The effects of role play activities on speaking skill for 4th grade students an action research project at yen vien town primary school

NGUYỄN THỊ PHƯƠNG THẢO THE EFFECTS OF ROLE-PLAY ACTIVITIES ON SPEAKING SKILL FOR 4 TH GRADE STUDENTS: AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT AT YEN VIEN TOWN PRIMARY SCHOOL Hiê ̣u quả của hoa

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

o0o

NGUYỄN THỊ PHƯƠNG THẢO

THE EFFECTS OF ROLE-PLAY ACTIVITIES ON SPEAKING SKILL FOR

4 TH GRADE STUDENTS: AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT AT YEN

VIEN TOWN PRIMARY SCHOOL

(Hiê ̣u quả của hoa ̣t đô ̣ng đóng vai trong kĩ năng Nói đối với ho ̣c sinh lớp 4:

Mô ̣t nghiên cứu hành đô ̣ng ta ̣i Trường Tiểu ho ̣c Thi ̣ trấn Yên Viên)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

HANOI - 2017

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

o0o

NGUYỄN THỊ PHƯƠNG THẢO

THE EFFECTS OF ROLE-PLAY ACTIVITIES ON SPEAKING SKILL FOR

4 TH GRADE STUDENTS: AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT AT YEN

VIEN TOWN PRIMARY SCHOOL

((Hiê ̣u quả của hoạt động đóng vai trong kĩ năng Nói đối với học sinh lớp 4:

Mô ̣t nghiên cứu hành đô ̣ng ta ̣i Trường Tiểu ho ̣c Thi ̣ trấn Yên Viên)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

Supervisor: Dr Đỗ Thị Thanh Hà

DECLARATION

I myself declare that this minor thesis entitled “The effects of role-play activities on

Primary School” is my own work and has not been submitted in substance for any

other degree or award

Hanoi, 2017

Nguyễn Thi ̣ Phương Thảo

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Firstly, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my supervisor, Dr

Do ThiThanh Ha, for her enthusiastic guidance, support and feedback throughout the steps of doing the research I am grateful for her useful and sufficient source of materials which helps me a lot for the interesting and relevant data Moreover, the supervisor‟s patience of reading and correcting the mistakes and errors makes great improvement of the thesis from the content to the grammatical issues

Secondly, I would like to express my sincere thanks to the Principal of Yen Vien Town Primary school Without her permission, I cannot carry out this research In particular, I feel greatly indebted to the teacher and the students in class 4A2 for their enthusiastic co-operation during more than two months of working

More importantly, I would like to send my regards to the staff of the Department of Post Graduate Studies at College of Foreign Languages, Vietnam National University, Hanoi for their useful materials which help to make this thesis valuable

Last but not least, my special word of thanks to my husband and my family for their inspiration and moral support they provided throughout my research work

The results of the study showed that there was a small change of students‟ overall score before and after implementing the action It can be seen that most of the students had improvements in fluency and comprehension It means that to some extent using role-play activities in classroom is effective The study also found out that students would rather speak in groups than in pair or through role-play It is suggested that the lesson plan should be more interesting to the students, so they will prefer using role-play

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Harris‟ oral English rating scale frame 19

Table 2: Students‟ result of questionnaire 1 24

Table 3: Students‟ pre-test result 27

Table 4: Students‟ post-test result 28

Table 5: Students‟ result of questionnaire 2 31

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Kurt Lewin‟s action research design 16

