Abstract

Deprived from Rousseau’s idea of “learning in activities” and “learning from drama”, drama in education has been fully developed both theoretically and practically until now. From western countries to China, drama in education has been studied and contributed further and further by hundreds of scholars and educators. It is exactly conforms to the advanced theories in education, such as Humanistic Psychology, Constructivist Learning Principle, Cooperative Learning Principle, Task-based Language Teaching and Communicative Language Teaching. And it also satisfies the requirements of The Compulsory English Curriculum Standards which emphasizes students’ overall development, including the comprehensive language competence and the ability to use language in real situation, and in the meantime, the proficiency of students' listening, speaking, reading and writing should also be developed.

Therefore, drama in education should be studied and dramatic activities are recommendable in middle school’s English classroom. This thesis will combine dramatic activities with English teaching and put forward some practical suggestions. In order to have a better understanding of dramatic activities applied in middle school’s English classroom, this study is firstly to observe the current situation in real classroom to find out the existing problems. Then, possible reasons should be analyzed after interview and questionnaire as well. According to the reasons, what kind of dramatic activities can be applied in middle school’s English classroom and how to apply them should be answered in this thesis.

Key words: drama in education; dramatic activities; middle school; English classroom

Contents

Abstract

摘  要

Chapter 1. Introduction1

1.1Background of the Research1

1.2Significance of the Research2

1.3Purpose of the Research3

1.4Layout of the Thesis3

Chapter 2. Literature Review4

2.1 Previous Studies on Dramatic Activities in English Teaching4

2.1.1 Foreign Studies4

2.1.2 Domestic Studies5

2.2 Theoretical Basis7

2.2.1 Humanistic Psychology 7

2.2.2 Constructivist Learning Principle 8

2.2.3 Cooperative Learning Principle 8

2.2.4 Task-based Language Teaching 9

2.2.5 Communicative Language Teaching 10

Chapter 3. Research Design11

3.1 Research Hypothesis11

3.2 Participants11

3.3 Methods and Procedures11

Chapter 4. Results and Analysis13

4.1 Analysis of present status13

4.1.1 Analysis of class observation13

4.1.2 Analysis of interview with teachers14

4.2 Analysis of practical teaching experiment16

4.3 Analysis of suggestions from teachers and students20

Chapter 5. Conclusion21

5.1 Major Findings21

5.2 Suggestions21

5.3 Limitations22

References23

Appendix