The Importance Of Drama In Drama Education

“The word drama may produce the image of an end-of-term play, staged by nervous children, organized by overwrought teachers, and watched by fond parents, but this is not what it really is. Drama is not only about the product (the performance), but part of the process of language learning. It allows children to own the simple and mechanical language they use by involving their personalities. It gives those children who are shy when speaking a foreign language another character to ‘hide behind’ and get a new experience” (Phillips 5). ‘Dramatizing’ is a synonym here since it is less theatrical and just possesses some features of drama: it means that the children become emotionally involved in a text they try to personify. Such kind of personal involvement makes the language learning more meaningful and encouraging than repetitive drilling or learning by heart.

It is a truism that actors when we watch theatrical performances act on stage. These stage actions project the already prepared situations. “In our case, we mean ‘play’ – a free, creative task including improvised actions and self-expressions. People express themselves through their bodies and language. Playing is often reflective of your experience,

However, the majority of the authors in the context of Drama Education do not differentiate much between different types and, quite the contrary, underline their mutual overlap. Apart from many of them that are rarely used among teachers and students in the EFL classroom such as skits, frozen image building, scriptwriting, masked drama, the use of puppets and reader`s theatre, we will look through the main traditional ones that do not create any unclarity and confusion as well. The most traditional ones are mime/dubbing, role-play, improvisation, and simulation. The rest of them refer to the second – alternative