Drama can be a beneficial activity in the ESL classroom. Drama provides an excellent platform from exploring theoretical and practical aspect of English language (Boudreault,
as cited in Whiteson, 1996). Many English teachers will use a communicative
approach in their beginner learner class. According to Patel (2008), the goal
of communicative approach is to make learners communicatively competency. Communicative capability is also known as communicative competence
includes grammatical competences, speech competences,
technical competences, and socio-Linguistic competences. Therefore,
drama is a good technique in learning English. Drama
can be a medium of students learning about their individual or social problem. Some
issue stated that ESL learners need more medium to produce the students who are
mastering in foreign language. Learning language is about the naturalness of
the speaking and language itself. The learners should be able to speak their
English second language naturally. The real
improvisation of learn foreign language is the students development
skills. In this writing, the writer will show some benefits of drama class
activity for ESL class such as increasing students ability in speaking,
enriching students vocabularies,
showing the students about the real life, and to build the students confidence.
Most ESL teachers use drama to train their student ability in speaking.
The speaker of English should have knowledge of more and more grammatical competences to become a good speaker in English language or other language (Hymes, as cite in Patel, 2008). Learning drama
technique will contribute the improvement of students learning language. By
learning drama, the students will not only learn how to perform a good drama
but also they learn many new vocabularies from the dialogue of the drama. Students
have to play in order to make an improvisation of their language skill
(Boudreault, 2010). The personal nature of improvisation provides many outlets for students’ self
expression. In this case, the students will have the acquisition meaningful of drama and fluent
interaction in the target language. Therefore, they will train themselves to make a
successful drama performing in the class. When the students act to be a
character that they have been chosen, they will try to act seem to the real
characters. When the students can involve to the character that they have
brought including the dialogue, they will be more communicative like their
daily conversation. Drama can change the students of ESL learner perception
about the language learning from negative to positive. In other hand, they will
study language with fun way.
Students will have many new vocabularies when they learn drama. According to Wassel (1987), one of the potential
benefits of drama is “the fully contextualized acquisition of new vocabulary
and structure”. The active use of lexical items help learner to develop
vocabulary. There should not be passive use of lexical items. They need command
of using words in meaningful message. So in this approach the lexical items
retouch in context. According to Scrivener (1994), when considering language skill, it is
important to make distinction between language systems and language skill.
Scrivener stated that language systems include the lexis (vocabulary), grammar
(rules), fungsion (situation), and phonology (sound, rhythm,
intonation etc.). This technique is very useful in order to help the students
in learning second language. In fact, Most of students have a difficulty in
memorizing the new vocabularies directly from their hand book. It will be a
boring activity for the students. Therefore, in performing drama, they have to
memorize many new vocabularies from the dialogue. In this case, the students
can choose their favorite story for their play. It can give a benefit for the
students in enriching their vocabulary. They will learn more than one character
from the dialogue that they memorized.
Dram makes
the students learn more about real life. Drama can bring the real world into the classroom
(problem solving, research, consulting dictionaries, real time and space,
cross-curricular content) (Zyoud, n.d). Like the other arts, it involves
imagination and feelings and helps us to make sense of the world. It does this
through the creation of imagined characters and situations, and the
relationships and events that they encounter. Therefore, drama can be a reflection of people real
life. The students will learn many different story of life, problems, and how
to solve that problem. Drama can also be used to introduce the culture of the
new language, through stories and customs, and with a context for working on different
kinds of behavior. While the students learn about the story of drama, the
students will get the moral value from the drama story. Actually, the authors
of the drama have a message that will deliver to the reader. Although, it can
be no author or anonymous but there should be a moral value that can be taken
from the story. This is one of techniques for students to learn various types
of life, how is life and the problem solving of different problem of life.
Drama can increase students self confidence. This is the important part of students learning
process. The students will need their confidence in the process of learning
their foreign language. Actually, self confidence not only need in the study of
foreign language but also for in every subject of study. By learning drama,
they should be more communicative in interacting with other. In the same time,
they will also train their self confidence by performing many different
characters in front of their classmate. There is not
cosideration in performing drama. There will not a different treatment berween rich and poor students. They should act based
on the character that have been chosen by their teacher. Therefore, drama is a
good technique in increasing students self confidence.
Drama is a fun activity for learning foreign language. Some benefits
that we will get are increasing the students
speaking skill, enriching the students’ vocabularies, and making the students aware about the meaning of real life,
and increasing the students self convidence.
Drama is an activity that will not give a contrbution in the learning process
in the classroom but also can train their personality of life.
References:
·
Patel,
M. F. & Jain, P. M. (2008). English language teacher. Jaipur:
Sunrise.
·
Broughton,
at al. (2003). Teaching english as a foreign language. NewYork:
Routledge.
·
Basom,
J. (2005). The benefits of drama education. Retrived from http://www.DramaEd.net/benefits.pdf
·
Boudreault,
C. (2011). The benefits of using drama in the EFL/ESL classroom. The internet
journal test. Vol. Xvi, No.1.
·
Zyoud,
Munther. (n. d). Using drama
activities and techniques to foster teaching english as foreign language: a
theoretical perspective. Retrived from http://www.qou.edu/english/conferences/firstNationalConference/pdfFiles/muntherZyoud.pdf
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