Purpose of teaching English in first trimester of primary school is mainly based on development
of social skills and the ability of communication. The emphasis is thus on listening and talking.
Language development of a child should firstly happen with help of developing primary
communication abilities and skills and later with the structure of the language itself. As a
teacher-to-be, I would like to ensure children meaningful situations, in which they would be
able to use the language in real-life situations. With that in mind, I performed drama based
pedagogical workshops in third grade of primary school.
In our research, we joined the area of learning a foreign language with the area of learning
through art, more specific drama. Choosing the suitable learning approach in teaching,
encourages autonomy and independence of a learner and rich language environment,
originating from interests of specific age group. At the same time, learning through and with
drama, includes also the social part of education, where the emphasis is on interpersonal
relations. In frame of this, mostly qualitative, study, which includes qualitative and quantitative
methods of gathering and analyzing data, participated the class of 24 students. From all of them,
21 were active participants from beginning till the end of the study, 10 females and 11 males.
In third grade, students are in the process of developing communication abilities and skills in
foreign language. With that in mind, we wanted to research how using elements of drama-based
approach can motivate children, encourage positive attitude towards the subject and in the same
time, reach learning aims in English class, with emphasis on development of social and
communication skills and abilities.
In planning and performing of the process, I used performative drama model AV (Ars Vitae),
developed by Alenka Vidrih, as my method of work. This model consists of three phases, the
third including other different drama techniques and methods.
The findings of qualitative and the data of quantitative part point out, that the experience of the
practice and activities had a positive influence on them and the experience of the subject itself.
They also had a positive influence on their motivation for learning and actively participating.
Besides of all the already known effects of drama, we discovered also that drama-based
activities have positive influence on the interpersonal relations between students, their selfimage
and personality formation. This aim was important also from perspective of me as a
performer, leading the process based on the situation of relations between students. That shows
the importance of a teacher, being creative, flexible and in touch with a group all the time.
Based on the data, gathered in the research, using drama-based activities in teaching a foreign
language is mostly reasonable in the area of active participation of learners, the development
of a dialogue and speech and also in observation of roles that learners take in the process, the
way they express themselves and with that the formation of relations and positive atmosphere,
in which is important also the development and formation of a teacher as a performer of the
educational process.
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