If drama is to work as a technique for language education, it needs to work as drama, but in Hong Kong, the objectives of each lesson must be language objectives. This implies that we need intermediate objectives, process objectives, to make drama work for language education. This article examines two previous models of drama in language education, drawing imagination, aesthetics and emotion from them as process objectives. It is proposed that all three should be used in a single complex model. This study focuses on a course that presented this three-part model to student teachers, examining survey and interview data together with their essays for the course. Student teachers find the model to be usable in practice. Obstacles arise from the school system, however.[Copyright © The Hong Kong Institute of Education].