Drama In The Classroom

PREFACE



“Drama is essentially a creative activity involving movement, language, imagination, emotion and social interaction to represent a story, a situation, a moment or anact.” This definition of drama can lead to the thought that a good synonym for it would be life itself, because we are constantly dealing with feelings and emotions. And through drama, we can find a wayof helping students (especially the ones learning a foreign language) to master the language easily as they would be expanding their knowledge of the world through deductive and inductive reasoning,learning social skills that will not only introduce interpersonal but also intrapersonal benefits, and developing their communication skills while resorting to their verbal-linguistic andbodily-kinesthetic intelligences in a context that tries to be as real as possible. This is why drama becomes part of the process of language learning and, therefore, as it helps develop multiple intelligences,it is of great importance that it be carried out in the classroom.
Educational drama has been developed to be used in the classroom. It deals with the art form of drama in educational pedagogy and itfacilitates the student’s social, physical, emotional, and cognitive development. When a student plays the role of another character, he/she sees things from a different perspective and this makes thechild think and feel differently too. Moreover, drama gives the shy child the possibility of “hiding” behind a character and speaking the foreign language more freely. At the same time, drama is partof the child’s play, especially in children between the ages of three and twelve, as it is the most important way they have to express themselves and relate to each other.
Here lies educationaldrama’s relevance in the language classroom since it involves the child’s natural way of behaving and it fosters interaction and communication. Thus, language becomes more meaningful and memorable than...