Figure 2: Students‟ overall score improvement 27

Figure 3: Students‟ pre-test result 29

Figure 4: Students‟ post-test result 29

TABLE OF CONTENT

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF TABLES iv

LIST OF FIGURES v

TABLE OF CONTENT vi

CHAPTER 1 – INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale 1

1.2 Aim of the study 2

1.3 Scope of the study 2

1.4 Significance of the study 3

1.5 Statement of the research questions 3

1.6 Organization of the study 3

CHAPTER 2 - LITERATURE REVIEW 5

2.1 Theoretical background of speaking skill 5

2.1.1 The understanding of speaking 5

2.1.2 Teaching speaking 5

2.1.3 Classroom speaking activities 6

2.2 Theoretical background of role-play 7

2.2.1 The understanding of role-play 7

2.2.2 Types of role – play 8

2.2.3 The function of role – play 8

2.2.4 The significance of role – play 9

2.3 Teaching speaking by using role – play 11

2.4 Previous research findings 13

CHAPTER 3 - METHODOLOGY 15

3.1 Time and place of the research 15

3.2 The participants 15

3.3 Research design 15

3.4 Research procedure 16

3.5 Technique of collecting data 18

3.5.1 Observation 18

3.5.2 Interview 18

3.5.3 Questionnaire 19

3.5.4 Test 19

3.6 Technique of data analysis 22

3.7 Criteria of the action success 22

CHAPTER 4 – DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 23

4.1 Findings for research question 1: 23

4.2 Findings for research question 2: 26

4.3 Findings for research question 3: 30

CHAPTER 5 – CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION 33

5.1 Conclusion 33

5.2 Limitations of the study 35

5.3 Pedagogical implications 35

5.4 Suggestion for further studies 36

REFERENCES 37 APPENDICES I

CHAPTER 1–INTRODUCTION 1.1Rationale

English has been considered as an international language for many years Almost all the people from many different countries around the world use it to communicate Today teaching English for young learners is an interesting topic for many researchers Moreover, in this globalization era, millions of people want to improve their English speaking or to ensure that their children achieve good speaking skill Since language is a means of communication, it is not enough for students to learn words, phrases, grammatical features if they want to produce language in their daily communication or interact with others in English The most important thing in teaching speaking is how to activate all the language elements such as pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary which students have possessed to communicate The goal for students learning English speaking is that they are able

to use English to communicate effectively and appropriately Students have to be able to express their thoughts, ideas and feelings orally in English without thinking for a long time before saying what they want to say

Based on the observation at some 4th grade English classes at Yen Vien Town Primary School in Gia Lam District, Hanoi City, I found that students are poor in English speaking skill They use the course syllabus which belongs to Ministry of Education and Training They study English twice a week and each period lasts forty minutes There are many reasons that students have difficulties in learning English, particularly speaking skill First of all, the students do not spend much time communicating and talking in English The number of students who can speak English fluently is limited In general, students are less confident while speaking in front of the class because they are worried about making mistakes Some of the students do not feel confident so that they never volunteer to speak It can be realized that the students seem to be passive during speaking lessons They just repeat the dialogues or conversations mechanically without any creation Days

by days their speaking ability is not much improved, especially some students do not want to speak or express their ideas The teachers need to find out a solution to help their students become more interested and active when they practice speaking Role-play technique may bea suitable tool for both the teachers and the students to improve the students‟ speaking skill in English classrooms Role-play activities may give students an opportunity to practice communicating in different social contexts and different social roles

Therefore, I would like to propose the study entitled“The effects of role-play

Yen Vien Town Primary School.”

1.2 Aim of the study

The aim of this study is to investigate if role play activities have impact on students‟ speaking skill In addition, this study is to prove that students can get better language communication by using role-play activities The results of this research will be the answer for the advantages of role-play in a small speaking class The change in students‟ speaking ability is what this study really wants to focus on Finally, this study has an intention of examining students‟ attitudes toward the use

of role-play activities It means whether role-play has influence on the learning attitudes of the students In the same context with the same teaching activity how students can get the learning target This confusion will be discussed in this study with the hope to enhance the speaking ability of young learners

1.3 Scope of the study

The study was conducted in class 4A2 at Yen Vien Town Primary School in Gia Lam District, Hanoi City The number of students in this class is 46 (26 males and 20 females) The learning target is that students are able to communicate effectively using their own language elements including pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary The study was done in a classroom with the hope to improve

students‟ speaking ability

1.4 Significance of the study

This study plays a significant role in changing the way students practice speaking tasks from repetition into role-playing Role-play activity has effects on improving students‟ speaking ability It encourages students to talk in the speaking lessons with different roles in different situations This research also contributes to English teaching adaptation in Yen Vien Town Primary School What concluded from the research will be practically applied to the teaching methods for small students Moreover, the theories in this research help to contribute to the knowledge

of CLT in English classes The teachers will have a thoughtful understanding of L2 acquisition, and they will find a suitable way to teach speaking for their children Finally, some suggestions can be given for further studies about role-play activities and other related issues

