الفهرس 
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Abstract
This research was carried out to investigate the effectiveness of the dramatic activities in developing the oral performance skills of second year prep students. Using dramatic activities in classroom requires students to be active participants. Intentionally, the oral performance skills, which are in line with today’s expectations of surviving in a global setting, have been chosen. Rather than choosing from presented options, as in traditional multiple-choice tests, students are responsible for creating or constructing their responses. Therefore, the problem of this research was stated in the following question: What is the effect of using the dramatic activities on the development of the English oral performance skills of the second year prep students? This question was subdivided into other minor questions: What are the oral performance skills that second year prep students have to develop? What is the students’ actual level in the oral performance skills? What are the most appropriate dramatic activities for teaching each story of Hello! 4? What is the effect of using the dramatic activities on the students’ oral performance skills in general and on each of the oral performance skills? The results of investigating the problem of the research can be shown in the following way: < For answering the first question, the following was done: Reviewing literature related to performance assessment approach and the general aims for standards of performance in TEFL in the Preparatory Stage; Forming a theoretical model of the oral performance construct; Classifying the learning objectives of the Teacher’s Guide, Hello! 4 according to this model; and Determining the oral performance skills that second year prep students should develop. These skills are: 1-The student is able to pronounce sounds: pronunciation of words (vowel sounds) intonation 2-The student is able to use vocabulary items: the most frequent content words( 120 words) function words (prepositions: in, on, to, at, about, by) 3-The student is able to form words: past tense and past participle of regular verbs past tens and past participle of irregular verbs nouns from verbs plural nouns 4-The student is able to use some structures and tenses: the Present Tenses: Simple, Continuous, Perfect the Past Tenses: Past, Continuous can ,can’t, could, couldn’t If I were……, I’d…….. . If I had……, I’d…… expressing obligation : must , will have to, have to , had to talking about future plans using The Present Continuous Tense 5-The students is able to select among language functions: deducing giving advice expressing obligation inviting <For answering the second question, the following was done: Determining the oral performance skills that second year prep students should develop, the test was built, validated and made reliable; Administering the test as a pre-test to two second year prep classes (2/3-2/4) from Sammanoud Prep School for Girls at very beginning of the academic year 2001/2002 to identify the students’ actual level of oral performance; and Analyzing and statistically treating the findings of the pre-testing. The results of were as follows: The students’ pre-level in the oral performance in general and in each of the oral performance skills The equivalence between the two groups in the oral performance in general The equivalence between the two groups in each of the oral performance skills The equivalence between the two groups in each of the oral performance sub-skills except for intonation < For answering the third question, the following was done: Reviewing literature related to the dramatic activities; Determining some dramatic activities that can be implemented on the second year prep students; Constructing a questionnaire of these activities, then validating and administering it to specialists to specify the dramatic activities that are appropriate for teaching each story of Hello! 4, the first term; and Specifying these activities as presented in Table (15) Table (15): Results of administering the questionnaire Unit 3 L.3: Seif and his neighbour storytelling, story-acting, puppetry, pantomime, role-playing and choral reading Unit 4 L.3: The lost island of Atlantis storytelling, role playing, pantomime and choral reading Unit 7 L. 4: Down on the farm storytelling, story-acting, puppetry, role playing, pantomime and reader’s theater Unit 12 L.4: Danger in the deep: Part 1 storytelling, role playing, choral reading and reader’s theater Unit 13 L.2: Danger in the deep: Part 2 storytelling, role playing, choral reading and reader’s theater < For answering the fourth question, the following was done: Adapting the procedure of the Teacher’s Guide of the Ministry of Education using the dramatic activities specified; Designing the Student’s Guide of the dramatic activities; Stating the research hypothesis: There is a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the experimental group and those of the control group on the oral performance post-test favoring the experimental group. Administering the Dramatic Activities Programme to the experimental group while teaching to the control group using the recommended procedure by the Ministry of Education. Administering the test after the study is over to measure the students’ level of the oral performance skills; Scoring, analyzing and statistically treating the two administrations of the test; Verifying the hypotheses of the test. The results showed that: Significant differences existed between the mean scores of the experimental group and those of the control group on the oral performance post-test at the level of (0.05) favoring the experimental group. According to the components of the oral performance, this hypothesis can be divided in the following minor hypotheses: There is a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the experimental group and those of the control group on the oral performance post-test in pronunciation at the level of (0.01) favoring the experimental group. This hypothesis is subdivided into the following: There is a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the experimental group and those of the control group on the oral performance post-test in vowel sounds at the level of (0.01) favoring the experimental group. There is a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the experimental group and those of the control group on the oral performance post-test in intonation at the level of (0.01) favoring the experimental group. There is statistically no significant difference between the mean scores of the experimental group and those of the control group on the oral performance post-test in vocabulary. This hypothesis is subdivided into the following: There is statistically no significant difference between the mean scores of the experimental group and those of the control group on the oral performance post-test in content words. There is statistically no significant difference between the mean scores of the experimental group and those of the control group on the oral performance post-test in function words. There is a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the