‘Teacher I am Too Shy to Speak English: Drama Is the Perfect Tool
H. Kubra Saygili and S. Esra Saygili, Turkey
H. Kubra Saygili got her B.A degree in English Language Teaching from European University of Lefke in 2009, and has been teaching English at Hasan Kalyoncu University and studying at the M.A program in English Language Teaching at Cag University. Among her areas of interest are teaching English to adult learners, classroom motivation as well as drama activities. E-mail: kubra.saygili@hku.edu.tr
Esra Saygili completed her major in English Language Teaching at Kocaeli University in 2010 and taught English at Zirve University from 2011 to 2012. She is doing her M.A degree in English Language Teaching at Cag University. Her areas of interest include: ESP, Vocabulary Teaching and Peer Collaboration. Email: esra.saygili@hku.edu.tr
Menu
Abstract
Introduction
Literature review
Research question
Methodology
Conclusion
Future actions
Appendix
References
This paper aims to provide a solution for the speaking problem of Turkish students with the research question of ‘ Does Drama help my students communicate more with the foreigners?’ Drama has a great impact on teaching English. The reason why most teachers prefer using drama in their classes is that it is closely related to the communicative approach. It is essential and beneficial to involve students in a social context instead of following the same coursebook everyday. Students are able to participate more in the class because the topic is interesting and they are more willing to take part in that process since it contributes to physical activities, creativity, imagination and emotional aspects.
The reason why we have chosen drama in my teaching classes is my students’ attitudes toward speaking activities. There are 49 students in the class including one student from Bosnia Herzegovina and another from the Republic of Congo. The problem is that their proficiency in English is much higher than the rest of the students. Turkish students don’t feel motivated enough to participate during the class, hence they feel a little bit shy and do not feel confident enough to express themselves. Sometimes we tried to set up the group activities by including international students in Turkish student groups. It both helped and perplexed students since they felt uncomfortable to speak because they thought that they would make a mistake.
In short, our study aims to provide Turkish students studying Political Science with some opportunities to communicate with international students.
Students learn more when they are actively involved so drama is the perfect tool in teaching them how to communicate with foreign students in class. It is considered as learner-centered since students are the active participants. There are lots of people who have donegreat deal of studies correlated to this issue. As the author Zyoud, M. cited from Fleming (2006) He stated that
Drama is inevitably learner-centered because it can only operate through active cooperation. It is therefore a social activity and thus embodies much of the theory that has emphasized the social and communal, as opposed to the purely individual, aspects of learning. The use of drama techniques and activities in the classroom provides exciting opportunities for foreign language learners to use the language in concrete situations. (Pg: 2)
As one can easily tell from Fleming’s statement, drama is the key tool for language learning since it is a social activity which enables students to participate in inclusive and communicative activities. It helps learners to express themselves freely in the classroom since there is nothing to be ashamed of because each of the learners in class will be actively involved. I want to share a sentence from one of the teaching trainers whose seminar related to Using Drama in ELT classes we attended. He said that ‘If everybody is drunk there is no shame’ which means students should not be feeling ashamed or embarrassed while participating in the learning atmosphere because every student is there for the same purpose.
To quote Gavin Bolton (in Dougill J. 1987), "Drama is a unique tool, vital for language development" as it simulates reality and develops self expression. You need not go into a full-fledged production and public performance.
They also might learn from one another since it is a group activity. We believe that atmosphere is the most vital factor in language learning. Students will have a safe atmosphere while being taught with the help of drama because they will be expressing themselves freely by using postures, gestures, mimicry, acting in social contexts and so forth. The environment in the classroom makes students feel more liberated as they are not being attached to certain kind of book or an activity.
It develops communication skills, social interactive skills, accuracy, fluency, and pronunciation. It is learner-centered and closely linked to cooperative learning.
One of the articles we have read is ‘Using Drama Activities and Techniques to foster Teaching English as a foreign Language’ by Dr. Munther Zyoud/ Al Quds Open University. We realized that Drama not only improves acting but also other skills. It is a powerful language teaching tool. As the author cited from Aldavero (2008) “Drama activities can provide students with an opportunity to use the target language to express various emotions, solve problems, make decisions, socialize. Drama activities are significant in the development of oral communication skills, reading, and writing as well. It helps students to communicate in the foreign language including those limited vocabulary.”(Pg: 2) As it can be understood quite clearly from his sentence, it improves all four skills even if the student has a lower capacity utilization.
