The use of drama to develop English speaking autonomous learning

For several years there has been an appreciation and huge awareness pertaining to the importance autonomy of learners and the role of individual and group learners in leading their process of learning inside and outside the classroom. Nevertheless, in real teaching and learning process, it is not always visible how to encourage and develop learners dealing with this role, and how to ensure they are ready to perform it. The topic of autonomy of learners is widely discussed and acknowledged among social scientists and observers but perhaps to its complex and myriad characteristics, the autonomy of learners has not been studied widely up to present day. To fill this gap, this qualitative research was conducted to investigate the use of drama to build autonomous English learning towards the students of International class program of IAIN Salatiga batch 2018. There are twenty students of fourth semester along with the range of age between 19 and 20 years old as the subject of the research along with two problem statements: the first, how is the process of students’ autonomous English learning process before and after the implementation of drama performance in the class? The second, what are the Strength and the weakness of the use of drama to improve autonomous English learning process of students? After conducting fourteen meeting of implementing the drama performance there were two conclusions: the first, it can be concluded that the use of drama performance is an effective method to develop autonomous learning habit of students. They are able to develop their potential in maximum way and be able to learn together in their peer learning group. The second, from the given questionnaire’s answers, dealing with the strength of the use of drama in improving student’s autonomous learning, it can be seen that there are 16 students who felt that drama performance can improve students’ speaking ability, mastery of vocabulary and boost their self-confidence. Pertaining to the weakness of the use of drama in building autonomous learning there are 17 students who said that there is no weakness in the use of drama to build autonomous learning.