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Drama As A Means Of Improving The Advocacy Skills Of Non-English-Speaking-Background Students

Drama as a Means of Improving the Advocacy Skills of Non-English-Speaking-Background Students
Chamkaur Gill
Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences
Bond University, Australia
cgill@staff.bond.edu.au
This paper will discuss the problems facing overseas-Asian students who study law in Western universities and will deal with how drama can help improve their English-language oral-communication skills. A profile of the average student belonging to a high-context, relational culture will be provided with the aim of showing why such a student needs full-on immersion in oral English. An attempt will be made to suggest that the activities and materials employed by instructors using such a strategy can help lower students?affective barriers and increase their confidence, motivation and spontaneity when speaking, while improving their non-verbal skills. The writer's personal experiences will be mentioned in passing.
Keywords: Drama, communication skills, advocacy skills, speaking
There is a Chinese proverb which goes "Let householders avoid litigation, for once go to law and there is nothing but trouble?(Goh, 2002, p. vii). This saying sums up the Chinese, and other Asian groups? view of law. They see the legal profession as a possible source of societal disharmony because it leans more towards dispute than mediation. A student from such a community who ventures into legal studies has, therefore, to be prepared to compromise values acquired since childhood. Generally speaking, students in Asia tend to subscribe to what are commonly referred to as ‘Confucian?values based on collectivism, which contrast with Western Socratic values of individualism. Such students are predominantly brought up in a high-context culture to exist in accord with other human beings and this means not readily resorting to arguments, among other things, especially when relating to those considered their ‘superiors? whether in terms of age, position, ability, or achievement. Given the fact...