The use of role-play to motivate students to speak: a classrom experience

1. 
   INTRODUCTION
   

Therefore to be able to communicate with other people, speaking skills is indispensable. However teaching speaking is very challenging for English teachers in non English speaking countries. It is because: (a) their native languages do not support to speak English, (b) the students feel shy and awkward , (c) their environment discourages them to speak, and (d) the method of teaching can be monotonous so that the students are not motivated to speak.

One method of teaching English that can be used to motivate students to speak is role-play. This article explains the use of role-play to motivate students to speak. It is based o the writer’s experience when teaching speaking in the classroom.

2. 
   THEORITICAL BACKGORUND
   

1. 
   Speaking
   

The language experts above believe that speaking is a way to communicate with others. As social human being, communication plays important role to get response from the others.

2. 
   Teaching speaking
   

1. 
   What is teaching speaking?
   

. produce the English speech sounds and sound patterns.

. use word and sentence stress, intonation pattern and the rhythm of the second

language .

. select appropriate words and sentences according to the proper social setting,

audience, situational subject matter.

. organise their thoughts in a meaningful and logical sequence.

. use language as a means of expressing values and judgments.

. use the language quickly and confidently with few unneutral pauses, which is called fluency.
The above statements show that teaching speaking needs great effort as speaking English explores the learners’ skills. These skills cover grammar, pronunciation, choice of words, and organising their thoughts to use the language. In addition, teaching speaking needs strategies to motivate students to speak. Harmer (1998) said: “...good speaking activities can and should be highly motivating. If all the students are participating fully- and if the teacher has set up the activity properly and can then give sympathetic and useful feedback – they will get tremendous satisfaction from it. Many speaking tasks (role-playing, discussion, problem-solving etc.) are intrinsically enjoyable in themselves”.

2. 
   How to teach speaking
   

The above statements emphasize on using communicative approach to teach speaking. He also stresses on having real-life communication and group collaboration among the students. To conclude, teaching speaking needs powerful strategies or techniques to encourage students to speak.

3. 
   Teaching Techniques
   

After a content-based lesson, a discussion can be held for various reasons. The students may aim to arrive at a conclusion, share ideas about an event, or find solutions in their discussion groups. Before the discussion, it is essential that the purpose of the discussion activity is set by the teacher. In this way, the discussion points are relevant to this purpose, so that students do not spend their time chatting with each other about irrelevant things. For example, students can become involved in agree/disagree discussions. In this type of discussions, the teacher can form groups of students, preferably 4 or 5 in each group, and provide controversial sentences like “people learn best when they read vs. people learn best when they travel”. Then each group works on their topic for a given time period, and presents their opinions to the class. It is essential that the speaking should be equally divided among group members. At the end, the class decides on the winning group who defended the idea in the best way. This activity fosters critical thinking and quick decision making, and students learn how to express and justify themselves in polite ways while disagreeing with the others. For efficient group discussions, it is always better not to form large groups, because quiet students may avoid contributing in large groups. The group members can be either assigned by the teacher or the students may determine it by themselves, but groups should be rearranged in every discussion activity so that students can work with various people and learn to be open to different ideas. Lastly, in class or group discussions, whatever the aim is, the students should always be encouraged to ask questions, paraphrase ideas, express support, check for clarification, and so on.

He quoted Harmer: “One other way of getting students to speak is role-playing. Students pretend they are in various social contexts and have a variety of social roles. In role-play activities, the teacher gives information to the learners such as who they are and what they think or feel. Thus, the teacher can tell the student that "You are David, you go to the doctor and tell him what happened last night, and…" .

Simulations are very similar to role-plays but what makes simulations different than role- plays is that they are more elaborate. In simulations, students can bring items to the class to create a realistic environment. For instance, if a student is acting as a singer, she brings a microphone to sing and so on. Role-plays and simulations have many advantages. First, since they are entertaining, they motivate the students. Second, as Harmer suggests, they increase the self-confidence of hesitant students, because in role-play and simulation activities, they will have a different role and do not have to speak for themselves, which means they do not have to take the same responsibility.

In this activity, students are supposed to be working in pairs. One student will have the information that other partner does not have and the partners will share their information. Information gap activities serve many purposes such as solving a problem or collecting information. Also, each partner plays an important role because the task cannot be completed if the partners do not provide the information the others need. These activities are effective because everybody has the opportunity to talk extensively in the target language.

On a given topic, students can produce ideas in a limited time. Depending on the context, either individual or group brainstorming is effective and learners generate ideas quickly and freely. The good characteristics of brainstorming is that the students are not criticized for their ideas so students will be open to sharing new ideas.

Students can briefly summarize a tale or story they heard from somebody beforehand, or they may create their own stories to tell their classmates. Story telling fosters creative thinking. It also helps students express ideas in the format of beginning, development, and ending, including the characters and setting a story has to have. Students also can tell riddles or jokes. For instance, at the very beginning of each class session, the teacher may call a few students to tell short riddles or jokes as an opening. In this way, not only will the teacher address students’ speaking ability, but also get the attention of the class.

