Drama Justification On 19th March 2014, TESL 1 has done their drama presentation under the subject LGA

3104, Dramas for Young Learners. Four groups including my group perform a drama based on an adaptation of children stories. My group chose to adapt the story of Snow White and the Seven Giants because we had analyze it and saw some potential in this story that can help young learners' personal growth. The use of drama in the classroom reflects a social constructivist perspective of language learning which is active, social and centered in students experiences and provides an effective way to teach oral language and literacy (Wagner, 2003). Based on the statement above, I believe that drama actually can help in language development of the children. In general, the involvement of the learners in drama can help them to develop their language skills. For example like, when the pupils in school directly involve by taking a roles or characters in the drama, they will be given a script to practice. Through the script they can practice to speak in a correct ways. So, this will help the pupils to develop their language through the practice that they have before the drama and slowly improve their communication skills between peoples. Other than that, in the adapted script that we used, we purposely adapt the language by inserting and applying an easier a low level of English so that it can be suitable to be use and understand by primary school children. When the pupils perform the drama using the adapted script that use such kind of English language, unconsciously they will absorb the usage of the English language. Same goes to the audience. They can absorb the usage of correct English because the language use is at their level. So, the usage of a suitable level of English in Drama can help not only the performers but also the audience to develop their language skills especially in their daily communication. Another aspect of development that our group takes into consideration is the intrapersonal development. In our adapted script, we purposely include a few moral values that can help the performers and also the audience to think further about the story and then relate it to their life. For example like the values and the concept of beauty that we insert in the story can help the pupils to expand their ideas about beauty. Maybe before this, the concept of beauty for pupils is just through physical but after they go through this story, they can understand about the true beauty that lies inside of a person. Drama also can help to develop pupils appreciation towards literature and arts. Under intrapersonal development, appreciation towards literature is important because literature works actually can help to improve their inner self. All the thinking that pupils go through when they involve with literature works such as drama can help them to be

more critical in their thinking. So through the drama performance, pupils can develop their interest in literature especially when the drama is interesting enough to catch pupils attention through the acting and script. Other than that, the script that we prepared for the drama also contains lots of positive idea about life. For example like in the end of the story, Snow White forgives her step mother although her step mother treats her badly. Through this scenario, the audience can develop their positive thinking about life and they have some positive ideas about how to handle peoples in such situation. So, the positive ideas and concept in the drama can help the pupils to build their positive intrapersonal. Next aspect of pupils development is interpersonal. The drama performance indeed helps to develop pupils interpersonal in many ways. We can see that from the performance itself, pupils can have the ideas of how people communicate in different situation. The situation created in the story actually can be related to the real world situation. For example like in a situation, they know what they need to say and how they can say it so that it will be acceptable to the other party. They can use verbal communication that they saw in the drama, or maybe they can use non-verbal communication if it is more suitable. So, both the performers and the audience can develop their interpersonal skills in communicating through the practice they have for the drama performance and also through the observation during the performance. Listening skills also is one of the important aspect of interpersonal skills. So, the development of listening skills can be seen a lot during the drama performance. What is meant by listening skills is How we interpret both the verbal and non-verbal messages sent by others. So, the audience interpreted verbal and non-verbal messages sent by the performers in various ways. The interpretation made shows that their interpersonal skills are improving because they need to think and produce an idea about the messages in the same time. In the drama, we also include different kind of situation that the pupils can relate to their life and how they can use their communication skills in a correct ways to handle a certain situations. For example like problem solving and decision making. For example like, when Snow White is dying because of the curse, the audience will automatically think about how to save her. So, different situation need a certain ways to deal with. So, drama actually helps to develop this kind of skills so that the pupils can relate it to their daily life and use it. In conclusion, drama is a tools that rarely used in Malaysian classroom. As a future English teacher, I have often been amazed at how effective drama is to capture the attention of the students and the effectiveness to help the pupils improve. Drama activities would sometimes have surprising and unexpected results. Teacher need to

use this medium more because the positive effects that drama offers are unlimited. So, we shouldnt underestimate this powerful teaching tool to reach our students.