Deconstructing the Bully and Victim Dichotomy

Abstract

Although steps have been taken to address the issue of ijime or bullying, it remains is a serious social problem within the Japanese educational system. The main focus of this pilot study was to ascertain how beneficial process drama could be in developing oral communicative skills in the target language of English as well as to build social awareness through the deconstruction of the bully and victim dichotomy. Process drama in language acquisition is unique in its aim to fuse language learning and personal development. The average Japanese university student has had six years of compulsory English education, with an emphasis on grammar-translation and accuracy. This means that, while the average student excels at translation and test-taking, s/he has had little experience with communicative English and has no sense of ownership of the language. Because of this lack of oral communicative skills, process drama is an ideal means to build the bridge to communicative competence. This paper is part of a larger tri-semester process drama project and the data accumulated from all three will be used as evidence in a final PhD dissertation. Although steps have been taken to address the issue of ijime or bullying, it remains is a serious social problem within the Japanese educational system. The main focus of this pilot study was to ascertain how beneficial process drama could be in developing oral communicative skills in the target language of English as well as to build social awareness through the deconstruction of the bully and victim dichotomy. Process drama in language acquisition is unique in its aim to fuse language learning and personal development. The average Japanese university student has had six years of compulsory English education, with an emphasis on grammar-translation and accuracy. This means that, while the average student excels at translation and test-taking, s/he has had little experience with communicative English and has no sense of ownership of the language. Because of this lack of oral communicative skills, process drama is an ideal means to build the bridge to communicative competence. This paper is part of a larger tri-semester process drama project and the data accumulated from all three will be used as evidence in a final PhD dissertation.