Role Play as a Strategy to Improve Speaking Skills

1. Introduction

A person, at first, learns to speak in native language to convey a message and then gradually uses
other methods like reading and writing to communicate with others. Getting students to speak in
class can sometimes be extremely easy. In a good class atmosphere, students who get on with
each other, and whose English is at an appropriate level, will often participate freely and
enthusiastically if we give them suitable topic and task. However, at other times it is not easy to
get students going. In learning speaking skill, the students often find some problems. The
problems frequently find is that their native language causes them difficult to use the foreign
language. Other reason is because of motivation lack to practice the second language in daily
conversation. They are also too shy and afraid to take part in the conversation. Many factors can
cause the problem of the students. (Donn, 1986).

Many research finding says that role play is an effective technique to use in teaching speaking.
Role play is important in teaching speaking because it gives students an opportunity to practice
in different social contexts and in different social roles. In addition, it also allows students to be
creative and to put themselves in another person‟s place for a while.

According to Ments (1999), the word „role‟ came „from the word that was used to describe the
roll of parchment on which an actor‟s part was written‟ (p. 6). He also stated, “The concept of
role acts as a short hand way of identifying and labeling a set of appearances and behaviours on
the assumption that these appearances and behaviours are characteristic of a particular person
and predictable within a given situation” (p. 6).

Livingstone (1983) said that role play is therefore a classroom activity which gives the student
the opportunity to practice the language, the aspects of role behavior, and the actual roles he may
need outside the classroom. On the book Pictures for Language Learning, Wright (1989) state
that in role play the students imagine they are in a specified situation. They may take on the
character and role of someone else or be themselves. From explanation above, this study
concludes that by using role play technique, the students are expected to be active language
speaker.

According to Qing (2011), “Role play is defined as the projection in real life situations with
social activities” (p. 37). Ments (1999) says, “In a role play each players act as a part of the
social environment of the others and provides a framework in which they can test out their
repertoire of behaviours or study the interacting behavior of the group” (p. 5).

When students were assigned a situation to role play in, they had put in the effort to think of the
appropriate language that could be used to express their views and thoughts for communication.
It also helped them to acquire speaking skill and oral fluency, which also helped to boost their
confidence level. As speaking skill requires more „practice and exposure‟, role play can play an
effective role. A clear observation of the similarly assigned situation helped the students to adapt
to the moods and vocal expression of the given situation, which they could then perform. For
example, when they were assigned to play the roles of a salesman and a customer, they were
introduced to a „different social context‟ which was new, interesting, and challenging for them. It
gave them an opportunity to show their creativity because the life style, language, emotion,
environment, expression and body language would be different. As they took preparation for the
play, it not only helped them to gain back their confidence but also helped in acquiring fluency in
the target language. In role play, although as teachers we gave them selected topics, they selected
the words and phrases of their own, which helped them to choose suitable words that, suited the
situation and also helped them to increase their vocabulary.
We noticed that the students were initially hesitant when we assigned them a role play. They
were reluctant initially because they were not familiar with such activities. Through our research,
we wanted to find out whether a series of role play could bring any effective changes in their
attitude as well as their speaking skills.

2. Research Question

Based on the background of the study, the present research proposes to answer the following
questions:
 Will role play solve students‟ pronunciation errors?
 How far role play activity can improve students‟ English speaking ability?
 Will they able to summarize the entire role play?

3. Aim of The Study

The main purposes of this study are:

1. To know if role play solve student‟s problem in speaking.

2. To know if role play improves pronunciation of the students.
3. To find out how far the role play activity can improve students‟ speaking ability.
4. To know if role play can helps student in summarizing the play orally.

4. Hypothesis

The hypothesis of this proposal is role play will solve students‟ problem in speaking, and it can improve
students‟ speaking.

5. Significance of Role Play as a strategy to Improve Students’ Speaking Skill

In my opinion, this method is very useful for anyone who is interest in English, especially for the
students and teachers institution. For students, it assists them to solve their problem in speaking
activity and it can help them to improve their speaking ability. It has been mentioned earlier in
that through role play activities the students learn how to express ideas, opinions, or feeling to
others by using words or sounds of articulation. And for the teacher, it gives the alternative
solution in teaching speaking.
4. Research Method

a. Population

The population of this study is the 5th grade students of any school. The total numbers of
population is 200 students.

b. Sample

The study collects all sections of class 5th as sample. The study choose only 20 students that are
chosen through cluster random sampling, so that data collection would be easier.

c. Procedure

Students from all the sections of grade 5th will be chosen randomly. Auditions will be taken so to
check which role will suit best with the student. Once the roles are distributed to the students, let
them practice their roles by themselves. Don‟t interrupt while they are practicing their roles as
this will help them to deal with the problem themselves. When the students feel ready to perform
the play then look up all the play. Students at first would find it difficult to pronoun some
difficult or unfamiliar words so the instructor will tell the correct pronunciation of the word. It
may happen that the student might ask the same word again and again. With every correct
pronunciation by instruction helps the student to have grip on the vocabulary and so his
pronunciation of the word would be solved easily. The moment he tries to learn the vocabulary,
he would be able to speak English well. Every time he practices the play his English speaking
skills will be improved. Not only would this he will be able to express the role play in his words
by summarizing all of the play from the start till the end.

5. Limitations

As the research was conducted on a small scale where twenty students and five teachers took part
in the investigation process, we cannot generalize the concept that role play is the effective
technique for improving learners‟ speaking skill the results may vary. This small scale research
can be taken as a sample guideline and can be used to carry out the research on a large scale.

6. Research findings

In our research, we have found that students were enthusiastic about role play as it was different
from other activities done in class. After a lot of practice, they showed remarkable improvement
in their speaking ability and they were also found to be quite fluent. They became confident
enough to speak. They shared their „hidden feelings‟ and expressed themselves without restraint.
In a large class room, role play was a good technique to use to observe the performance of a
number of students in a limited time constraint. They were given feedback for further
improvement.

7. Conclusion and Suggestion

In a few words, we can say that role play technique has positive impact in improving learners‟
speaking skills and enables them to speak accurately and confidently in any situation in the target
language. Their recall and verbal summarization skills is also improved which is again a big
achievement. Although during role play, the situation gets chaotic and the performers sometimes
forget their dialogues, which create embarrassment, eventually with the help of little feedback
from the teachers, this problem can be resolved. Teachers may give prompt verbal feedback or
written feedback in case of technical difficulties while recording acts.

8. Bibliography

 Donn, Byrne. (1986). Teaching Oral English: Longman Handbooks for English Teacher.
Singapore: Longman group.

 Livingstone, Carol. (2005). Role Play in Language Learning. New York: Longman group
limited.

 Ments, V. M. (1999). The effective use of role-play: practical techniques for improving
learning (2nd ed.). Retrieved from:
http://books.google.com.bd/books/about/The_Effective_Use_of_Role_Play.
html?id=GbXOYf8aTIC&redir_esc=y

 Qing, X. (2011). Role-play an effective approach to developing overall communicative

competence. Cross-Cultural Communication, 7(4), 36-39.

 Wright, Andrew. (1989). Pictures for Language Learning. London: Cambridge University
Press.