OVERCOMING THE STUDENT’S SPEAKING ANXIETY DISORDERS THROUGH PLAYBACK THEATRE THERAPY

In India, English language teachers encounter numerous challenges while developing speaking skill of the learners in rural and semi-urban regions. There are many activities like role-play, theatre and drama to improve the oral competence of the second language learners of English. Playback theatre is an improvisational theatre technique where the participants will enact and perform the stories on the spot. Playback theatre therapy training may prove as a crucial factor in overcoming affective filters while speaking and learners may gain better development and awareness of language expressions in English. This process will aid in the development of their communication skills. Anxiety, motivation, and self-confidence are identified as factors that affect the speaking performance of students. Anxiety is a feeling defined by nervousness, perplexity, and fear. When students are anxious, they are often reluctant to speak and fear making mistakes. Anxiety disorder would prevent the oral performances from being consistent. Majority of the learners at the undergraduate level quite often encounter anxiety when they speak in English. So, playback theatre therapy training as a workshop was organized to identify the relevance of such activities to improve the speaking skills of the learners. The participants of the study are from Undergraduate programme in Vellore district. The sampling method employed in the study is purposive sampling method. 38 participants were selected as the samples for this study. The playback theatre activities like warm up, introducing myself with an adjective, taking someone’s place, becoming the object, fluid sculpt, tableau and metaphor was employed as the intervention to improve the speaking skills and alleviate the speaking anxiety among the learners. The study concludes that Playback theatre activities have a considerable impact on learners’ anxiety level, expressiveness and attentiveness, composure, and speech naturalness.