The Relationship between Drama and Language Learning

Drama is a literary form supported by the most ancient traditions, firmly embedded in the social customs of cultures throughout the world, and well known for the excitement and enthusiasm it produces both in performers and the spectators. It is essential to remember that drama is not just the description of discussion of events from real life; it is the re-creation of real life (‘the imitation of an action’-as Aristotle defined it centuries ago), and make use of all the constituent elements of real activity. These obviously include language, but such things also as movement, position, gesture and facial expression, so it is really an imitation of the real life. This means that we are able to make use of the varied and subtle expressive resources of language, such as intonation, pitch, volume, emphasis, hesitation and so on. By performing the drama, the language students will naturally be set to learn about the target language (language to be learned). Drama is an effective way as a useful tool in learning language. Learning through drama helps students to develop four main language skills, because in drama they will perform by using all senses, as well as drama helps student to develop their proficiency in structural, semantic, discoursal and other communicative aspect. Drama provides an ideal opportunity for task-based learning in the study of language. It is a great opportunity to build students’ ability in languages such as decoding, discourse, vocabulary and syntactic knowledge. It is really great chance to use languages in application as if in the real life.