Pros and Cons of watching plays.

An approach is used by my lecturer to teach drama. We were asked to watch plays that we are currently studying. It was fun to watch it. As I am part of a generation that will always prefer watching movies than to read the book itself. This posting is to share my opinion on the pros and cons of this approach.
Pros:
Students can absorb certain information at a faster rate by watching a play. They have a clearer picture on the setting, tone, plot and characteristics of the characters. This is because those aspects listed are quite difficult to be captured by students who are new to reading scripts of play, especially the tone of the dialogues.Watching plays is also a great way for students who possesses slow reading skills. By using the play watching method, students could more or less understand the play. This will make their life so much easier when reading the script of that particular play.

Cons:
The disadvantage of the play is that it offer little opportunity for students to analyze the play by just watching it alone. The problem will arise when students need to analyze the play in terms of choices of words used. This is due to plays being ephemeral. Once the part of a play is over, students can't just rewind and check out what is missed. Furthermore, the accent of the actors would make it hard for students of not so high proficiency to make sense of what the actor have said.

One way to counter the disadvantages of this movie watching session is to bring along the script and reading it while watching the movie. This will allow student to overcome the accent barrier and also being able to highlight the important parts in their respective book for future analysis and revisions.
For me, the advantages of this approach outweigh its disadvantages. In the end, it is up to the students to fully utilize both the movie and the book to gain the most from the movie watching session.