Effects of Drama Activities on EFL Students’ Speaking Skills

Abstract

Many studies have been conducted to explore better ways to foster speaking skills of EFL learners. Drama has recently been considered as one of those ways to improve speaking skills. In the light of this information, this research aimed to find out the effects of drama activities on speaking skills of EFL students and to analyze their perceptions about the use of drama activities in foreign language learning. The participants in this study included 21 preparatory class students enrolled at a state university in Turkey during 2018-2019 academic year. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected by means of a pre-intermediate level speaking achievement test and an attitude questionnaire followed by semi-structured interviews regarding students’ perceptions about the use of drama activities in foreign language classrooms. IBM SPSS Statistics 23.0 and pattern coding were used to analyze the data. The findings of the study revealed that the integration of drama in speaking courses had a positive effect on encouraging EFL students’ speaking skills and the students had positive feelings toward the use of drama activities in foreign language courses. The results of the study are expected to contribute to curriculum developers, teachers, instructors and teacher educators.