The Role of Creative Drama on Prospective English Teachers’ Academic Achievement

Creative drama is an improvisational form of drama created by participants based on their observations and experiences. It enhances imagination, communication and problem-solving skills. Thus, creative drama suits perfectly to the 21st century skills, helping learners develop four Cs; creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration which are of crucial importance for personal and professional achievement in today's society. The main objective of this quantitative study is to determine whether there is a relationship between creative drama and achievement in one of the most theoretical lessons of English Language Teaching (ELT) Department; “language acquisition”. Accordingly, the paper discusses how creative drama can be implemented in order to increase the achievement of prospective teachers of English in “language acquisition” lessons. The sample of the study is composed of 66 second grade prospective English teachers of a state university. In the scope of this experimental study, control and experimental groups were formed randomly and six hour-lesson plans were prepared for these groups. Experimental groups were taught language acquisition lessons for two weeks via of creative drama; whereas, control groups used traditional teaching. An achievement test was prepared and its construct and content validity were investigated by the experts. This achievement test was administered as pre and post test to all groups. Findings indicated that creative drama has statistically significant positive effect on prospective English teachers’ language acquisition lesson achievement.