1.5 Statement of the research questions

The research objective is to discover if there is any effect of using role – play activities in speaking lessons In addition, the study focuses on the process of applying this technique and the benefits that students can get when they practice speaking using role-play The students‟ progress reflects both the effects of role-play activities and the teacher‟s feedback It also reflects the students‟ attitudes toward role – play activities Based on those purposes the research questions are given as following

1 What is the situation of teaching and learning speaking at the primary school?

2 To what extent is students’ speaking skill improved through role- play?

3 What are students’ attitudes towards using role-play?

1.6 Organization of the study

This minor thesis consists of five chapters

Chapter 1: Introduction

The reasons for choosing the research content, the aim of the study and the statements of the research questions are mentioned in this chapter

Chapter 2: Literature Review

This chapter provides the theoretical background of speaking and role play as well

as some previous studies about using role play activities to teach speaking

Chapter 3: Methodology

In this chapter, an introduction to the action research and the technique of data collection are clearly stated

Chapter 4: Data Analysis and Findings

The fourth chapter deals with the results of the study

Chapter 5: Conclusion and Suggestion

The last chapter includes the summary of the study, pedagogical implications and some suggestions for further studies

CHAPTER 2 - LITERATURE REVIEW

In order to do the research, a list of basic definitions and conceptsare presented such as definition of Speaking, Teaching speaking, and Role-playing These definitions are concluded from the research findings which play an integral role as the theoretical perspectives for further studies

2.1Theoretical background of speaking skill

2.1.1 The understanding of speaking

Speaking is an action that involves producing, receiving and processing information in spoken language to conveying the information or expressing one‟s thoughts and feeling (Brown, 1994; Burns & Joyce, 1997) Nunan (1999) asserts that speaking requires that learners not only know how to produce specific points of language such as grammar, pronunciation, or vocabulary ("linguistic competence"), but also that they understand when, why, and in what ways to produce language ("sociolinguistic competence")

2.1.2 Teaching speaking

According to Nunan (2003), teaching speaking is to teach EFL learners to produce the English speech sounds and sound patterns, to use word and sentence stress, intonation patterns and the rhythm of the second language, to organize their thoughts in a meaningful and logical sequence, to use language as a means of expressing values and judgments and to use the language quickly and confidently with few unnatural pauses, which is called as fluency

Teaching speaking aims at enhancing students‟ communication skills Only

by improving their speaking ability can the students express themselves and practice speaking fluently in real situations Teaching speaking is important, which asks the teacher to find appropriate teaching methods in order to motivate the students The teacher should understand well how to create a good learning atmosphere which

includes relationship between teacher and students, enjoyable classroom atmosphere, and the freedom for students to convey their ideas and perform in front

of the class

2.1.3 Classroom speaking activities

To help students develop their communicative efficiency in speaking, there are some activities used in the classroom According to Celce-Murcia (2001), there are some major types of speaking activities that can be implemented

The first type is discussion which is probably the most commonly used in

speaking activities It can be considered as an effective activity because it can activate and involve students in classroom teaching Typically, students are introduced to a topic via a video tape, a story, a listening or reading passage, then they need to work in groups or in pairs to discuss related topic in order to come up a solution or a response This type of activity may need time to prepare because students have to assemble their thought before any discussion Therefore, teacher must take care in planning and setting up a discussion activity

The second type of speaking activities is prepared speech which students can

choose a free topic and make their own speech to present in front of the class The topics for speeches depend on the level of the students and the focus of the class The teacher can provide the structures for the speech to help the students The key strategy in this activity is the assigned task for both the speaker and listeners It is a good idea to assign some responsibilities during the speeches to avoid boring atmosphere It is an excellent time to require peer evaluation of classmate‟s speech

Another type of classroom speaking activities is role play in which students are assigned roles and a scene, information or clue to create a dialogue It is one way of getting students to speak in different social context and to assume varied social roles Role plays can be performed from prepared scripts or a set of prompt and expression This type of activity requires students‟ creativity and social knowledge

The next one is conversation that can be considered as one of the recent trends in oral skill pedagogy It focuses on having students analyze and evaluate the language that they or others produce It means that students must be aware of many features of language in order to become competent speakers A good conversation is the one in which both the speaker and the listener must understand and catch the other‟s ideas

