| This study investigated the impact of dramatic activities on the English reading comprehension of EFL eleventh graders in Taiwan. The dramatic activities were developed within existing themes in the EFL classroom. In addition, a drama contest for the experimental groups was held at the end of this study.; This study utilized a quasi-experimental design. One-hundred and sixty-five students participated in this study. Experimental groups consisted of Group A and Group B, the control groups contained Group C and Group D. Teacher A and Teacher B gave English instruction to one experimental group and one control group.; Students were exposed to 300-minutes of English instruction per week for eighteen weeks, for a total of ninety hours of class time. Data was obtained from 83 subjects in the experimental groups and 82 in the control groups. The two assessment instruments were a thirty-question reading comprehension test selected from GEPT reading comprehension practice examination and a seven-item questionnaire designed by the researcher.; Data from this study led to the following findings: (1) dramatic activities increased reading comprehension for high-school students; (2) dramatic activities provided another effective way to learn the grammatical rules; (3) aside from the impact on reading comprehension, dramatic activities had a positive influence on other language skills such as listening, speaking, and writing; (4) dramatic activities motivated language learners; (5) subjects improved their self-confidence, and lowered the affective filter through dramatic activities; (6) drama created an atmosphere for cooperative and social learning; (7) drama provided a rich, memorable physical context for learning and (8) dramatic activities not only provided an opportunity for the EFL learners to learn the four language skills simultaneously, but also helped realize the goal of CLT (Communicative Language Teaching). |