Students can conduct interviews on selected topics with various people. It is a good idea that the teacher provides a rubric to students so that they know what type of questions they can ask or what path to follow, but students should prepare their own interview questions. Conducting interviews with people gives students a chance to practice their speaking ability not only in class but also outside and helps them becoming socialized. After interviews, each student can present his or her study to the class. Moreover, students can interview each other and "introduce" his or her partner to the class.

This is a very enjoyable, whole-class, free-speaking activity for which students sit in a circle. For this activity, a teacher starts to tell a story, but after a few sentences he or she stops narrating. Then, each student starts to narrate from the point where the previous one stopped. Each student is supposed to add from four to ten sentences. Students can add new characters, events, descriptions and so on.

Before coming to class, students are asked to read a newspaper or magazine and, in class, they report to their friends what they find as the most interesting news. Students can also talk about whether they have experienced anything worth telling their friends in their daily lives before class.

In this game, students should form groups of four. Each suit will represent a topic. For instance:

Each student in a group will choose a card. Then, each student will write 4-5 questions about that topic to ask the other people in the group. For example:

If the topic "Diamonds: Earning Money" is selected, here are some possible questions:

Is money important in your life? Why?

What is the easiest way of earning money?

What do you think about lottery? Etc.

This activity is based on several sequential pictures. Students are asked to tell the story taking place in the sequential pictures by paying attention to the criteria provided by the teacher as a rubric. Rubrics can include the vocabulary or structures they need to use while narrating.

Another way to make use of pictures in a speaking activity is to give students just one picture and having them describe what it is in the picture. For this activity students can form groups and each group is given a different picture. Students discuss the picture with their groups, then a spokesperson for each group describes the picture to the whole class. This activity fosters the creativity and imagination of the learners as well as their public speaking skills.

For this activity students can work in pairs and each couple is given two different pictures, for example, picture of boys playing football and another picture of girls playing tennis. Students in pairs discuss the similarities and/or differences in the pictures.

• 
  Provide maximum opportunity to students to speak the target language by providing a rich environment that contains collaborative work, authentic materials and tasks, and shared knowledge.
  
• 
  Try to involve each student in every speaking activity; for this aim, practice different ways of student participation.
  
• 
  Reduce teacher speaking time in class while increasing student speaking time. Step back and observe students.
  
• 
  Indicate positive signs when commenting on a student's response.
  
• 
  Ask eliciting questions such as "What do you mean? How did you reach that conclusion?" in order to prompt students to speak more.
  
• 
  Provide written feedback like "Your presentation was really great. It was a good job. I really appreciated your efforts in preparing the materials and efficient use of your voice…"
  
• 
  Do not correct students' pronunciation mistakes very often while they are speaking. Correction should not distract student from his or her speech.
  
• 
  Involve speaking activities not only in class but also out of class; contact parents and other people who can help.
  
• 
  Circulate around classroom to ensure that students are on the right track and see whether they need your help while they work in groups or pairs.
  
• 
  Provide the vocabulary beforehand that students need in speaking activities.
  
• 
  Diagnose problems faced by students who have difficulty in expressing themselves in the target language and provide more opportunities to practice the spoken language.
  
• 
  
  

Sasson (2007) gave additional tips for improving speaking skills. They are :

• 
  Allot a time limit for each and every speaking activity. Take into consideration those activities that involve either group or pair work.
  
• 
  Keep the activity fun and simple. Make sure the instructions are also crystal clear.
  
• 
  Don’t overdo speaking activities in one lesson.
  
• 
  Make sure you aim for a balance between speaking and listening.
  
• 
  Have a back-up plan for the entire class and for individual students who are withdrawn.
  
• 
  Always reflect on what can you do as a teacher to help students improve their speaking skills.
  

3. 
   Role-play
   

Aforementioned statements describe that role-play is a powerful teaching technique to actively involve the language learners to take part in teaching-learning process. Role-play emotionally forces the learners to speak as it can touch their deep feelings. They are so enthusiastic as it can encourage them to express their ideas. Kumar (2011) further said: “role-play is a simulation exercise where persons take on assumed roles in order to act out a scenario in contrieved setting. The learners or participants can act out the assigned roles in order to explore the scenario, apply skills (maybe communication, negotiation, debate etc.), experience the scenario from another view point, evoke and understand emotions that maybe alien to them. It helps to make sense of theory and gathers together the concepts into a practical experience”.

Role-play is practicing doing their knowledge to interact with others. They express their ideas to get response from others. They are not only speak to get across their opinions, but they are also explore their body languages such as mimics, gestures, eye-contact etc. According to learning pyramid, learning by practicing allows the learners to get 75% of the teaching-learning process, and teaching others have greater impact of 90% of it. 75% is a great quantity of getting information from what the learners learn. Therefore role-play is a good teaching method to be applied. Below is the learning pyramid as quoted by Kumar ( 2011).