The last type is information-gap activity in which each student has different information and they need to obtain information from each other Information-gap activities are excellent activities as they force the students to ask each other questions; these activities help make the language classroom experience more meaningful These activities help move the students from working in a more structured environment into a more communicative environment

2.2 Theoretical background of role-play

2.2.1 The understanding of role-play

According to Richards and Rodgers (2001), role-play refers to a game that the teachers and the students play in carrying out learning task as well as the social and interpersonal relationship between the respondents In addition, role-play is an activity for bringing real language situations which can help the learners to acquire the language (Najizade, 1996) Moreover, 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 " (Harmer, 1984) To my position, the definition of Harmer is quite important because it is appropriate to the working thesis The way Harmer describes role-play is understandable and practical, especially for the intermediate students In order to investigate the effects of role-play on speaking skill, a range of activities which use role-play technique are

applied in the classroom The procedure is actually as same as the description of Harmer

2.2.2 Types of role – play

There are two broad types of role play activities often used in English

language classrooms: scripted and non-scripted role plays To perform role-plays

of the scripted type, the students will have to work in pairs or small groups They are given prompts related to the target scenarios Then, they will have to use the prompts as the model to form the target dialogue The students rehearse that dialogue before performing it in front of the class In the non-scripted role play, on the other hand, the students are assigned to perform the role play activity in front of the class based on the prompts given without preparing or writing the script in advance

Choosing which types of role play to use depends on the level of the students and the target scenarios The participants in my research are small children of 4thgrade, therefore it is reasonable to use scripted role play Students will find it easy

to practice and they may learn more from what they have prepared to talk in front of the class

2.2.3 The function of role – play

It can be seen that the way of teaching English in Vietnam schools mostly approaches grammar translation methods and examination oriented Both the teachers and students become passive while this method is applied in EFL classroom Adian Doff (2002) pointed out the problems of those English teaching methods, and argued that there is a need to develop more diverse English teaching methods or activities The aim is to develop the ability of speaking English among the students The English learning environment in our country does not encourage the students be active and confident That is why Vietnamese students have common weakness in their speaking ability They have little chance to practice conversation, even in the second language classrooms In order to encourage

students to speak in public, role -play is often used by teachers as one of the teaching methods

Maxwell (1997) states that the purpose of role-play is "to improve students' verbal and nonverbal communication skills and to link and use previously built schemas, in both structured and improvised situations "His opinion shows that role -play could improve students in verbal or nonverbal communication while they are performing their roles in the conversation James G Clawson (1997) concluded that

"A common theme in the benefits of using role play is that the technique can bring abstract discussions alive, make them live, and in so doing, open up student's willingness to learn" When the students participate in the dialogues created by teachers or taken from the text books, they will be required to play the roles of the characters in the dialogues, therefore, they will find it easier to use the conversation

in daily lives Acting in real situations is better than reading or repeating as exact as

in the books Daily conversation will create lots of unpredictable situations that make students confused how to deal with Using role play in teaching speaking involves the students to the practical communication It means that they will be trained in many situations so they will become familiar and confident Role-play helps learners to deal with daily conversations, motivate them to speak English fluently and accurately Accordingly, role-play helps create a safe environment for students to practice their language skills

2.2.4 The significance of role – play

It can be said that role play is one of the activities to promote speaking By implementing role play technique the students learn how to express ideas, opinions,

or feeling to others by using words or sounds Ladousse (1995) explains that role play uses different communicative techniques and develops fluency in the language Moreover, Bailey and Nunan (2005) make it more detail that role plays can be excellent procedures for helping students learn and practice important speech acts,

