A Teaching Research of Applying the Drama Skills in English Curriculum: A Case Study on a Junior High School in Keelung

• Main Authors: Wang, Wan-shih, 王菀詩
• Other Authors: 黃純敏
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/99829672697215572292

碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 教育學系在職進修碩士班 === 99 === This is a case study about how to apply drama skills in English curriculums, what influence on students’ English learning in the eighth grade of junior high, and what introspection the researcher can acquire from the teaching process. We experimented on seven drama skills, i.e. Sculpture, Sculpture Gallery, Dramatic Games, Story-teller, Role Play, Impromptu Performance, and Drama Play, in an English curriculum with a textbook and fairy tales as the main teaching material. A group of eighth grade students from a Junior High School in Keelung participated in our experiments. The teaching process went through three periods and two corrections of units design. After analyzing the research data qualitatively, the main findings are as summarized as follows: From the curriculum contents, we found applying drama skills in English curriculum was flexible and feasible in terms of units design. The textbook and fairy tales effectively enriched the teaching units. Applying different drama skills in different units (such as Dramatic Games in English vocabulary teaching) demonstrated its flexibility. From the teaching process, we found the teaching experience helped both the teacher and students in teaching and learning respectively. The combination of drama skills and multi-teaching methods of English provided the show times for different learning types of students. The difficulties encountered during the three periods in the curriculum implementation gave the teacher a chance to learn. The difficulties: the teacher wasn’t familiar with the drama skills in the first period; the dramatic activities made the time too long and shortened the teaching time on the textbook; the students were too noisy in class and made the teacher angry; the teacher had to deal with the contingencies of the teaching process. From the learning influences on students, students’ learning motivation increased, as well as their English performance, the level of imagination and creation, and the abilities to solve questions. The relationship among students and the teacher in team works also increased. About learning motivation, students became more actively asking questions and giving suggestions in class. Besides that, they also looked forward to the drama play. They used dictionaries and were glad to hand in their homework. About learning performance, students improved their listening and oral abilities after taking part in body gestures activities. The dramatic games helped students remember English vocabularies. The guided writing enhanced students’ writing and reading abilities. About imagination and creation, students were able to rewrite the paragraphs incorporating their own diverse living experiences. They made up stories based on the clues provided by the teacher, which showed their imagination. They gave a new life to the roles in drama plays. In During the team work, the students helped each other and coped with problems encountered their drama plays. The team work increased the interaction between the teacher and students, and it raised the relationship among students as well. We made some suggestions based on what we have described: First of all, English teachers should learn more about drama skills to improve their specialty in English teaching with drama so that the frustration of teaching process can be reduced when they want to combine drama skills with multi-teaching methods of English. Second, we can apply more drama skills or strategies to enrich English learning experience. Third, for future work, learning achievement tests should be added before and after the teaching process so that we can compare the results in the three periods of the teaching process.