Using Drama in the Classroom [antikvár]

ForewordThe suitability of extracts from contemporary drama, with its emphasis on naturalistic dialogue, for use in the English language classroom seems so obvious as to be hardly worth stating. Yet on examination this is in fact a far more complicatedand less obviousmatter than it might at first seem. For drama is intended, above all else, to be acted, and this calls for a set of skills and attitudes that are not automatically and perhaps not even necessarilypart of the natural stock-in-trade of the teacher and may be alien and off-putting to the learner. The danger, then, is that by attempting on too rough-and-ready a basis to force drama into use in the classroom, the teacher would be actually doing a kind of violence to both the material and the learner.We are extremely fortunate in having found, in John McRae, a teacher/drama lover who is acutely aware of this danger and has brought an enthusiasm tempered by sober and realistic judgement to bear on the topic of the use of drama in the classroom. His book is a model of its kind and will both allay the teacher's apprehensions and give him the sort of guidance and encouragement that he will welcome.C. V. JamesKirtlington, 1985