The use of drama in the development of oral communication in ninth graders

Abstract

The following internship project will be developed in ninth grade English class in Instituto Guimarc school located in Bogotá. The purpose of this project is to use different plays in order to foster the verbal communication of ninth graders in English to develop their oral communication microskills. According to the principal’s report, students seem to present a lack of oral participation in the english class, the school asked for activities in which students can interact and develop their oral communication. One of the tools that will be used is roleplay, according to Boudreault (2010): “Apart from the obvious development of communication skills, it encourages leadership, teamwork, compromise, authentic listening skills and practice with real life savior-faire” (p.5), it seems that implementing drama in classrooms might encourage students to produce language orally. The activities proposed for this project are focused on oral communication between students as monologues and role plays taking as a basis the micro skills proposed by Brown, (2001) in his book Teaching by principles an interactive approach to language pedagogy.