A study examined whether dramatization exercises generated more interpretive and evaluative thought among students regarding theme and characterization within a short story than traditional methods of answering questions or writing an essay regarding the story. Subjects, 35 junior English students at a suburban southern California high school, were ranked according to grade point average, reading level, and the assessment of their academic abilities by their English instructor. Subjects were placed into three groups in a randomized block distribution. During one 61-minute class period, the three groups followed along in their textbooks as an oral reading of "Another April" by Jesse Stuart was played on a tape recorder. One group spent 20 minutes answering questions from their textbook, another group rehearsed and performed a 90-second two-character script depicting the climax of the same story in randomly assigned pairs, and the third group individually composed compare-contrast essays. During the final 20 minutes of the class period the students composed a written response to a writing prompt asking them to discuss the principal character's actions in a proposed situation unrelated to the story. Results indicated that the dramatization instructional methodology yielded no significantly superior results compared with the two more traditional written analysis techniques, yet the highest mean score was obtained by high achieving students engaged in the dramatization method of story analysis. Results also indicated that high achievers benefited more than low achievers from the dramatization technique. (Contains 21 references. Six appendixes of data are attached.) (RS)