The Word Drama, Dramatization, And Dramatic Strategies

The words Drama, Dramatization, and Dramatic Strategies are three terms frequently used in this study. In the context of this study, the word drama is not used to refer to play or theatrical work involving a stage, scripts, actors, or audiences. Instead, drama is defined as an interactive intervention strategy where students perform informal unscripted drama for the purpose of learning. Wagner ( 1998) called this form of drama as “ improvised drama”, an umbrella term she used to refer to drama – based pedagogy used in the classroom such as drama in education ( Heathcote, 19xx), creative drama ( Paley, 19xx) , and process drama ( O’Neill, 199x) . Meanwhile, the word dramatization, defined by Merriam Webster’s dictionary ( 2017) as “the

For example, in the field of communication studies, Milburn and McGrail (1992) , conducted an experimental study to find whether a dramatic presentations of news stories on TV influence the audiences’ ability and accuracy in receiving news. They found that the exposure to the dramatized news stories significantly decreased participants’ ability to recall the information from the stories and reduced the complexity of the news. The term of “drama” or “dramatization” in this context of study is associated with the activity of exaggerating presentation of news that brought negative impacts to TV audiences . Unlike Milburn and McGrail’s, this study will take the stance of drama or dramatization activity as an intervention strategy in education whose objectives are to foster students’ learning.

The integration of drama in the United States classroom did not officially start until 1934, when John Dewey called for the urgency of involving creative expression and exploration in U. S educational curriculum. Gallagher, et.al. (2017) noted that in and after that period of time, literature in the United States started to emphasize the insertion of dramatic play or play-based improvisation as a key technique for students to express themselves creatively and develop language and thinking skills, as well as for teachers to “see the child’s real self” Gallagher,

Unlike the general cognitive theory that can be “too mechanistic” in their analysis, Courtney’s ( 1990) dramatic cognitive science analyzes semiotics to examine players’ or actors’ cognition. For him, “dramatic action is the signifier and the dramatic thought ( of the players) as the signified”. Correspondingly, Bidwell ( 1990) claimed that dramatization is one of the most efficient ways to get students internalized with the new words, setting, character, and context of the story they read. He argued that repetitions and the activity of acting those vocabularies help students immerse in meaning. In the context of drama, cognition, and language learning, Mages ( 2006) was confident that dramatization would provide a tangible context for decontextualized language in which students can use their bodies and voices to dramatize the characters’ actions. This activity may later lead to developed imagination and comprehension of the words or language they