Said on Drama Club

I asked each of the mentors to write about a club. Said wrote about our Drama Club, which takes place on Mondays at lunchtime:

Project Bridging Cultures is offering students a Drama Club, which focuses on dialogues, sketches, activities, games and plays. The sessions take place during the 5th and 6th lunch period in room 217B during the school year 2008-2009. The sessions mainly focus on exploring and developing areas of learning English such as pronunciation through Drama, grammar through Drama, using and exploiting role-plays and much more.

The course is aimed at all English students from different ages and levels. The sessions are dealing with different aspects of the use of drama in learning English. The sessions and workshops are to be practical and it is hoped that students will want to "get up and do" rather than "sit and listen".

Some of the main concerns of the Drama Club are catering the needs of students as performers on stage, and this would enable them to face the audience and overcome "the stage fright", using relaxation techniques, moving, body language, and so on. Also, the sessions concentrate on dialogues which can be used to focus on a particular pronunciation point. Participants will develop their ability to exploit the ready-made dialogues and to create their own, making them both natural and enjoyable. The sessions also look at the way students display emotion through changes of intonation, stress and pace in speech. Drama games, which can be used with younger learners and adults, are taking places in the Drama Club. The games aim to develop concentration and group dynamics, as well as general confidence in the language. Participants will look at how to set up games and how to manage them.