Abstract:

Abstract The body is undoubtedly the first language of communication in human history. Body language, which dates back to the first human, was the first language with which humans communicated with each other. Human being is a social being; just as it needs nutrition, shelter, security, knowledge, respect and love, it also needs communication. Therefore, speaking skill has become one of the language skills that individuals use most in daily life throughout their lives. Drama method is a method that can be used to help people get to know themselves and their environment, improve their relationships, gain different perspectives, and increase social harmony. The aim of this research is to determine the effect of body language-centered drama activities on the development of students' speaking skills in secondary school Turkish teaching. The participants of the study consist of 55 7th grade students studying in a secondary school in Battalgazi district of Malatya province. In this research, mixed research method sequential explanatory design was used. A semi-experimental design was used in the quantitative part of the research, and the quantitative data of the research was collected using the Speaking Skills Attitude Scale (2017), and the phenomenology design was used in the qualitative part, and the data were collected with student diaries, semi-structured interview form and observation form. In the quantitative part of the research, a control and an experimental group were created. Experimental and control groups were determined according to the students' pre-test results from the attitude scale. According to the results of the Mann Whitney U test, the groups were found to be equivalent. In the experimental group, body language-centered drama prepared in the context of Turkish language teaching program achievements was taught, and in the control group, lessons were taught taking into account the current Turkish course curriculum. At the end of the research, a semi-structured interview was conducted with 9 experimental group students, a diary was collected after each drama application, and observations were made by taking pre- and post-videos of the students' body language-centered speaking skills. A reliability and validity study was conducted on the applied quantitative and qualitative data collection tools. Analysis of the post-tests in the experimental and control groups was made with the Mann Whitney U test. Qualitative data were analyzed with codes and categories created by content analysis and descriptive analysis.

Keywords: