english radio drama school
TRANSCRIPT
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