Psychodrama with Music and Poetry Therapy: Effects on the Vocabulary and Reading Skills of EFL Learners with Autism Spectrum Disorder

In the rapidly globalized and technologized world of the ۲۱st century, the need for universal education is gaining ever-growing necessity and significance. This is of course very true for one of the highly marginalized and thus vulnerable cohorts of the human population, that is learners with special needs. A subcategory of this group of learners comprises those with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) who need to be approached through creative pedagogical procedures as conventional educational processes often fail at engaging these individuals. Accordingly, this study sought to investigate the vocabulary and reading skills of English as a foreign language (EFL) learners with ASD through psychodrama techniques using music therapy and poetry therapy. To this end, ۲۰ male teenage learners were selected from three autism schools located in Tehran. The participants were then divided into two groups each receiving a ۱۰-session instruction: one group took part in psychodrama and music therapy while the other underwent psychodrama and poetry therapy. The results demonstrated promising results for both groups thereby encouraging the use of psychodrama and music and poetry therapy for EFL learners with ASD, thus highlighting the need to adopt both methods in addressing the ELT needs of such often neglected learners.

کلیدواژه ها:

ASD ، music therapy ، Poetry therapy ، psychodrama ، Reading comprehension ، Vocabulary Learning