| Under the influence of exam-oriented education for many years,English teaching has shown its obvious drawbacks.In the traditional teacher-centered classroom,students always passively receive whatever the teacher teaches.Mechanical practice and exercise are the main ways for students to learn English.Such cramming teaching method gradually dampens students’ learning interest and results in the frustration and boredom in English learning.As New English Curriculum for Chinese Junior schools puts it,English teaching and learning should aim to develop a certain level of comprehensive language competence and the ability to use language for real communication.The learning patterns of sensory,activity-based,experiential,participatory and cooperative are advocated.Drama in Education,as an effective way of engaging students in classroom,is an innovative attempt catering to the trend of teaching reform.With the help of dramatic activities,students’ English learning interest and involvement could be all improved.Moreover,by creating some authentic language environment,Drama in Education can help students better understand the language materials and communicate naturally.In recent years,a large number of researches have been conducted on the application of Drama in Education,among which many prove the advantages which it may bring for English learning and teaching.However,how and in what ways that Drama in Education leads to the good result have been rarely referred to.This study intends to give a clear picture of how Drama in Education influences students’ English learning interest and English academic achievements through a teaching experiment and aims to answer the following three research questions:1.Are there any changes of students’ learning interest and academic achievements after DIE is applied in teaching?What are the changes?2.Why DIE influence students’ learning interest and academic achievements?3.How can DIE be effectively applied in junior English teaching?Subjects involved in this study were 98 junior students from W school in Wuhan.They were in grade eight and from two classes which were chosen as experimental class and controlled class.Students in EC received the teaching applying DIE while students in CC received the traditional English teaching.Three instruments were used in this research:questionnaire and interview and test.After the experiment,SPSS 20.0 was used to study the changes of students’ English learning interest and English scores.The research results can be concluded as follows:(1)Drama in Education has a positive impact on students’ English learning interest,especially for improving students’ sense of pleasure and engagement in English learning.In the aspect of understanding of function,expanding knowledge and application,the impacts are not significant.Drama in Education has no significant effect on students’ English scores.However,the average score of EC exceeds that of CC with over two points.And the gap between students’ scores in EC becomes narrower while the gap in CC becomes wider.Moreover,students’ confidence,English expression ability and cooperative ability have improved a lot in EC.(2)Authentic and communicative language environment,harmonious classroom relationship and diversified evaluation in DIE are the main factors leading to the changes in the English learning.(3)For better applying Drama in Education in junior English teaching,teachers need to select appropriate learning materials based on the junior students’ language levels,needs and interests.Some basic activities like role-play,mime,improvisation and drama performance can be applied to English class.Moreover,diversified evaluation from both the teachers and students is advocated.Though this study has some limitations,it aims to enrich the present research about Drama in Education and provide English teachers with some useful and practical strategies for better teaching. |
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