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AWEJ for Translation & Literary Studies, Volume4, Number1. February  2020                                   Pp. 70- 83

The Effectiveness of Utilising Drama Performance in Enhancing Student Teachers’ Engagement with Harper Lee’s Novel ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ (1960)

Faculty of Education,
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Selangor, Malaysia 

Faculty of Education,
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Selangor, Malaysia

Abstract:

Abstract PDF

The purpose of this research is to interrogate the effectiveness of utilizing drama performance in enhancing student teachers’ engagement with the literary text ‘ To Kill a Mockingbird’ by Harper Lee (1960). This study is based on a TESL course “Teaching of literature: Reading the word and the world” for TESL undergraduate student teachers at the Faculty of Education, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), Malaysia. In this study, student teachers would need to read and understand the literary text “To Kill a Mockingbird” and eventually conduct a drama workshop, where they will dramatize the text to a group of secondary school pupils. The drama performance aims to engage these student teachers on issues of racism, prejudice and discrimination as a means to utilise literary texts to help them gain insight on how they are constructed and enacted. This study was designed to be a case study with three methods of data collection namely questionnaire, student teachers’ personal response and reflective essays. In this study, the student teachers reflected on the whole process of dramatization, identifying its strengths, weaknesses and suggestions on how to improve it. Generally, the participants perceived that dramatization helps them to construct meaning from the literary text and be able to examine issues of race, racism and discrimination.

Cite as:

Abdul Aziz, A., & Mohd Raffi, N. S. (2020). The Effectiveness of Utilising Drama Performance in Enhancing Student Teachers’ Engagement with the Novel ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ By Harper Lee. Arab World English Journal for Translation & Literary Studies 4 (1)  70- 83.

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Azlina Abdul Aziz is a TESL lecturer at the Faculty of Education, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. She has an Ed.D in Teaching of English from Teachers College, Columbia University, U.S.A. Her research interests are in the Teaching and Learning of Literature and Teacher
Education in TESL. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7800-3688

Nurul Shahira Mohd Raffi has been an English teacher since 2017 in a primary school in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM). Her thesis is on ‘The
Effectiveness of Utilising Drama Performance in Enhancing Student Teachers’ Engagement with the Novel ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ by Harper Lee’. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9426-4311