Nora, El Salvador
I think there is no way to evaluate drama accurately.  There are many participantas at a time and just one teacher evaluating the process, but I really enjoy watching students acting and it's a great tool to involve students not only in acting but also to develop oral skill.  We have to use drama in the classroom and I recommend you to take into account the following aspects: An appropriate environment should be prepared, fluency, intonation, pronunciation, improvisation and grammar. A chart will be prepared in advance with all the aspects and the percentage given to each part. It will be hard for you but your students will learn and have fun at the same time.

Susan Hillyard, Argentina
Check out www.trinitycollege.org.uk and look for Drama and Speech exams. There you can read the syllabus for a variety of exams and their descriptors.I have used drama very extensively and have devised my own criteria, too long to write here. You might also think of joining the TESOL EVO Drama group in Jan 2008 which will offer a free on-line course for teachers all over the world on Drama in ELT.

Tatyana Ryzhkova, Russia
I and my colleagues have practised drama at school and we have worked out some criteria that seem to satisfy our purposes. We divide the whole process of assessment into two parts: preparation stage and performance itself. We decided that students demonstrate their communication and language skills much more during the preparation stage, which includes writing the storyboard and the script, making the scenery, and rehearsing the play. So, the criteria could include participation in the group work, fluency, ability to give arguments, ability to persuade, etc.

Nidia Cecchetto Reuter, Argentina
I think Drama is an excellent resource to increase students' interest in learning the language. It challenges students to interpret, act and feel, thus improving students' ability to comprehend. Drama lets students be the protagonist of their own learning as they create.They learn while having fun. In my opinion you can evaluate many aspects: Problem-solving: Improvisation requires quick-thinking. Communication: Drama enhaces verbal and non-verbal expression of ideas. Empathy: Tolerance for other students' points of views. To put in other words the project is useful for evaluating integrated skills.

Elena Igorevna, Russia
I also wanted to say that drama during the lessons of English interests me. Can we say that we use drama when we ask children to act out dialogues? What can be considered drama? Everything if the person is acting or what? I'll be very thankful to you, if you will answer. The thing is that this topic is my course paper and I'll be really happy to know where I can find the material.

A.K.Farrar, Romania
Silly point - but maybe you should start with 'Why use Drama rather than discussion?' As a teaching tool, drama gives greater context to the spoken language - and opportunity during rehearsal to consider overtly not just 'what to say', but 'how to say it'. Is the drama to be scripted or only improvised?

Liliana, Spain
I have worked with drama, some plays from the Britlit page, among others, and I think the best way to assess drama is doing informal assessment and also take into account the student's attitude and hard work. In this way they will not feel pressed and they will perfrom better and enjoy the learning process as well.

Louis Letta, Tanzania
Drama is one of activities which can be employed by a teacher to develop listening and speaking skills to the learners. With these two skills the learners are likely to acquire fluency, confidence, and efficiency in language production. The following are evaluation criteria: Ability to make and respond to questions positively along with relevant moods, speaking and pronouncing the words correctly along with actions relating to what is said.

Seckin Arslan, Turkey
To evaluate drama work you may look for two basis first, which are linguistic frame and dramatic frame. Drama way generally encourages students to speak better or to show much more effort than they may not do during "chalk and board" learning process, so this would confuse teachers while evaluating, so have some questions to see if the students are fulfilling the answers for the questions which may differ according to skill(s) you are expecting to be improved but I have some questions to ask for you:
1) What do they produce (oral or written)that is relevant to the main theme of the dramatic framework? (relevance)
2) Is the language they produce growing spontaniously or just cliche chants? (creation)
3) Do they link the meaning with their bodly movements or just say what they are supposed to? (body-language cooperation)
4) Do they find the right tone-manner connection while they are producing or is there a gap between? (linguistic competence)
5) Are they behaving and producing the language corperating with the group (society)? (sociolinguistic competence)
6) How much of what they put out is meaningful and how much of the output is understood by the receiver? Body and mimes are helping this communication? (communicating)
7) Are they able to do what they hear or/and to say what they do? (dramatic comprehension)
8) What do you think, is the production aesthetic? (you mat not look for this if you are not expecting aesthetic competence to be applied)