Constructivism‐based drama activities in EFL reading classes

Abstract

Lack of interest in classroom activities, difficulty in understanding reading texts, and unfamiliarity with using reading strategies are the three major problems that negatively impact students' achievements in English as a foreign language (EFL) reading classes. This article considers integration of drama activities into EFL reading classes, looking particularly at the constructivist foundations of this approach to (1) motivate students to read and participate in class, (2) facilitate understanding and meaning construction, and (3) develop students' reading strategies and skills. Incorporation of drama activities grounded in cognitive and social constructivist learning theory is especially effective as these theories accentuate prior knowledge, student-centered learning, social interactions, cooperative learning, and engaging and stimulating classroom activities as well as teachers' scaffolding. Two sample activities are presented to illustrate the practical implementation of such drama activities in EFL reading classes. Drama activities based on constructivism are recommended as an effective approach to encourage students to learn, increase understanding, and sharpen reading strategies in EFL reading classes. | INTRODUCTIONReading and reading teaching have been recognized as highly significant in English as a foreign language (EFL) settings (Namaziandost, Razmi, Ahmad Tilwani, & Pourhosein Gilakjani, 2022). Given that reading is one of the most important skills in English learning, EFL students are (2 of 11) | YANG expected to know how to read and develop the ability to read independently (Okasha, 2020). EFL reading courses are offered to support students in constructing meaning from reading texts and to develop reading abilities independently inside and outside of the classroom using effective reading strategies (Par, 2020). However, a number of researchers have confirmed that EFL students tend to encounter problems related to reading and reading classes.Research has identified three main problems. First, EFL students are demotivated by unstimulating reading lessons that fail to maintain their interest in reading and reading class (H. Al-Jarrah & Ismail, 2018;Marzuki, 2019). Students feel discouraged to engage with the materials, and feel reluctant to participate in EFL reading class (Özbek, 2015) when they are treated as passive recipients of knowledge (Güngör, 2008), when the teaching focus is on exam preparation, or when students are required to read and then answer questions silently on their own (Özbek, 2015). The second problem is that understanding different genres of reading texts is challenging to EFL students because of their limited vocabulary and lack of background knowledge. Further complicating this problem are difficult contents, difficult concepts, and not being given enough time to read (Khataee, 2019). The third problem is that EFL students do not know how to employ effective reading strategies suitable to their needs (Khataee, 2019), which leads to difficulties in comprehension (H. Al-Jarra...

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Drama for dialogue of civilizations: Performance as storytelling in the adultESOLclassroom

“…Scholarship on drama in TESOL has illustrated drama's affordances across diverse areas of language learning, including EFL reading (e.g., Yang, 2022), language anxiety (Galante, 2018), learner agency (Dalziel & Piazzoli, 2019), intercultural understanding (e.g., Byram & Fleming, 1998; Deardorff, 2020), and more. Given the range of literature on drama and language learning, it is beyond the scope of this article to review it comprehensively; for literature reviews on this subject see Belliveau & Kim, 2013, McGovern, 2017, and Schewe, 2013).…”

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