Incidental vocabulary learning via verbal dramatization of words in readers’ theatre / Ch’ng Looi Chin

Explicit teaching of vocabulary is a favourable practice in English as Second Language (ESL)
classrooms. However, such practice would be a hinder for the students to learn words effectively
since they are not taught in context. Thus, it leads to the idea of incidental vocabulary learning
approach in repetitive reading. Such approach used in this study aims to examine the capability
of students to learn vocabulary incidentally via the dramatization of written text. In this case,
readers’ theatre (RT) is used as the platform of measurement. A total of 160 diploma students
participated in this case study were equally divided into two different group – classroom reading
(CR) and RT group. Both groups took a proficiency test to determine their vocabulary levels.
The results were used to choose suitable level of reading materials for both groups. CR group
read the story through normal reading lesson in classroom while RT group dramatized the story
verbally via readers’ theatre activity. A post-test was carried out to compare the results. The
findings revealed that with RT, students performed better in learning the vocabulary incidentally.
Besides, based on the accuracy scores, it is also promising that students learn higher level words
with the use of RT. Although the results were not conclusive, the study has proven the potential
of RT in incidental vocabulary learning in ESL settings.