Mohamad IrwandyTESL R2Reflection on dramatizationFor this course, our assignment for this semester was mainly to dramatize a story for young learners. The story which my group and I chose for our dramatization was Tanggang the Ungrateful Son. We worked together to develop the script for it and make the props ourselves. We did the dramatization on Wednesdays night and recorded it. From our drama, there were some stengths and weaknesses shown on my part. I will first discuss about my strenghts that Ive shown during the dramatization. One of my strenght would be my voice projection. My voice was loud and clear. According to Barbara Brockmann (2010) who wrote the book, Remembrance Day Plays for Schools and Communities, she states that Voice projection is the most important dramatic skill. Despite the increasing use ofhanging and clip on microphones, skills like enunciation, pacing of speech, and loud voice projection are critically important.Besides that, I used appropriate tones during my dialogue which helps in setting the mood for the drama and clearly conveyed what happens during my scene. Other than my voice, the emotions I had conveyed during my dramatization also help in my acting. This is because when I get into the character, the emotion shown when I act was conveyed naturally rather than forcefully. Furthermore, one other strength that I had shown would be the strong cooperation that I have between other actors.This strong cooperation had allowed the other cast members and I work well together and also finishing the drama wthin the time given. As well as there are strengths, there are also weaknesses I had shown during the dramatization of our group. One of my biggest weaknesses would be my unclear utterances and pronunciation. The result of my weakness makes it a bit hard for my voice to be heard in the video. Moreover, because my pronunciation was a bit unclear, there were some words which sounded more like muffled noises. Besides that, one other weakness that I had shown would be the the hesistation during my acting. This is mainly caused when I tried to memorize my lines during a certain time in my act. The hesitation caused a silent gap which affects the drama greatly because it was obvious to others who watch the drama that I was getting uncomfortable and that I had somehow forgotten my lines. In addition, I had also committed dragging which was saying or doing unneseacary action during my scene in order to come up with my lines. This had caused the drama to be stretch loneger and audiences bored because what Ive shown werent necessary to the drama. Other than that, during my performance or acting, I was a bit still and my movements around the stage were stiff. I did not use the stage well and I could have move around more during some scenes. To address these weaknesses, I had come up with a few suggestions for improvement. To improve on my utterances, repeated practice is one way to fix this problem. A few days before the dramatization, I should practice my lines with a partner and he could make sure whether my utterances are clear and precise. To adress the problem where I hesitate during acting, I should try to improvise whenever it is necessary to do so. Improvisation can help me save a lot of time and prevent me from spacing out during the dramatization. To improve on my weak pronunciation, one way to fix it is with constant practice and also listening to the corrct pronunciation by others and modeled it. My stiffness and my lack of movement across the stage can be overcome by practicing my movement in front of the mirror. Also, I can ask for some help from my friends who has better knowledge on stage direction to teach me about it. From this drama, I had also gain a lot of knowledge which proves to be very useful in my future teaching career. One of the things I learn from the dramatization that I and my group had done is that appropriate stage direction need to be mastered by actors to make dramatization much intersting and real. This piece of knowledge is important because it will help in developing my acting skills which can be use in the classroom where I will teach students using drama. Furthermore, I can use this knowledge to assist young learners when I am given the resposibility to help them manage a play or a drama in schools. Other than that, I now know that props play an important part in a drama not just as tools but also in helping the actors create a more realistic feeling during the drama. I can utilise this knowledge to help my students in the future and helping them to make better props. When conducting this drama, I had also made a few decisions which I think worth mentioning. One of the decision was in order to make it much more interesting and fun, I and together with my group decided to improvise a bit of the drama and adapt it with extra scenes like the marriage scene. The marriage scene was also included because my group and I know that it would be a crowd pleaser. Also, I decided to insert some sense of humor in every scene so that it would lesson the grim mood of the story. This decision was made because the targeted audience was young learners. Young learners tend to be more attracted and relax if some humor is incorporated inside a story or a drama. According to Chiiasson (2002), the nature of positive humor helps create a "positive atmosphere" which encourages the learners' desire to take part in class conversations by decreasing anxiety and stress. Nevertheless, it was a decision made because the most of the members of my group were having difficulty in expressing sadness for the drama. So instead, we put in a twist of humor which all of us can relate to. Lastly, from the dramatization done, I learnt that drama isnt just for entertainment but can also be educational for young learners.

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