Abstract: Drama activities with the nature of creativity and imagination can bring the learning environment within four walls of classroom out into life-like contexts, thus enhancing language learners’ communicative competence. After drama activities had been applied to three speaking classes at one public high school in Vietnam with the convenience sample of 125 eleventh-grade students, the researcher carried out a survey to examine how these participants perceived the benefits and difficulties of learning speaking with drama-based lessons. Based on the questionnaire results, the study indicated that most of the students felt interested and enthusiastic in drama activities, especially role-play and improvisation; besides, they also realized the positive effects of these activities on their speaking ability, pronunciation, fluency, self-confidence, and creativity. Yet, shyness, immature language input, limited time, L1 use were main problems of doing drama activities in the speaking classrooms perceived by the students. The paper was concluded with some practical recommendations.