Disadvantages Of Drama In Literature

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 DRAMA IN LANGUAGE LEARNING 2.1.1 Definitions of drama According to Holden (1981), drama was defined as any kind of activity where learners are asked either to portray themselves or to portray someone else in an imaginary situation. Also, Hubbard, Jones, Thornton and Wheeler (1986) stated a definition of drama as "a wide range of oral activities that have an element of creativity present" (p. 317). More importantly, Alan Maley and Alan Duff make the point that dramatic activities are not the performance of plays before passive audiences; the value of these activities lies "not in what they lead up to but in what they are, in what they bring out right now" (Maley and Duff, 1984, p. 6). In addition, Fleming (2006) stated that “drama is inevitably learner-centered because it can only operate through active cooperation”. Drama is a very fruitful activity because learners amass language skills simultaneously. Instead of deploying last decade methods in one way, we can apply drama as an efficient teaching method for learners. To sum up, applying drama in language acquisition will surely bring new outlook of language competence to EFL learners.

2.1.2 The benefits of

Wessels (1987) assumed that “If drama can really enrich the language class in all these ways, why are so many teachers reluctant to use it? Obviously, that trend might be appropriate to the old methods. It could be non-natural and fairly difficult for a teacher to monitor the activity. There may still be some shy students who do not want to perform in front of other people, and some cultures may not prefer this kind of learner-centered activity (Richards & Rodgers, 2001). Clearly, from their perspective, the main drawbacks of using drama are human and cultural factors, which prevent learners and teachers from creative, efficient learning and teaching