Applying Drama In Education To Developing Intercultural Competence In Primary School English Classes

As the wheel of human history has moved mankind inexorably forward from isolation to integration,thanks to globalization,the world today has been transformed into a politically,economically,and environmentally interdependent web.To better prepare the youth in this globalized world,cultivating their intercultural competence(ICC)is of great importance and has become a requisite in foreign language teaching.Nowadays,scholars are increasingly realizing the importance of foreign language education as a platform for cultivating students’ ICC.It has been considered an important goal in foreign language education.It is worth noting that the development of intercultural competence is a long-term process.This means that cultivating students’ intercultural competence is also a long-term and even life-long process.Although there are many studies on the development of intercultural competence of college students,there are relatively few studies on that of primary and secondary school students,especially primary school students.This paper focuses on primary school students and attempts to explore effective ways to cultivate primary school students’ intercultural competence in foreign language teaching.Drama in Education(DIE)is a method of integrating drama elements,strategies,or conventions into specific teaching practices.It serves as a bridge that helps teachers achieve their teaching goals and objectives.Through the use of various drama elements,strategies,or conventions,teachers can either create drama activities of their own or adopt the existing drama activities to establish an enlightening,interactive,and experiential learning environment and platforms for their students,thus cultivating students’ imagination,expressive ability,and creativity,increasing students’ learning enthusiasm,and in the end,improving their teaching efficiency.This thesis tries to find out if and how well DIE can be used in elementary school English classes to help students become more interculturally competent.In this thesis,the researcher conducted a 4-week teaching experiment in the expanded class for primary school students in a school in Shanghai.Surveys,interviews,classroom observations,etc.,are adopted in this study to collect data.Descriptive analysis is largely used to analyze the data.The results show DIE can be flexibly applied to primary English teaching and can promote the development of students’ intercultural competence.1)Students have expanded their cultural knowledge,such as greeting etiquette in Britain,Japan,Thailand,and other countries,Chinese and Western eating habits;2)In terms of attitude,they have cultivated students’ curiosity,interest,and willingness to learn about different cultures;3)In terms of skills,most students can observe and identify cultural similarities and differences in different countries.Besides,in the drama activities,students have also practiced their oral English.The study also found that the application of DIE in primary English teaching to promote the development of students’ intercultural competence has limitations,such as classroom organization and management,classroom time control,etc.,which are difficult to coordinate.But as the combination of DIE and teaching English in elementary school gets stronger,its value in helping students learn how to work with people from other cultures will become clearer.