experimental group and those of the control group on the oral performance post-test in word-formation at the level of (0.05) favoring the experimental group. There is a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the experimental group and those of the control group on the oral performance post-test in grammar at the level of (0.05) favoring the experimental group. There is a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the experimental group and those of the control group on the oral performance post-test in language functions at the level of (0.01) favoring the experimental group. Refusing the null hypotheses of the research except for the third one. Conclusion Based upon these findings and in the light of the pre- and post-testing for each skill of both the experimental and control groups, it was concluded that using the dramatic activities is effective in developing the oral performance skills of second year prep students in English. The improved skills are pronunciation, word-formation, grammar and language functions. Recommendations From the findings of this research, it is recommended that: First: teachers should: have a clear picture of the skills they want students to master and a coherent plan for how students are going to master those skills. consider how students learn and what instructional activities are most likely to be effective. be flexible in using assessment information for diagnostic purpose to help individual students achieve. introduce students to various enjoyable ways of learning a foreign language such as the dramatic activities which can provide students with opportunity to use their imagination and creativity and can motivate them to learn English. build classroom experiences on an oral language base integrating the four language forms: listening, reading and writing and work orally and actively at language play with students. should try to leap out of stories and subject-content experiences into communication sequences. organize classroom activity to include small-group, large-group and personalized encounters with communication processes. proceed during the period as follows: make sure that the students know what they are supposed to do; help the groups in need of assistance to find solutions by suggesting ways, possibilities and viewpoints that help them carry out their task; be prepared to model utterances and to give explanations during the preparation stage. At this stage the attention is paid to accuracy; the teacher has to correct the students’ productions before they act them out for the class; do not make either positive or negative comments as the students act out their roles; give students time to discuss and reflect upon what they have done; monitor students’ actions on an ongoing basis to determine and respond to their learning needs; select and develop a variety of classroom assessment strategies and instruments to assess the full range of learning objectives; record, interpret and use the results of their assessments to modify students’ learning activities; help students develop the ability to diagnose their own learning needs and to assess their progress toward learning goals; and help students, parents and other educators interpret and understand the results of diagnoses and assessments, and the implications for students. Second: students need to learn how to learn by asking themselves the following questions with every phase of the lesson: Why should I learn this? What should I know to learn it? How does it work? If I do this, what happens? The idea is to have the students gain confidence and faith in themselves. Third: curriculum designers should: know the advantage of the performance assessment approach which can directly provide parents and community members with observable products and understandable evidence concerning their students’ performance; include more dramatic activities as a useful way to help students develop certain skills; try to include the dramatic activities in subject contents that can be dramatized such as a mathematical rule, a historical event, a scientific experimentation, etc. have the oral speaking skills as a basis of developing the other language skills of listening, reading and writing; provide an ample opportunities for practice of the dramatic activities; and consider the students’ age, interests in presenting literature to them. Fourth: school administrators should: balance their view concerning the linguistic activities to have a place in the general plan of the school policy; consider participation in the activities as a principal factor in evaluating both the teachers and students; try to provide a suitable budget for buying the needed props for the activities; focus on documenting individual student growth over time, rather than comparing students with one another; emphasize the students’ strengths (what they know), rather than weaknesses (what they do not know); provide classrooms with supplemental materials; and arrange the physical environment in a way that encourages language development. Fifth: faculties of Education should: provide student teachers and inservice teachers with strategies of implementing the dramatic activities specially and linguistic activities generally; and provide student teachers and inservice teachers with knowledge of the potential importance of the performance assessment approach. Sixth: researchers should: measure important outcomes. Performance assessment tasks should reflect important, real-world performances that are tied to desired student outcomes that are relevant to the workplace and everyday life; try to solve the problem of how to implement plans based on performance assessments within the constraints of classroom life; provide clear descriptions of student performance that can be linked to instructional objectives; communicate the goals of learning to teachers and students so that teachers should direct their instruction and students establish personal learning goals; generate accurate, meaningful information (i.e., be reliable and valid) that can shape the future direction of classroom-based assessment,; provide accurate, clear steps of implementing the dramatic activities; find ways of solving the problems of implementing the dramatic activities within the constraints of the classroom; communicate the goals of using the dramatic activities and other linguistic activities to school administrators and policy makers; and communicate the advantages of using the dramatic activities in a concrete and direct way to the teachers, students, policy makers and curriculum designers. Suggestions for Further Research It is suggested to conduct more researches on the following points: Determining the skills and subskills that students in all stages of education must acquire in each subject matter. Conducing research for better developing vocabulary, using dramatic activities. Determining the effects of each dramatic activity separately on developing the oral performance skills. Using the dramatic activities to develop performance skills other than the oral ones. Designing oral performance tests in each subject matter and examining the validity and reliability of these tests.