vocabulary, and grammatical structures It is important for the teacher to set up role play that are realistic, plausible, and related to the real situations in daily life Role play can improve learners‟ speaking skill in any situation, helps learner to interact and motivate them to speak by their own words Ladousse also provides five reasons why role – play is beneficial to speaking skill First, a very wide variety of experience can be brought into the classroom and we can train our students in speaking skill in any situation through role play Second, role play puts students in situation in which they are required to use and develop their language which are so necessary in daily communication Third, some people are learning English to prepare for specific roles in their lives It is helpful for these students to have tried out and experimented with the language they will require in the friendly and safe environment of a classroom Fourth, role play helps shy students by providing them with a mask Fifth, perhaps the most important reason for using role play is that fun Snarski (2007) explained that there are five advantages in applying role play technique in the language classroom They are: whole class participation, integrated observation task, varying proficiency levels, pragmatic practice and critical thinking skill In addition, role playing can be used as an effective assessment tool When the students are presenting their role play, it will be easy to know if they have grasped the grammar point, content, vocabulary, or other new information presented to them They will display what they have learned and present that knowledge to the class

In short, role play is considered as an effective technique in teaching and learning a foreign language It is used not only to promote the students‟ speaking skill but also to assess the students‟ language use Applying role – play in English speaking class helps the learners gain better knowledge and have good communication skill

2.3 Teaching speaking by using role – play

The teacher needs to decide the context for the exercise and the roles that the students will play If the students are taking human roles, the context is generally a specific problem such as working in an office or dealing with persons Lessons need

to be carefully explained and supervised so as to involve the students and to enable them to learn as much as possible from the experience However, a well – done scenario never runs the same way twice The teachers should teach their students things they might not ordinarily have learned In addition, the explanations and instructions tend to be fun for all involved Role play is not a simple work because

of its careful preparation and instructions If the teachers do not use this technique

appropriately, the learners may feel boring and unmotivated

Huang (2008) usually uses six major steps in the procedure

 Decide on the Teaching Materials

The teacher must decide which teaching materials will be used for role play activities The teaching materials can be taken from text books or other materials such as picture books, story books or comic books The material is selectedby the teacher each week The teacher can also create his or her own authentic teaching materials for role play activities The teaching materials should be decided based on

students‟ level and interest and teaching objectives

 Select Situations and Create Dialogues

Situation to be role played should be selected For every role play situation, dialogs should be provided (by the teaching materials or by the teacher) or created by the student themselves

 Teach the Dialogs for Role Plays

The teacher needs to teach the necessary vocabulary, sentences, and dialogues for the role play situations The teacher need to make sure the students know how to use vocabulary, sentences and dialogs before doing role play activities, otherwise, the teacher should allow students to ask how to say the words they want to say

 Have Students Practice the Role Plays

Students can practice in pairs or in small group After they have played their own roles a few times, have them exchange roles That way, students can play different roles and practice all of the lines in the role play When students are confident enough to demonstrate or perform in front of the class, the teacher can ask them to

do so for their classmates

 Have Students Modify the Situations and Dialogs

Once students have finished and become familiar with an original role play situation, they can modify the situations and/or dialogs to create a variation of the original role play

 Comprehension

Finally, the teacher shall evaluate the effectiveness of the role play activities and check if students successfully comprehend the meanings of the vocabulary, sentences, and dialogs There are several ways to do students evaluations Students can be given oral and listening test relating to the role plays The example of oral tests can be in the following way: students are asked to answer some simple questions relating to the role plays, students are asked to reenact the role plays, students are asked to translate the role plays into their native language

2.4 Previous research findings

There are various researches that discover the effects of role play technique

in teaching speaking for students, especially the young learners These studies pointed out that role play is beneficial to the teaching of speaking and it can help the

students to communicate better

Woodhouse (2007) suggested how role play could be used as a beneficial technique for „personal development‟ through case studies in „healthcare strategy‟ with a group of nursing students and how video recordings helped to observe the gradual progress of the individuals in „a constructive way‟(p 75) His case study was aimed to see the personal development in behavior of individuals by video-taping the performance but in this study I use the speaking observation form to see the gradual progress in the speaking skill of the learners

Al-Senaidi (2009) investigated on „The effectiveness of using role play to improve the oral fluency of Grade 4 learners‟ by using a series of role play giving situations a day before and video recorded to re-examine their performance One different thing in my research is that we give feedback immediately after the students‟ performance The students follow and work on it to ensure their progress

Liu and Ding (2009) used role-play technique to see how the students performed in groups when they were given a familiar situation to role play in They also observed the learner‟s language potency and how the errors can be corrected as well as how to give feedback to the learners for further improvement In my study, I followed the same procedure for feedback as in the case study of Liu and Ding I let the students know what they need to do to have better performance by using oral feedback The students will get benefits and improve accordingly

