Using Drama to Teach English: Cutting Edge of Second Language Teaching

As an English teacher, I have often been amazed at how effective drama is in capturing the attention of the students in the ESL classroom. Drama activities would sometimes have surprising and unexpected results which merits further research. Which activities are effective, what works and why? This book looks at what students and teachers think of drama to enhance English language learning as well as a subjective analysis of a drama teacher. For this study, I worked as a drama teacher for the last 8 months in a Hong Kong secondary school While this work involved using questionnaires, focus groups and interviews with other professionals, my investigation focused on how effective is drama in the ESL classroom. This study involved almost 700 students and 32 different groups, ages 13-16(640 hours of class time and a total of 1200 hours spent in the school) and 20+ teachers with ESL drama experience.. The participant observer aspect of this study adds a deeper dimension and complements the objective findings based on the students and teachers views. This is due to the mixture of theory and actual hands on practice of many hours in the classroom, ideal for Teachers of ESL.