Learning English Through Play: What Drama Actually Does

English drama works with the tools we used to learn our first language: play, imitation and role. Attention moves to the scene, the partner and the task, and English becomes the means of getting something done. Research suggests this kind of practice helps most with fluency, with remembering words learned through movement, and with speaking anxiety. It does not replace grammar instruction; it is the practice that turns what you already know into English you can use live.

This guide is for adults who already speak some English, and for expat and international school parents wondering what a drama programme can and cannot do for a child. We take one popular claim apart and check each piece against the research.

How we learned our first language

None of us learned our mother tongue from a rule sheet. In Michael Tomasello's usage-based account, children build language from two general skills: reading other people's intentions (joint attention, imitation) and finding patterns in the concrete utterances they hear (Tomasello, 2003). Vygotsky went further: in play, a child behaves "a head taller" than they are, because an imaginary situation gives them a role and the role brings rules (Vygotsky, 1967; Bodrova & Leong, 2015). Imaginary situation, roles, rules: these are also the three building blocks of creative drama.

A caveat. Tomasello wrote about first-language acquisition, Vygotsky about child development. Saying "adults learn a second language exactly like children, through play" goes beyond the evidence. Skill-acquisition research stresses that implicit learning is limited in adults (DeKeyser & Criado, 2013). The honest version: drama carries the mechanisms children use (role, imitation, imaginary situation) into an adult setting, and adults add something children lack, which is knowledge they have learned explicitly.

What happens when language moves to the background

In an improvisation you do not think "I should use the past tense". You are trying to get your partner out of the room, keep a lie going, or talk your way past a receptionist. Language is the tool. Task-based teaching works the same way: attention goes to meaning first, and to form only briefly, when the communication needs it (Long, 1991, 2015).

Skill-acquisition theory explains why this matters. Knowledge moves from declarative (you know the rule but apply it slowly) to procedural to automatic. The practice types recommended for automatisation are long, open-ended, meaning-focused activities such as role play, simulation and debate (DeKeyser & Criado, 2013). Drama is that practice.

The most direct evidence: Brazilian teenagers in a four-month drama-based English programme made significantly larger gains in oral fluency than peers in a conventional communicative programme, as rated by native listeners who did not know which group they were hearing (Galante & Thomson, 2017).

There is a neuroscience frame for this too. Ullman's declarative/procedural model links words and explicit rules to a hippocampus-centred memory system, and automatised skills to procedural circuits involving the basal ganglia and frontal regions, with a predicted shift toward the procedural system as adult learners gain experience (Ullman, 2004, 2016). It is a general model. No brain-imaging study has looked at drama and second-language learning, so "drama writes English into procedural memory" would be an inference, not a finding.

Attention does not switch off completely. Noticing a form is part of how input becomes learning (Schmidt, 1990), and meta-analytic work on incidental vocabulary learning shows smaller gains than deliberate study, with bigger gains for learners who pay attention (Webb et al., 2023). That is why a good session alternates: scene, a short look at a phrase, scene again.

The body and the word

Memory research has documented the enactment effect since the 1980s: people who perform an action that goes with a word remember it better than people who only read or hear it. The effect has been shown for foreign-language vocabulary (Macedonia, 2014). In one widely cited study, words learned with gestures were translated better two and six months later than words learned with pictures or sound alone, and hearing them engaged movement-related brain areas (Mayer et al., 2015). Brain-stimulation work points to a causal role for the motor cortex (Mathias et al., 2021).

The key condition is doing the movement yourself; watching is not enough for lasting gains (Macedonia et al., 2019). In a drama session, nobody watches the gesture. They make it. The limits: these studies are at word level, mostly with artificial languages and small adult samples, and none of them used drama.

Role, anxiety and the audience

Foreign language anxiety includes fear of negative evaluation, and it is specific to language learning (Horwitz, Horwitz & Cope, 1986). A role gives you cover: if my character makes a mistake, the scene goes on. A six-week creative drama programme in Turkey significantly reduced foreign language anxiety among university students, though without a control group (Sağlamel & Kayaoğlu, 2013).

Here is where we need to be fair to speaking clubs. A Turkish study of a seven-week speaking club with 49 high school students also found a large drop in speaking anxiety (Saraç & Doğan, 2024). A 2025 meta-analysis linked drama to a medium-to-large anxiety reduction, but on only three studies, and found no significant difference between intervention types (Kayhan, 2025). Drama does not beat clubs on anxiety. What it adds is the fluency evidence, the body, and an audience.

On that last point: in a year-long study in Taiwan, the drama group only pulled ahead of the control group after performing for a real audience (Lee & Liu, 2022).

