The effect of drama on acquisition of children aged 5-6

This research is an experimental study intending to find out the effect of dramaactivities on acquisiton of children aged 5-6. In this study, word classes, number ofwords, length of sentecnes and phrases that children used were investigated.The population sample is composed of 36 children at 5-6 attending 4 differentclasses at a preschool at the University of Çukurova. Before treatment, each child wasgiven ` Ankara Development Scannig Inventory? in order to collect data regarding thefact that their developmental processes are normal and regular, and identify theirlanguage development level.In order to find out the effectiveness of creative drama, one experimental andone control group were designed. The experimental group went through the processes ofcreative drama activities, whereas the control group was exposed to only lecturing andtraditional teaching approach. The activites in both groups were prepared and arrangedby the researcher. In the study the voice of participants in both groups were recordedbefore and after the treatment. The data were collected with the same method for bothgroups.In the study, as a result of the creative drama activites carried out, it was foundout that the number of words in an utterance that the children used increased, and thechildren used longer sentences, and the utterances the children used showed anincreease in adjectives and nouns in terms of word classes. There was also an increasein using noun and verb phrases, while there was no increase in the numbers of verbs andadverbs. These findings suggest that the creative drama training had no effect onchildren?s language development.viKey words: Preschool education, Creative drama, Language development, Languageacquisition