I think I mentioned before that putting on a play involves a lot of chewing on nails, pulling of hair and gallons of coffee. Well then, why do I do it? Why use drama to teach English?

1.   Authenticity. Drama encourages students to use English appropriately in real conversations, expressing emotions and ideas. 

2.   Fluency. While learning a play, students listen to, read and then repeat their lines. This way they become familiar with the words and phrases and are able to say them with more and more fluency. 

3.   Pronunciation/Enunciation: through drama, students learn proper pronunciation and enunciation as well as how to project their voices.  This helps them to become clear and confident speakers.  

4.   Vocabulary building. Students understand and retain new words easily through drama. By the time my students have read, rehearsed and acted out a scene that contains the word “astonishing”, for example, they never forget it! 

5.   Differentiated Learning: It is easy to teach students with different learning styles / at different levels when you use drama. Dramatization lets each student absorb the language in his own way. The weakest students often benefit a lot from communicating using nonverbal cues (body movements/facial expressions) 

6.   Fun: Students love drama because it is interactive, visual and fun.

If you are looking for a play to use with your school/class, I can suggest (and recommend) some of the plays/musical plays we use at my school:

Grade 2: Go Fish!

Grade 3: Bugz

 Grade 5: Persephone

 Grade 6: Treasure Island

 Grade 7: Project Peace

 Grade 8: Wooing Wed Widing Hood

;-)CoffeeAddict - w/broken leg