Speaking club or drama: an honest comparison

	Speaking club (café or Meetup style)	English drama (our adult programme)
Speaking time	Usually 6–8 at a table; turns rotate, staying quiet is possible	Up to 12; everyone goes on in improvisations, staying passive is hard
Facilitation	Mentor or host; often none at Meetup-style events	Conservatoire-trained facilitators run every session
Level	Usually mixed, A1–C1	B1 and above; not suitable for A1–A2
Flexibility	Drop-in is common	Single sessions possible; 4- and 8-session packages
Native speakers	Many clubs offer them	We make no native-speaker claim
Cost	From free (public, Meetup) to monthly packages	Paid; ask us for details
Social side	Café or pub, meet new people	Studio, a weekly group
Aim	Conversation habit and comfort	Fluency, nerve, body and voice; scene work

We also have no online option. We meet in person in Pera and Kadıköy.

For parents: what to expect for children

Play is a child's natural mode, so the threshold an adult has to cross ("now we're doing a role play") barely exists. A large online study suggests grammar-learning ability stays largely intact until about 17 and declines after that (Hartshorne, Tenenbaum & Pinker, 2018); it measured grammar judgements, not speaking, and it describes a decline, not a closed door.

Two honest points. First, the strongest drama-and-English evidence comes from teenagers (Galante & Thomson, 2017); with younger children it is mixed. Second, duration matters. A study of 43 Turkish fourth-graders found no measurable change in anxiety, motivation or attitude after ten drama activities, even though the children said they felt comfortable and safe (Öksüzer, 2021). A meta-analysis of 47 studies found stronger effects in programmes longer than five sessions (Lee et al., 2015). That is why our youth programme runs October to May, one day a week, with 8–14 and 15–17 in separate groups and a fully English show for a real audience at the end. Details are on the drama classes for kids page, and why teenagers freeze when speaking English covers the teenage side in more depth.

What we do not promise

• Accent change. In Galante and Thomson's study, fluency improved; accent did not differ between groups.
• Grammar without study. Two major meta-analyses found explicit instruction more effective on average than implicit instruction (Norris & Ortega, 2000; Goo et al., 2015). Drama sits on top of explicit learning, not instead of it.
• Magic. Drama is not "the most effective method". A research synthesis found wide interest but limited empirical evidence on what actually happens in drama classrooms (Belliveau & Kim, 2013).

For the adult programme, see English drama in Istanbul. Schools looking at drama for their students can start with our schools page and choosing a drama partner for your school. You can try a session first on an open day.

Related reading: English drama for kids and teens: a parents' guide · Drama classes for teens in Istanbul · Making friends in Istanbul through drama

Frequently asked questions

Does drama really help you learn English? For specific outcomes, yes. In a controlled study, a drama group made larger fluency gains than a communicative-programme group (Galante & Thomson, 2017); words learned with movement are remembered longer (Mayer et al., 2015); and drama can reduce speaking anxiety (Sağlamel & Kayaoğlu, 2013). It is not a substitute for grammar study and does not change accent.

Is English drama better than a speaking club? There is no evidence that it is better overall. Speaking clubs also reduce anxiety (Saraç & Doğan, 2024). Drama's measured extras are fluency and embodied vocabulary, plus performing for an audience.

Can adults learn through play the way children do? Not in the same way. Adults have less capacity for implicit learning (DeKeyser & Criado, 2013). Drama brings children's mechanisms into the room; adults combine them with what they have learned explicitly.

What level of English do you need? We recommend B1 or above, for adults and children alike. Drama makes existing English usable; it does not teach a language from scratch.

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Sources: Belliveau & Kim 2013 · Bodrova & Leong 2015 · DeKeyser & Criado 2013 · Galante & Thomson 2017 · Goo et al. 2015 · Hartshorne, Tenenbaum & Pinker 2018 · Horwitz, Horwitz & Cope 1986 · Kayhan 2025 · Lee, Patall, Cawthon & Steingut 2015 · Lee & Liu 2022 · Long 1991 (in de Bot, Ginsberg & Kramsch, Foreign Language Research in Cross-Cultural Perspective, John Benjamins) · Long 2015 (review) · Macedonia 2014 · Macedonia et al. 2019 · Mathias et al. 2021 · Mayer et al. 2015 · Norris & Ortega 2000 · Öksüzer 2021 · Sağlamel & Kayaoğlu 2013 · Saraç & Doğan 2024 · Schmidt 1990 · Tomasello 2003 (Constructing a Language, Harvard University Press) · Ullman 2004 · Ullman 2016 · Vygotsky 1967 · Webb, Uchihara & Yanagisawa 2023