Qing (2011) experimented role-play in the intermediate level and noticed that role play could increase students‟ intercultural awareness and develop overall communicative competence He stated that content based role plays give the students chances to discover different cultures in detail My research also focuses on

cultural communication awareness, but it is not the main target of the study Applying role play aims at developing students‟ communication skills through their roles in different situations

To sum up, these studies proved that role-play technique is effective in improving students‟ learning skills Most of the researches showed that the learners‟ personal growth and development is possible using role play because this activity is

“interactive, creative, interesting and motivating” Based on the mentioned studies,

my own research is carried out to find out whether role-playing is beneficial to primary student in enhancing their speaking skill

CHAPTER 3 - METHODOLOGY

3.1 Time and place of the research

The research was held at class 4A2 of Yen Vien Town Primary School in Gia Lam District, Hanoi This classroom action research was done in 8 weeks from the beginning of March up to the middle of May of school year 2016-2017

3.2 The participants

The participants of this study are 46 students of grade 4A2 and the English teacher of the class The students are all non- English major and the teacher has been teaching English for 10 years She has worked with 4th grade students for

many years from the time of using old textbook until now

3.3 Research design

This study was done by using classroom action research in which ideas are tried out in practice as a means of improving teaching and learning The aim of classroom action research is to help a teacher find out what is happening in his or her classroom, and to use that information to make wise decisions for the future In his 1946 paper "Action Research and Minority Problems", Kurt Lewin described action research as "a comparative research on the conditions and effects of various forms of social action and research leading to social action" that uses "a spiral of steps, each of which is composed of a circle of planning, action and fact-finding about the result of the action" The research is designed, carried out, and implemented by teachers themselves in order to improve teaching in their own classrooms In this way, educators could better deal with everyday practical problems rather than the theoretical problems identified by pure research The action research framework is most appropriate for the educators who recognize the existence of shortcomings in their educational activities But they must identify the problem, formulate a plan, carry out an intervention, evaluate the outcomes and develop further strategies to deal with the problem

The following map shows the model of action research designed by Kurt Lewin

Figure 1: Kurt Lewin’s action research design

According to this map, classroom action research consists of four basic steps The first step is planning in which classroom instructional strategy is prepared to solve the problems in the study The second step is acting in which the researcher takes part in the process of trying out the strategy to test how much the strategy can solve the classroom problems The next step, observing, is the process of collecting data indicating the success of the strategy The focus of the observation is on the data related to the criteria of success that have been decided The final step, reflecting, is the process of analyzing data to determine how far the data collected have shown the success of the strategy in solving the problem Reflection also shows what other problems may occur during the implementation process

3.4 Research procedure

The research is carried out steps by steps with the help of both the teacher and the students in the class Firstly, a careful plan is given to make sure that everything will be done effectively In this preliminary step, choosing suitable material plays an important role to motivate students in speaking lessons After that,

a set of role play situations including scripted and non-scripted ones are suggested

to practice During the time of applying role-play, the evaluation form for each

Acting

Planning

Reflecting

Observing

practicing situation are written to show if there are any changes in students‟

speaking skill

a Planning

In this step, a lesson plan was written in detail for each topic during the time

of implementing role-play (See Appendix 1) The situations are built based on the content of the new textbook English 4 which belongs to Education and Training Ministry The topics are familiar with the students because they are related to real situations in their daily life The purpose of choosing this material is to help students feel easier in practicing speaking Moreover, an evaluation form was also prepared to measure students‟ improvement The interview questions and the questionnaire were made to get the data from the participants

b Acting

In this phase, the prepared lesson plan was taught in the classroom in about 8 weeks During each period, the students were explained how to play a role and they were given an example of role-play For each topic, the teacher gave related vocabulary items and structures to help students Then the teacher delivered a role card and instructed students to practice The students were told who they are in the situations and what they should do Then the teacher asked students to practice in pairs

c Observing

The teacher observed the students‟ responses, participations and achievements during the teaching and learning process The observation notes were used to record the real situation when the action is occurred This type of assessment was effective and accurate because students‟ strengths and weaknesses were reflected immediately

d Reflecting

In this step, the teacher indentified the problems which students encountered

by seeing the result of observation The teacher assessed and gave feedbacks to the students so that they could realize what they needed to change to get better results

