Students' attitudes towards theatrical plays use and its effects on vocabulary learning

The subject of teaching English has been one of the important issues in many books, articles or opinion papers explaining the reasons for using literature in language classes. Literature is an authentic and motivational material which helps to the students? linguistic and personal development with cultural enrichment which is asserted by researchers. Although language teachers are aware of the benefits of using literature in theory, they don?t use it ?consciously? practically. For that reason, to ?re-highlight? literature use in language classrooms this study is conducted in 2010-2011 education year, at a private language school in Kütahya, by participation of 14 A2 level students. Data collection of the research is twofold; descriptive and experimental. The descriptive part is made of an attitude questionnaire towards the using of literature, namely drama, in language classrooms. The experimental part is conducted in a ten-week period and a vocabulary test is used for searching students? vocabulary learning levels. The findings which are obtained from the instruments, are analyzed by SPSS programme. To find out the attitudes of students towards literature specially theatrical plays Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test is carried out. To examine the different levels of vocabulary learning levels Mann-Whitney Rank Test is used. In all attitude questionnaires and vocabulary tests positive and significant results are found. Overall, students have positive attitudes towards the usage of literature ?theatrical plays- in language classrooms and using appropriate literary works help students to increase their vocabulary proficiency levels. Key words : Literature, Attitude, Theatrical Plays, Vocabulary Proficiency Level