Title : The teaching of senior level English through drama education
Background of the project
In order to lift the English level of the students, an activity-base learning scheme is proposed by the English panel chairman. He decides to undergo curriculum reform that a double-lesson of learning activities, such as drama and poetry, will be ranged in each cycle for form four students in the next academic year.
Students are expected to achieve the targets for English Language under the three Strands. Experience Strand (for responding and giving expression to real and imaginative experience) is one of the 3 interrelated strands which define the general purposes of learning English (EDB 2007). During the NSS English lessons, students will be provided with the opportunities to
← participate in dramatic presentations,
← reflect on the way in which the authors use language to create effects, and
← create short dramatic episodes.
A. Analytical account of the key concepts
1. Genre Analysis
Genre analysis has the following four characteristics (Bhatia, 2000)
← shows a genuine interest in the use of language to achieve communicative goals.
← gives a dynamic explanation of the way expert users of language manipulate generic conventions to achieve a variety of complex goals.
← motivated by applied linguistic concerns, especially language teaching at various levels.
← focuses on specific differentiation in language use at various levels of generality.
Through Genre analysis, texts are classified as belonging to certain genre which can be the formal letter of a certain application or a standardised style of a literary. Examples of genres include stories, prayers, sermons, conversations, songs, speeches, poems, novels, prose, fairytales, folk-tales, letters and commercial advertising. Furthermore, certain genres sharing some similar features can be grouped together to form super-genres while on the other hand...