Teaching Drama to Enhance Listening Comprehension and Communication Skills to 3rd Year LMD Students of the University of Mostaganem

Abstract

It has been said that those who possess the ability to hear what others say, do not always actively listen and grasp the words uttered. The same thing goes for those who have the ability of growing their knowledge and have plenty of information but they do not think critically all the time. Teachers ought to focus on learning which helps students acquire and use knowledge. In other words, effective educational practices give learners access and the opportunity to develop their language skills. Role-playing (RP) is the most reliable technique that any teacher of oral expression (OE) can think of incorporating into their classrooms as it obliges learners to take on roles in different plays and enables them to replace their daily identity by a different one to mainly overcome their shyness and inhibitions. In this case, the characters they portray during a role-play permit them to be free from their real identities to defeat their shortcomings and weaknesses. Using developed strategies is crucial to strengthen the listening ability as well as activate procedural knowledge of strategy use. The present study aims to examine the extent and importance of implementing dramatic techniques into OE classes as well as teaching learners new and skilful listening strategies for the enhancement of listening comprehension and speaking skills. It also investigates whether the use of audio-visual materials could help and whether teachers use such technological tools in their classroom. For the data collection, a mixed-methods research approach are employed in which different data collection tools are used and directed to only a sample of research subjects in order to constrict the scope of the study. First, questionnaires were handed to both, third year LMD students and OE teachers to identify and investigate their opinions on and attitudes towards the OE class and having the right technique to enhance the listening skill and adopting dramatic techniques such as improvisation and RP. Second, classroom observation sessions were organized to observe the classroom practices of learners during the activities implemented through role-plays, improvisation and storytelling as the new methods in OE. After that, a simple experiment was carried out to demonstrate the role of teaching listening strategies and practicing RP technique in developing both listening comprehension and speaking performance. The results of the data analysis reveal that EFL teachers are more dependent on traditional ways such as free topics and class discussions whereas learners are interested and eager to have OE as a module but not motivated or encouraged to learn strategies that might ameliorate their listening abilities. Since both listening and speaking skills go hand in hand, this study highlights the importance of ameliorating learners’ abilities to promote their language proficiency in speaking and listening. This study draws attention to the significance of including dramatic techniques such as RP in class to foster and develop IV learners’ listening abilities by being creative and adopt instruction-based approach while teaching as well.