Improving Oral Skills through Readers Theatre: A Study of Views of Japanese EFL Learners

Readers Theatre (RT) is an example of a story dramatization where readers fi rst read a literary text and then write a drama script to portray characters from the text they have read. To portray a character, readers strive for voice fl exibility, good articulation, proper pronunciation and projection. Readers Theatre was implemented in a class of EFL learners enrolled in the International Study and Regional Department in the University of Niigata Prefecture. This study was designed to investigate the attitudes of Japanese EFL learners towards the use of Reader Theatre as a way to enhance their English oral skills. The data for this research were collected through both quantitative and qualitative means. The quantitative data was aimed at investigating the attitudes of students towards the RT activity while the qualitative data were sought to examine students' perceptions as English language learners in the RT activity. The fi ndings from this study show that RT enhanced the English skills of Japanese EFL learners as they learned to use English in a real communicative context. Readers Theatre also boostedthe confi dence of Japanese EFL learners in their spoken English as they experimented with their voices by varying the pitch and volume to portray the characters in their scripts