Investigating teachers’ attitudes towards implementing drama activities in the Algerian secondary school textbooks

Abstract

Competency in English is crucial in a globalised world. Therefore, in a secondary school setting, English courses do not focus solely on the development of the four language skills. Instead, emphasis is put on the use of English in real world contexts, and this is known as the Competency-Based Approach (CBA). It is argued that the majority of English language instruction ignores the use of drama activities in the classroom despite their usefulness. The present research sets out to investigate the use of drama activities in teaching English in the Algerian secondary schools. More precisely, focus is placed on the second year textbook entitled “Getting Through”. Answering if and to what extent drama activities are used by the teachers and what they think of them is one of our aims. Another equally significant aspect of this study is to investigate how teachers think about the textbook “Getting Through” and how it can be adapted. We hypothesise that if the participating teachers receive a training workshop on how to use drama activities in the classroom, they would be willing to implement them in their teaching practices. In addition, we hypothesise that the activities included in “Getting Through” can be changed into drama ctivities. The first hypothesis is tested by means of a Teachers Questionnaire. For the second one, a Drama Adaptability Checklist (DAC) is developed to analyse all the activities of “Getting Through”. The findings obtained allow to validate the first hypothesis and null the second one. On the basis of these findings, recommendations are made to the authors and designers of “Getting Through” in order to help make its content more engaging for both teachers and students.