Another notable issue is the definition of the drama since it could be used for different purposes in classes. For example; as the author of the article cited from Susan Holde (1982) drama means “any kind of activity where learners are asked either to portray themselves or someone else in an imaginary situation.”(Pg.2 ) That is to say, it means to pretend. As it is mentioned in a perfect way, we can define it as being someone else in the classroom.
As Davies (1990) mentioned “ Drama activities could probably be used in any or all stages of the lesson”. Here he focused on the importance of Drama by mentioning its usage in all stages. It has other benefits as well. It can be used of course but it has some drawbacks as well. We want to share the sentence of Wan Ye Sam (1990), in her article she referred that “However, it should not be used in isolation but should be used in an integrated approach for language teaching. It should not be treated as a 'last resort' when all else fails. It should be part and parcel of the communicative classroom methodology in teaching English as a second language.” It is clear from this sentence that it should be the part of communicative tasks and skills.
Therefore by using drama in our class we hoped that students would overcome their difficulties concerning communication skills. While acting out they were feeling more self confident than before while participating in classroom.Maley and Duff ( 2001), (Philips 2003) suggest that “Drama activities can promote interesting ways of motivating language learner. With drama we can play, move, act and learn at the same time.”(Pq:2), (as cited by the author).
Since drama motivates students to act and participate more actively in the classroom it increases the self confidences of the students.
Related to this issue Peköz, B. (2009) mentioned in his book that “Drama not only provides purposeful and real life situations to develop our language competence but also raises self awareness, increases self confidence.”
‘Does drama help our students take part in class and communicate more with foreign students?’
The reason why we have chosen drama so as to improve communicative skills in my teaching classes is our students’ attitudes toward speaking. Me, Kubra teach at Hasan Kalyoncu University to the Political Science Department. There are 49 students in the class. There is a student from Bosnia Herzegovina and Republic of Congo. The problem is that their proficiency in English is much higher than the rest of the students. Turkish students don’t feel motivated enough to participate during the class, hence they feel a little bit shy and do not feel confident enough to express themselves. Sometimes we tried to create the group activities by including international students in Turkish student groups. It both helped and perplexed students since they felt uncomfortable to speak because they thought that they would make a mistake.
After attending to an English Language Teaching conference held in the university where we currently work, we joined the workshop called ‘Using Drama in ELT classes.’ we learnt great activities and teaching styles via that workshop and decided to practice it in my classes in order to integrate foreign students with Turkish students and secure them communicate more with the foreign ones.
We observed that our students have some troubles during the group discussion activities. They are reluctant to do the tasks, not willing enough to talk to foreigners in class and less likely to be involved in some tasks. Therefore we wanted to change the behavior of our students toward communication skills by providing some strategies which we will be discussing further. We had the plan of increasing my student’s motivation in speaking classes and enable Turkish students to have more conversation with foreign ones. Those problems in our classes and this workshop related to drama led to our action research question ‘Does drama help our students take part in class and communicate more with foreign students?
We decided to use some cards which I prepared by creating some imaginative situations. Those cards are called ‘Persuasion Game’. Wehave created some situations which we will be explaining in the appendix part in a detail way. We have written some situation for students like ‘You found a love letter on your husband’s computer. You are very angry, you want to divorce your husband’ or ‘Your daughter wants to marry with a Italian Guy, but you don’t want her to do so.’ Persuade your dad. We thought that those kind situations would be familiar for students to act out since they are taken from real life. Students might also like to act, since the topic is amusing. We divided the classroom into eight groups. I gave one card to each group. After passing out the cards to students, we told them to pick up a character by saying who wants to be the dad, or who wants to be the husband and wife. Students chose the character that they wanted to act. We were like a facilitator in class and we wandered around the class and help them when needed. Some Turkish students were not willing to prepare a dialogue in order to act in front of the classroom. we observed that they had the feeling of doing or creating some discussions but they kept asking us the same question ‘ Teacher, Are we going to perform it in class?’
