BENEFITS AND SHORTCOMINGS OF ROLE-PLAY AS A SPEAKING ACTIVITY IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE CLASSROOMS

Abstract

This paper aims at finding out if role-play is helpful in encouraging Malaysian secondary school students to speak in English. It includes students’ reaction to the use of role-play and teachers’ perception on the use of role-play as a speaking activity in Malaysian classrooms. The rationale for carrying out this study is to provide useful information and understanding to readers on the use of role-play activities in English language classrooms. An action research study was carried out on seventy-nine form four students from two classes. The data was gathered through questionnaires given to students and teachers. The results suggest that students enjoy carrying out role-play activities and it does encourage them to speak in English to a certain extent. The results also show that not all teachers carry out role-play as a speaking activity because of reasons such as time constraints, low availability of role-play materials and difficulty in class control. The results do not reflect the perceptions of all students and teachers in Malaysia but is only relevant to the particular school where the research was carried out.