Teacher Discussion Forums

mephobia · Joined: 08 Feb 2005 Posts: 1

To those in Korea, I was wondering if "Drama English" is understood by Koreans as a study in plays (Shakespeare, Miller, Shaw) or thought of as a lesson in western tv dramas (soap operas, melodramas). This is a university course title and I'm preparing the syllabus for this class. Your help would be greatly appreciated!!! Thank you! -KA

anuratha · Joined: 05 Mar 2006 Posts: 5 Location: Malaysia

Many a times the teaching of English language falls short of fulfilling its goals. Even after years of English teaching, the learners do not gain the confidence of using the language in and outside the class. Their output in the language is limited to writing run-of-the-mill answers for literature chapters and producing grammatically accurate, but, isolated sentences. Real communication involves ideas, emotions, feelings, appropriateness and adaptability. The conventional English class hardly gives the learners an opportunity to use language in this manner and develop fluency in it. Thus, the main purpose of the language teaching course, i.e., developing skills in communication, is unfortunately, neglected. I think an attractive alternative is teaching language through drama because it gives a context for listening and meaningful language production, forcing the learners to use their language resources and, thus, enhancing their linguistic abilities. It provides situations for reading and writing. It is very useful in teaching literary texts as it helps in analyzing plot, character and style. It also involves learners more positively and actively in the text.

cheers!!!!
anu

michael drummond · Joined: 24 Jun 2006 Posts: 12 Location: Asia

reetings,

I would like to bring to everyone's attention a very interesting and powerful resource: http://www.democracynow.org/.

What you will find is that they present a discussion of current social topics with the complete transcript in the same page.

On this site on the homepage, look on hte left column that says 'archives' and then click on 'browse archives by date'. Once there, click, for example, on May 2006, then click on Headlines for May 31, 2006. You will then find that the day's news is read with all the transcripts below...

This site's host is Amy Goodman. Her pronunciation of English is slow, clear and perfect for more advanced students...

The site is full of these transcripts and video files. I would greatly appreciate any feedback on the use of this resource.

Best regards.

Michael