We realized that they had great ideas in their mind but the need to perform made them anxious. We had four foreign students in class who were from Uzbekistan, Morocco, Nigeria and Bosnia Herzegovina respectively. We told those students to join the groups which had some speaking difficulties. They chose their groups and helped the Turkish students. After asking them to work together, we realized that Turkish students started to communicate with foreign students unconsciously. We made my Turkish students communicate with foreign ones with the help of those drama cards. Each group prepared marvellous scripts. The dialogues and scripts were superb and really quite funny because students were familiar with the situations. It was really close to real life and they had no difficulties while preparing the dialogues. Topics we have created were also interesting and attracted student’s attention.
Next week all groups were ready to act. They performed in the class with foreign students. Foreign students did not belong to any group, they helped the groups. Foreign students joined the groups more than once when Turkish students needed them. We saw that much more speaking occurred with the help of drama.
Apart from observation we prepared five questions to be asked to both foreign students and Turkish ones so as to find out whether my role cards were useful or not. We used written interview to find it out. Here we will be sharing the answer of students.
Teacher: Do you think it was beneficial enough to have a non-turkish in your group?
Turkish Student: I think It was really beneficial because we had chance to use L2, If we didn’t have foreign friends in our group we would use L1 which would not be efficient at all.
Teacher: Were you able to express yourself more freely with your foreign classmates? If yes, Why?
Turkish Student: It was a nice practice with foreign students before performing it in front of the class. We had more self-confidence since we practiced some English beforehand with foreign friends of us.
Teacher: Did drama help you communicate more in class?
Turkish Student: I couldn’tparticipate in class since my English is not quite well, but with the help of drama and the variety of situations our teacher created, I was motivated. I tried to speak.
Bosnian Student: Everyone had different ideas, we combined them all but before combining them, we discussed it. There was a conversation most of the time.
Congon Student: I was able to use my English effectively thanks to drama. I helped my friends and answered their questions. It was a different kind of practice for me.
Uzbek Student: I improved not only my communication skills but also my body language. We weren’t bored in the classroom. Everyone was busy doing something. Much more learning occurred. The teacher gave us some directions and showed us that English will be spoken if the topic is attractive enough for the students.
After receiving feedback from some students, we realized that Drama does help students to communicate more in the classroom.
After having acted those role play cards in the classroom by involving all the students, as we mentioned above in the methodology part, we noticed that Turkish students started to communicate with foreign students unconsciously. We made my Turkish students communicate with foreign ones with the help of those drama cards.
We also realized that students learned how to communicate with one another as well as acting. It helped more than one skill to be developed. Students felt more comfortable while participating in class and they felt more self-confident after the implementation of using drama. They also gave feedback to each other. At the end of the activities the written interviews which we have applied for students were essential and useful for students since it involved a reflection for them and we had lots of ideas about their thoughts about learning the language via Drama.
We are planning to implement these techniques in other classes as well. We believe that this will help our students to be aware of them and other students as well. Implementation of Drama in order to make our Turkish students communicate more with foreign ones will help them to involve themselves more into the class or provide them help to acquire awareness.
Q1: Do you think it was beneficial having someone who wasn't Turkish in your group?
A: Turkish Student: _______________________________________
Q2:Were you able to express yourself more freely with your foreign classmates? If yes, why?
A: Turkish Student: _______________________________________
Q3: Did drama help you communicate more in class?
A: Turkish Student: _______________________________________
A: Bosnian Student: _______________________________________
A: African Student: _______________________________________
A: Uzbek Student: _______________________________________
Aldavero, V.A.(2008).“Drama in the development of oral spontaneous communication.” Journal of Encuentro (17). Retrieved on 1/8/2010, 40-43
Davies, P. (1990), “The use of Drama in English Language Teaching.”TESL Canada Journal/ Revue TESL du Canada,Vol. 8, No 1. November, 88
Peköz, B. (2009), “Teaching Language Skills”,(pp.21). Anı Yayıncılık, Ankara.
Sam, W. (1990), “Drama in Teaching English as a Second Language-Communicative Approach”, The English Teacher, Vol XIX July 1990. 10
University of Malaya
Zyoud, M.“Using Drama Activities and Techniques to Foster Teaching English as a Foreign Language: a Theoretical Perspective”. Al Quds University. p.2, (n.d.)
Please check the Drama Techniques for Creative Language Teaching course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the How the Motivate your Students course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Building Positive Group Dynamics course at Pilgrims website.
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