple of friends laughing together. In pairs, they must each choose a participant. They must study that person in the clip – their hand gestures, body language, facial expressions. Once they have watched the clip a few times, the teacher plays just the audio of the clip and the students must mime out their characters while the audio is playing
Title: Miming sentences.
Description: Prepare cards beforehand with common sentences or questions. This can be related to a specific scenario, such as making small talk (How do you know Jacky?), traveling (Can you tell me where the bus station is?), or introductions (This is my colleague, John). One student takes a card and must act it out and the other students must guess what it is.
Title: Freeze Frame Photos
Description: Project the photographed scenes that you collected for the class and describe them to the students. Don’t use too many scenes. Then, the teacher asks students if they don’t understand something or if the scenes are unfamiliar to them. Print the images on a sheet of paper for each pair of students. Students write a story base on the sequence of pictures. Another option is that students tell the story orally. After that, the teacher distributes one of the images to a pair of students and asks them to write an alternative story explaining what is going on in the picture. The student should explain what is different from the story they write before. The teacher divide class into groups. Each group should create a timeline of the scenes of the story
References.
I like the way you have designed your blog, it is simple, but attractive. Besides, you have summarized the most important content about drama, as well as some activities we can use in our planning. Not mentionaning, that you also included information about drama in EFL class. Good job!
ResponderBorrarHi Daniel, I like your job. You added all the information required, which is very useful for me. You were clear with the information and descriptions of the activities. Also, it is good that you added the references, so I can find the original author and read his/her work.
ResponderBorrarHi Daniel! I enjoyed to read your blog, it was interesting and atractive. You mentioned important advantages and disadvantages about drama in the classroom and also activities that teacher could use in the class. I think that drama could be a good strategy to teach English as a second language. Good job!
ResponderBorrar