Theatre Performance for Oral Communicative Competence

This paper reports the process and results of an experimental study that involves the use of theatrical performance as a constructive means of enhancing the communicative skills and confidence of a classroom of English language learners doing a course in Functional English. These learners come from a background where English is taught as a second language, and where language teaching is generally text based rather than focusing on the oral communicative skills. A whole class of under graduates (as the Target Group) were initiated by a core theatre team and dramatist into producing and presenting plays in English to an audience of their peers as well as to a general audience for over a period of two years. At the end of the project, their communicative competence was evaluated against a comparable peer group unexposed to the project. The results showed that the target group demonstrated much improved communicative abilities than the control peer group, thus strongly recommending a need to seriously (re)consider the use of theatre as an important technique of second language instruction.