Abstract:
Learners’ language development has generally been assessed by
conventional methods by the maintenance of reliability and validity. Teachers check
students’ knowledge of spelling, appropriate use of vocabulary, grammar through
spelling tests, filling in the blanks, vocabulary test, and syntactical structures through
jumbled sentences, and reading skills through reading comprehension with ‘Wh’
questions, and written skills through guided and unguided compositions. However,
students’ response based on the socio, economic, cultural and psychological aspects
are not taken care of. Today’s modern classrooms where students from various
backgrounds gather for the purpose of learning do not have any consideration for the
poor and slow learner. To aggravate the plight of the students the testing system too,
does suppress the feelings of the learners whose living conditions and psychological
motivations are poor. This situation leads to a state where students’ interest in
learning an alien language has become deplorable. In this context, the researchers is
of the view that a methodology using theatre workshop to teach English would be
useful in motivating students to learn English beter. The present study conducted
with a group of students, twenty-four in number from a Sri Lankan English
classroom employing the ethnographical methodology was able to promote the
speaking and writing skills of the students who came from a poor background in a
war-torn city as was evident from the video-recorded classroom activities and the
scripts written by the students after the performance. This paper concentrates on how
the assessment was made to prove that language growth occurred because of the use
of theatre workshop rather than conventional methods
