ENGL ISH RADIO DRAMA

@ MANJ IANG SECONDARY

SCHOOL

OBJECTIVES OF THE

PROJECT

1. To introducing a new teaching method i.e. radio drama

2. To raise students’ interest in learning English and motivate

their learning

3. To allow students to practice more oral English through

radio drama improve pronunciation and English oral

skills.

4. To provide students with more varied learning experience

BACKGROUND OF THE

SCHOOL

Manjiang Secondary School

• Not a key developed school in China

• Around 600 students and 100 students are living in dorms

• Only 26 teachers and 10 of them are English teachers

• Lack of teaching resources e.g. lack of qualified teachers, poor infrastructure, accommodation etc.

• Shabby classrooms but with basic necessities e.g. blackboard, chops, notice board

• Projectors were installed last year in some of the classrooms

• Generally low English standard

BACKGROUND OF THE

SCHOOL

TEACHING METHODS

1. Vocabulary Teaching

• Creation of story

Used to link up most of the vocabularies

Make the teaching more vivid and

interesting.

• Pictures of vocabularies

Illustrate the meanings of the words

• Quizzes

The instructor would shout out the meanings of any

vocabularies learnt randomly

The students who could pronounce the corresponding

vocabularies would get a small present

2. Script Teaching

• The whole class read the script sentence-by-

sentence and scene-by-scene

• Learn the vocabularies and

sentences in a detailed way

TEACHING METHODS

3. Radio Drama Demonstration

• Instructors acted out one of the scenes from the script

with appropriate change in voice

• Students got to know what a radio drama was like

TEACHING METHODS

Please identify the extent to

which you are satisfied with

this event (1 = the most

unsatisfied, 5 = the most

satisfied).

4

25%

5

75%

FEEDBACK

Are you willing to take part in

similar workshops in the

future?

Willing

100%

FEEDBACK

Please identify the extent to

which you think this event is

interesting.

Please identify the extent to

which you think this event is

helpful in English learning.

3

5%

4

20%

5

70%

Fail to

respond

5%

4

50%

5

50%

FEEDBACK

Do you think Sleeping

Beauty is suitable for

English teaching for

you and students of

similar ages to you?

Suitable

75%

Not

suitable

5%

Haven't

thought

of that

20%

FEEDBACK

The most confident part

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Reading the script aloud

Memorizing the vocabulary

Expression of emotions

FEEDBACK

The least confident part

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Reading the script aloud

Memorizing the vocabulary

Expression of emotions

Tone and speed

Translation to Chinese

FEEDBACK

Most welcomed characteristics in teachers

0 2 4 6 8

Humor

Kindness

Patience

Devotion

Carefulness

Assistance

Energy

Apperance

FEEDBACK

Local teacher

• Passion in participation in the workshop

• Elevated interest in English learning

Principal

• Performance better than expected

• Confidence in future teaching work

FEEDBACK

Which part of the event can be improved?

0 2 4 6 8

Longer duration

More communication and interaction

More varied components

Avoidance to occupy regular class time

No room for improvement

FEEDBACK

EVALUATION-

STRENGTHS

1. Interactive teaching style

• Questions for students understand their learning progress

• Positive responses from students

• Most of them were willing to answer questions

• A few tried to answer the questions with encouragement

• Ask students to demonstrate the meanings of those vocabularies learnt

2. Interesting teaching material and style

• A popular fairy tale – the sleeping beauty was chosen

• Showed students pictures and demonstrated the way how

people perform radio drama

e.g. imitated the sound of witch

in an exaggerated way

• Students were cooperative

and dare to speak out loud

EVALUATION-

STRENGTHS

3. Innovative teaching way

• Radio drama a fresh and innovative way to students and teachers there

• Taught students new vocabularies through learning the script of radio drama

• Learnt how to express emotion of a character through varying loudness and intonation

• Students’ pronunciation and listening skills were also enhanced

• Before: lack the opportunities to practice speaking

EVALUATION-

STRENGTHS

4. Sustainable teaching method

• Radio drama sustainable and replicable

• Prerequisite: scripts are adjusted to suit the students’

English level

• Teachers can prepare teaching materials easily by

extracting online materials or writing their own scripts

• An attractive way of performance on different kinds of

event

EVALUATION-

STRENGTHS

EVALUATION-

WEAKNESSES

1. Limited time

• Did not have time to revise and recite the vocabularies learnt

• Not enough time to correct students’ pronunciation and accent

Solution:

• Increase number of teaching days - to have more chances to practice and rehearse before the performance

2. Small class size

• Owing to short teaching days only twenty students

Solution:

• Extend the class size - more students can be benefited

from interesting English learning

EVALUATION-

WEAKNESSES

3. Teaching content

• First part of the lesson not much interaction with students

• Only read aloud the script sentence by sentence

• Lack of interaction among S1 and S2 students

Solution:

• Insert more mini games;

• Divide them into groups;

• Try to mix S1 students with S2 students

EVALUATION-

WEAKNESSES

GROUP FEEDBACK

1. Misconception students there must be difficult to teach

Turned out to be a complete different picture

2. Misconception that it would be a difficult task to perform a radio drama

within two days

Students needed to be very familiar with the script and act it out with

appropriate change in voice

3. Students had devoted much effort in practicing

e.g. they paid great attention in lessons and they were never reserved in

asking us questions when they encountered difficulties

4. Good learning attitude: deeply touched our hearts ; the radio drama was a

huge success that it received much positive feedback

5. The workshop has provided the school a more interesting and vivid

way on teaching English

• Not many teachers and students have heard about radio drama

before

• Workshop: has successfully triggered their interest in learning

English

6. School principle expressed that they would like to make radio drama

as one of the performances in the coming school anniversary

• A big encouragement for all of us

• Definitely try our best to make this project a sustainable one and

work even better in the service trip in October

GROUP FEEDBACK

FUTURE PLAN

1. Learn English through drama

• A more interactive way to teach junior students English

• Offers an active, stimulating, funny and creative

environment in which to develop their language learning

potential

• Students were encouraged to explore English through

creativity, imagination and other forms of communication,

including action, expression, dance and role-play

2. Increase the number of participants

• Expose to an English learning environment

• Students could be divided into a few teams

• Hold a drama competition

• Raise students’ interests in learning English in daily life

FUTURE PLAN

3. Provision of sample scripts

• Provide sample scripts for the school on a regular basis

• Use scripts revised from classic fairy tales ("Snow White"

and "Little Red Riding Hood“)

• Flexible: stick with the sample scripts / based on the

templates and then make adjustments according to each

class

• Achieve sustainability

FUTURE PLAN