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Success in literacy relies on the secure development of oral language, particularly for bilingual learners who are known to start school with lower oral language skills than their monolingual peers. Drama-based activities could have beneficial effects on children’s second language (L2) development, but the extent and strength of the evidence in favour of this claim has not been evaluated to date. We conducted a systematic review to fill this research gap. After searching for literature, we identified 471 initial records. Following systematic screening and selection, 29 studies that met the inclusion criteria were included for in-depth analysis. We found that the studies were all conducted in the last 25 years; spanned numerous geographical contexts and educational settings; involved children of varied ages and target L2s; used diverse drama pedagogies; and focused on distinct linguistic, psychological and social skills. Despite their differences, all studies reported positive effects of drama on children’s development of oral language and socio-affective skills in the L2. However, most studies were not able to give rise to unbiased conclusions regarding the effectiveness of drama as a pedagogical approach because of their design and reporting omissions. Based on our findings, we suggest that drama-based education programmes seem to have the potential to develop young L2 learners’ oral language and communication skills. However, more studies – involving more robust methods and more thorough reporting – are needed to draw firmer conclusions about the effectiveness of the approach.
Faitaki et al. (Tue,) studied this question.