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.