DESIGNING DRAMA ACTIVITIES BASED ON NASREDDIN HODJA JOKES FOR ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE (EFL) CLASSROOMS
YABANCI DİL OLARAK İNGİLİZCE ÖĞRETİLEN SINIFLAR İÇİN NASREDDİN HOCA FIKRALARINA DAYALI DRAMA ETKİNLİKLERİNİN TASARLANMASI

Author : Emrah EKMEKÇİ
Number of pages : 213-224

Abstract

Employing drama activities in foreign language classes has proved to help language learners improve their skills. Drama and kinaesthetic activities entertain learners and develop decoding skills, fluency, vocabulary, discourse knowledge, syntactic knowledge, and metacognitive thinking (Sun, 2003). Learners get the opportunity of producing meaningful language in an adequate context thanks to drama activities (Chauhan, 2004), and acting out in the classroom is highly motivating for students to share information and interact with each other (Peregoy and Boyle, 2008). English Language Teacher Education Programs in Turkey offer Drama course for prospective English language teachers to raise their awareness and train them to benefit from drama activities in their own teaching. The course is offered four class hours a week and the main aim of the course is to enable students to prepare and apply lesson plans that are compatible with the curriculum and contain drama techniques and activities within the context of an English Teaching Program. Within this context, the present study suggests some drama activities based on well-known Nasreddin Hodja jokes. The study aims to indicate how to incorporate humour, drama and a cultural hero into EFL classes through drama activities. While designing activities for EFL learners, the researcher adopts Maley and Duff’s (2005) drama activity format which specifies the activity explaining its aim, focus, level, time, preparation, procedure, follow-on, variation(s), and note(s). The study concludes that drama activities based on Nasreddin Hodja jokes can be effective means of presenting some main and sub-skills in foreign language classes and promote learners’ cultural awareness on how to integrate cultural figures into language learning process.

Keywords

Drama, jokes, humour, activity, language teachers

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