Exploring the Role of Drama in Enhancing Speaking Skills: Effectiveness, Engagement and Challenges

Teaching English is crucial in today's interconnected world, with English serving as a global lingua franca. A focus on speaking skills is essential for language education, going beyond linguistic proficiency to develop clear and confident expression in spoken interaction. Traditional teacher-models in English classrooms often lead to learner reticence and reduced confidence due to limited opportunities for autonomous verbal expression. To address these challenges, a shift towards student-centered approaches, such as teaching English through drama, has been proposed. This approach aims to create a supportive environment for learners to practice speaking skills without restrictions. A mixed-methods research study was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of teaching English through drama. The findings revealed positive impacts on students' speaking skills, including improvements in fluency, intonation, turn-taking, and confidence. Drama techniques such as role-play, and story creation, and scriptwriting were found to be particularly effective. Collaborative teamwork, warm-up activities were also identified as beneficial in creating an engaging language learning environment. The results show that integrating drama techniques into English language lessons offers a holistic approach to improving speaking skills and helps students overcome their fear of public speaking while making the learning experience enjoyable and social.