Valoración de los resultados a partir de la comparación de los datos

I decided to focus my study on creative drama, which is similar to children’s play, characterised by free flow, imaginative work, and extemporisation. The blurred border between play and creative drama is another issue to discuss further, which I argued in Chapter Two. With regard to the terminology of playmaking and creative drama, McCaslin (1997) notes that the two terms can be used interchangeably. Considering this unclear demarcation of play and creative drama, my assumption is that its playful nature can invite the possibility of incorporating more natural, interactional, and impromptu situations when children are engaged in the ‘dramatic world’ while being exposed to a foreign language. Compared to other drama pedagogy such as drama in education (DIE) or process drama, creative drama follows a somewhat informal structure, so that it brings more opportunities for playmaking modes to the participants. Whether the term indicates dramatic play, playmaking, or creative drama, in a broader concept, it also includes social, imaginative, and voluntary attributes of play.

11 _{‘Progressive education is a pedagogical movement that emphasizes student-centered}

learning experiences and that incorporates aspects such as learning by doing, valuing diversity, integrated curriculum, problem solving, critical thinking, collaborative learning, social responsibility, democracy, and lifelong learning’ (Pecore and Bruce, 2013, p. 10).

85 Therefore, the essence of play in creative dramatics is further examined in this research in relation to the sociocultural aspect of EFL teaching for young learners.

Vygotsky (1966) asserted the significant potential of children’s imaginative play as follows:

Play is the source of development and creates the zone of proximal development. Action in the imaginative sphere, in an imaginary situation, the creation of voluntary intentions and the formation of real-life plans and volitional motives all appear in play and make it the highest level of preschool development (p.16).

Grounded upon Vygotsky’s notion of play, my hypothesis is that the extemporaneous nature of play can offer a safe and natural environment for children, in which young EFL learners may positively be impacted even when they are surrounded by unfamiliar language. Also, the sociocultural impetus in playmaking can foster the creation of a zone of proximal development in which young learners experience, experiment, and acquire foreign language while exploring and co-authoring the context.

Studies in the Korean EFL sector have shown the benefits of drama from a linguistic perspective, as Lee (2007) summarises in her study: Kim and Ko (2002) comment that free role play at elementary school contributes to the improvement of students’ communicative competence, especially in skills of speaking-fluency and stress, intonation, and rhythm; Lee (1999) conducted an experiment on 152 first-year high school students and found that drama helped to improve the students’ overall English language ability, especially in speaking and writing; Chung and Park (2003) found that students’ listening ability is improved by drama-orientated classes; Bang (2003) mentions that her students revealed their

86 opinions that drama-orientated activities helped to improve their communicative competence. As the above investigations demonstrate, the valuable outcome of drama in EFL classrooms is the enhancement of communicative competence, prominently oral language development.

In comparison with the research findings regarding general drama and EFL learning, few reports on creative drama in an EFL environment have been investigated in empirical studies. Lee (2013) notes the scarce research outcomes related to creative drama and foreign language learning in Korea:

When the term ‘Creative Drama’ is searched on the online catalogue of [the] National Digital Library, more than 2,000 journal articles, theses, and books appear; whereas fewer than 60 results appear when the search scope narrows down to ‘Creative Drama’ with the search words of ‘English education.’ Even among those 60 results, the majority deals with Theatre in Education (p.103).

For this reason, I was driven to examine the possibility of creative drama in EFL teaching. Throughout two decades of teaching young ESL/EFL children and teachers, I have sensed the high potential of play and creative drama as alternative methods for young people’s second or foreign language learning. However, I also noticed that the theory and the methods of creative drama developed by western advocates do not fit easily into the Korean educational system. Likewise, Lee (Ibid.) asserts, ‘this method requires a process of customization’ (p.103). Indeed, throughout my career, I was eager to develop a customised method of creative drama in EFL classrooms in Korea. Eventually, I embarked on investigating its impact on children’s foreign language learning while grasping the sociocultural notion of children’s mental and linguistic development that highly values social and cultural experiences in learning.

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4.5. Conclusion

Throughout this chapter, I have argued the strong bonds between drama and foreign language education, which is supported by the sociocultural interpretation of meaningful and communicative language use that possibly occurs in the midst of social interaction. As a matter of fact, it has been reported that the pedagogy of drama positively impacts foreign language learners’ communicative competence, particularly their oral communication skills. Meanwhile, few studies have been conducted in relation to the efficacy of creative drama in an EFL setting. Nonetheless, throughout my experiences and experiments in the field, I have glimpsed the impact of creative drama on young EFL learners’ whole growth, which goes beyond linguistic development. Therefore, I have set the goal to investigate the extent to which the pedagogy of creative drama impacts young EFL learners. Then, while seeking rigour and quality in the study, I have developed in-depth knowledge by investigating teachers’ responses and observing the phenomena of creative drama-integrated young EFL classrooms. The following chapter describes the methodological underpinning and the process of data collection, analysis, and interpretation in view of the qualitative paradigm.

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