Drama and education has been closely related since the birth of drama in ancient Greek centuries ago。 Drama, a special form of education, provides both actors and audience enjoyment and different understanding when they get themselves into the plot, so is drama in education, which helps learners to understand the knowledge more easily and even influences their personality and views on life and value。 Drama in education has been widely discussed in various fields from different perspectives。 Rousseau first put forward the concept DIE (drama in education) in 1770s in his book Emile and then put it into practice until 1800s。 It was firstly studied and applied in some western countries, and as time goes by, more and more Asian countries began to introduce DIE to school and even to classroom teaching in 1970s, such as Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, etc。 Leming has the view that drama in classroom is a tool for learning in an increasingly favorable light (Cited in Bolton 1984: 148)。 By far, DIE has been both practically and theoretically studied in various fields, especially in English teaching。 

Drama in English classroom, based on the real materials and imagination of students, put students easily into a multi-level, real context and it is a vivid means of learning English。 In more specific, concrete terms, drama in English classroom has a number of forms, including mime, role-playing, extended role-playing (or improvisation), simulation, interaction activities such as various forms of dialogues, dramatized story-telling, etc。 Good application of drama in English classroom is a effective method to develop students’ all-round personality, creativity and learning ability, which accords with the requirement of the new English curriculum。

1。2 Significance of the Research文献综述

According to the new English curriculum and the increasingly rising demand of communicative English, it is widely recognized that students should have overall language abilities。 It is also believed that drama activities can set a real and interesting environment in which students can play an active role in learning English, which can be helpful to develop students’ overall English abilities。 The new English curriculum emphasizes the task-based learning method, while the drama in English classroom is exactly developed from the principle of task-based learning。 It cannot be defended that dramatic activities do help English teaching in classroom。 Dramatic activities are helpful for students’ integrated ability of applying English to real situation。 English skills include four main parts: listening, speaking, reading and writing, and all of them can be improved through dramatic activities, especially the speaking skills。 Dramatic activities can activate students’ desire of performance and interests in English learning so that they can obtain the motivation to learn English。 Dramatic activities also play a significant role in cultivating students’ team spirit and sense of cooperation。 In conclusion, dramatic activities in English classroom can arouse students’ learning motivation, cultivate their language competence, enhance their knowledge acquisition and stimulate their interests in studying English and set up interpersonal relationships in communicative classrooms。 

Therefore, it is necessary to study the dramatic activities applied in English education。 In fact, various dramatic activities have been widely studied and applied to the English classroom by many researchers and teachers at home and abroad。 Drama teaching, one typical method in Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is totally considered by both researchers and teachers as an effective way to enhance the students’ communicative competence in English。 However, the dramatic activities applied in the middle school’s English classroom in China are not so successful as them applied abroad。 In China, English learning, especially in middle school, is still teacher-centered, book-centered and class-centered, because of the pressure of examinations。 Even through some teachers or schools try to carry out some dramatic activities, most of them are out-of-class activities, just as a supplement。 Few dramatic activities are exclusively designed for classroom teaching and fewer can be combined with the content in the English book。 In other words, the application of dramatic activities in middle school’s English classroom is still on the way。 How to apply dramatic activities to English classroom and what dramatic activities can be applied are both good questions worthy of studying。 So, it is significant to study the application of dramatic activities in the middle school’s English classroom。