Moreover, those are used to help students improve and help teacher change a suitable lesson plan

3.5 Technique of collecting data

As mentioned in the Literature Review, this study is different from other studies which used video-taping to record students‟ performance and behavior of using role-play Observation was chosen because it did not interrupt students while they were speaking Students felt as comfortable as in other usual days without thinking that they were under pressure of a research Moreover, students did not worry about what they had to perform as much as in the case of video recording The observation was used to get the information about the real condition in teaching learning activities The observation notes were used in the class while teaching learning process occurred The students‟ speaking skill such as pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, fluency and comprehension are taken note carefully

3.5.2 Interview

Before implementing the action, an interview for the teacher of class 4A2 was made to investigate the students‟ difficulties in speaking skill and the kinds of strategies usually adopted by the teacher in teaching speaking (See Appendix 2) The aim of the interview is to find out the situation of teaching and learning English speaking skill in the classroom From the result of the interview, it was necessary to apply a new technique to help students improve their speaking skill

3.5.3 Questionnaire

The first questionnaire was used at the beginning of the research to survey the situation of learning speaking skills in the class (See Appendix 3) There are 8 questions for the students to discover what they usually do in their speaking lessons and what they think of learning speaking

The second questionnaire was used at the end of the action research to check students‟ attitudes toward using role-play (See Appendix 4).In order to check students‟ perception toward the use of role-play activities; a quick survey questionnaire which includes some short questions was carried out Because the participants are small children of 4th grade, the questions are easy to understand and answer That is why I chose multiple - choice questions so that the students can

finish them more easily

3.5.4 Test

Oral test was used for the students (see appendix 5) The test used in this study is pre-test and post-test The pre-test was done before implementing role play technique It is to measure students‟ speaking ability at first Meanwhile, the post-test was implemented after using role play technique

The students did the oral test by role play technique, they were asked to choose one of the cards provided by the teacher Then, the students performed their role play based on the situation they got The students were required to do the test in pairs

The students‟ tests were assessed by using the rating scores of oral test by David P Harris (1969) as follows:

Table 1: Harris’ oral English rating scale frame

No Criteria Rating

1 Pronunciation 5 Have few traces of foreign language

4 Always intelligible, thought one is conscious of

a definite accent

3 Pronunciation problem necessities concentrated listening and occasionally lead to misunderstanding

2 Very hard to understand because of pronunciation problem, most frequently be asked to repeat

1 Pronunciation problem to serve as to make speech virtually unintelligible

2 Grammar 5 Make few (if any) noticeable errors of grammar

and word order

4 Occasionally makes grammatical and or word orders errors that do not, however obscure meaning

1 Errors in grammar and word order, so, severe

as to make speech virtually unintelligible

3 Vocabulary 5 Use of vocabulary and idioms is virtually that

2 Misuse of words and very limited vocabulary makes comprehension quite difficult

1 Vocabulary limitation so extreme as to make conversation virtually impossible

4 Fluency 5 Speech as fluent and efforts less as that of

although occasionally repetition may be necessary

3 Understand most of what is said at slower than normal speed without repetition

2 Has great difficulty following what is said Can comprehend only “social conversation” spoken slowly and with frequent repetition

1 Cannot be said to understand even simple conversation

Note: maximum score = 25

Overall score = the result of score × 100

Maximum score

3.6 Technique of data analysis

The collected data found in this research are analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively It means that all the data gathered from the observations during teaching learning process, questionnaire and interview before and after classroom action research are analyzed qualitatively, while the data collected from pre-test and post-test are analyzed quantitatively (percentage).The students‟ speaking score from pre-test and post-test are analyzed by using repeated t-test to know whether students improve their score or not

3.7 Criteria of the action success

Classroom Action Research is able to be called successful if it can exceed the criteria that have been determined In this study the research will succeed when

there is 70% of the students could pass the assessment score >= 50

In addition, the success of the action is not only measured with the score, but also the role play technique can motivate students and they become more actively in learning process