THE IMPACT OF DRAMA-BASED INSTRUCTION OF ENGLISH ON EFL STUDENTS’ INTERPRETATION OF IMPLIED MEANINGS

Abstract

Understanding the conversational implicatures is considered as one of the key factors in conducting an appropriate and efficient communication which is the vital tool of every social life, and also in increasing one’s reading and writing proficiency which is important in educational sense. Due to the importance of this issue, this study investigated the effectiveness of drama-based instruction as a method to increase the Iraqi ELT university students’ understanding of implicatures and compared their progress based on their educational level. To do so, 32 B.A. and 12 M.A. students were selected to participate in the 4 weeks of drama-based implicature training program. Using a researcher-made Test as a pre-test and post-test, the participants’ progress were evaluated and it was found that using drama in training implicatures to the students is very effective in developing the students’ implicature understanding and students with higher educational level made more progress than the students with lower educational level.