Learning Language Through Literature in Secondary Schools: A Resource Book for Teachers of English

Chapter 6 - From Reading to Speaking and Writing: Dramatizing for the English Classroom

h CI----IAPTER \J From Reading to Speaking and Writing: Dramatizing for the English Classroom Philip Kam- wing Chan INTRODUCTION This chapter will outline the importance of drama in English lessons and illustrate how drama activities can be used to teach integrated reading, speaking and writing skills. DRAMA IN THE ENGLISH CLASSROOM From a pedagogical point of view, drama has much to offer. Drama exemplifies how language is enacted to organize and formulate experiences, particularly feelings and attitudes. Drama activities can help students in learning to interpret, appreciate and communicate experiences in language. In language teaching, drama can be used to foster speaking skills: it requires students to project their voices while speaking, helps rid them of their inhibitions, prompts them to take speaking turns, and encourages them to convey meaning and emphasis through intonation, facial expressions, gestures and movement. Practising speaking skills through drama activities can be personalized, authentic and fun. The importance ofdrama is acknowledged in the Teaching Syllabusl which gives guidance on how to use drama in the classroom. The School Drama Festival and the School Speech Festival give students opportunities and the 68 Philip Kam-wing Chan motivation to act and speak in English. The revision of the Certificate of Education Examination English Language Syllabus in 1996 increased the weighting of the oral test and introduced role-playas a test format. However, drama activities in the language classroom are often regarded as peripheral. This is because the Examination Syllabus tests predominantly transactional and referential functions of language. Drama is excluded from the Syllabus. In the oral test, for instance,the situations prescribed for the roleplay are related to work and study. The washback effects of these exemplar functions and tasks find their way into the classroom through an overreliance on textbooks. Students are drilled to do role-playing tasks in situations which may not require English for communication. These tasks are useful to prepare them for work but they are not engaging in learning activities since most students may not feel the urgent need to play those roles in the immediate future. The washback effect of such tasks may be one reason why only 6.58% of primary and secondary pupils participated in the Hong Kong School Speech Festival in the 1994-95 academic year.2 The percentage ofpupil participation in the Hong Kong School Drama Festival was even lower, at 0.62%. The lack of drama scripts for the EFL classroom is another reason why drama activities are marginalized. There is a large supply of stories for the teaching ofreading, but there are few plays available on the market for teachers to use in the classroom. This chapter proposes a way ofimproving this situation by turning stories into plays. This will lead students into integrated reading, speaking and writing activities. The following sections will illustrate how to create and conduct these integrated activities. TEXT SELECTION The first thing is to select a suitable story. The story I have chosen is Terry Jones' 'Three Raindrops' ? I chose this story because it is short enough to use for intensive reading. The story is unabridged and the language is simple but not simplified. Sentence patterns are repeated. This makes it interesting for analysis and imitation. We are invited to witness the vanity of the three characters and evaluate their behaviour. The plot is straightforward and the theme is clear. The message is simply presented when we see the downfall of the characters at the end. The story is excellent for both silent reading and reading aloud. It is a model for writing and speaking practice. There are a number of activities that can be generated from this story depending on the language level and learning objective of the class. Here are some of the tasks that have been tried out in the classroom. ==============,.... From Reading to Speaking and Writing 69 TASK DESIGN The tasks do not involve drilling or testing students' knowledge of language. Instead, they seek to build on and extend students' language use by linking the text and tasks to students' personal experiences. Unlike many of the questions found in language textbooks which require students to find the 'right' answers, the tasks here are open-ended. They invite and encourage varied responses. Another point is that these tasks are not form-oriented (they do not just focus on grammatical form). Many textbooks tend to start a unit by defining or explaining a form, e...