Action Research: A Journey of Developing Materials for Process Drama in Free Semester

Grace Lee (International Graduate School of English, Seoul) in Seminar Room 6

at The MATSDA/University of Liverpool Conference: Authenticity and Materials Development for Language Learning, June 2016

This study presents how a former actor, a novice English teacher, experiences teaching process drama in a Korean EFL middle school classroom. The study originates from previous research findings that process drama helps English learners in both EFL and ESL settings to develop communicative competence (Kao & O’Neill, 1998; Park, 2010, 2012). Knowing that process drama does enable English learners to use the target language in a meaningful context, the researcher hopes to develop process drama materials that can be applied to an everyday teaching environment with history or literature as cross-curricular contents. She hopes to apply these experiences on material developing to suits the specific target student, Korean EFL learners: She hopes to include activities that minimize cultural obstacles derived from Confucianism and other obstacles such as peer pressure. During the piloting, the researcher ascertained how process drama can help students with special needs and how literacy should come before using the drama technique. To refine it, the researcher plans to add Readers’ Theatre techniques in her experimental sessions. The drama session includes 8 piloting sessions and 10 experimental sessions; 63 students participated in the piloting session and around 60 students participated in the experiments. The students are in grade one of Korean middle school, an average age of 12.5 years old. During the experiment, historical events were introduced with the techniques of process drama; Salem Witch Hunt. Questionnaires, interviews, teaching logs, classroom observation and students’ reflections are used to find out how the students feel about learning English in dramatic and historical context. With this feedback as cornerstone, the developing material for process drama is under progression. (The researcher is analysing the collected data.)