Enhancing english speaking fluency for the first year students of faculty of english language in national economic university through role play activity

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES  BÙI THỊ MỸ DUYÊN ENHANCING ENGLISH SPEAKING FLUENCY FOR THE FI

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES



BÙI THỊ MỸ DUYÊN

ENHANCING ENGLISH SPEAKING FLUENCY FOR THE FIRST YEAR STUDENTS OF FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN NATIONAL ECONOMIC UNIVERSITY THROUGH ROLE PLAY ACTIVITY

(Nâng cao kỹ năng nói Tiếng Anh trôi chảy cho sinh viên năm nhất khoa Ngôn Ngữ Anh tại Trường Đại học Kinh tế Quốc dân thông qua hoạt động

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES



BÙI THỊ MỸ DUYÊN

ENHANCING ENGLISH SPEAKING FLUENCY FOR THE FIRST YEAR STUDENTS OF FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN NATIONAL ECONOMIC UNIVERSITY THROUGH ROLE PLAY ACTIVITY

(Nâng cao kỹ năng nói Tiếng Anh trôi chảy cho sinh viên năm nhất khoa Ngôn Ngữ Anh tại Trường Đại học Kinh tế Quốc dân thông qua hoạt động

đóng vai)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology

Code: 8140231.01 Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr Lê Văn Canh

Hanoi – 2020

DECLARATION

I certify that the minor thesis entitled “Enhancing English speaking

fluency for the first year students of Faculty of English Language in

National Economic University through role-play activity” is the result of

my own work and has not been submitted in any form for another degree

or diploma at any universities or other institutions

Bui Thi My Duyen

Hanoi, 2020

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to acknowledge my truthful gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc Prof

Dr Le Van Canh, for his thorough reading, critical comments, invaluable guidance and precious corrections of the thesis It was his acute guidance that has enabled me to find the right way to complete this study

I also would like to express my sincere thanks and appreciate the assistance and cooperation of the first-year students in classes from Faculty of English Language in National Economic University, who have been willing to complete

my survey questionnaire and have given me useful opinions in the interviews to support for my research

My special words of thanks are sent to my family, especially my husband and my parents who have given me constant encouragement and support throughout my research work

Hanoi, 2020

ABSTRACT

This is a micro-scale classroom action research conducted at the Faculty of English Language of one university in the capital of Vietnam Based on the preliminary study, the researcher found that some first-year students have low ability of speaking fluency, which motivated the researcher to decide to implement role play technique in teaching speaking skill The study aims at shedding the light on improving oral fluency of learners by acting in role plays as

a good model for bringing real-life situations into the classroom Both qualitative and quantitative methods that consist of some instruments such as speaking test, observation checklists, field notes along with questionnaires & interviews from the learners were used The procedure of the research consists of four main stages: planning, implementation, observation and reflection The findings of this research showed that the teacher saw a significant improvement in their students‟ speaking fluency from one cycle to the following cycle and from both self-report

of students The role-playing procedures implemented by the researcher in this study consist of 7 major steps Those are deciding on the teaching materials, organizing the group ofthe students, providing the situation and dialogue to be role played, teaching the dialogue for role plays, having the students practice the role plays, having the students modify the situation and dialogue, and having the students perform the dialogue in front of the class The paper presents how role-playing technique improve the speaking ability of the students

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vii

LIST OF TABLES viii

LIST OF FIGURES ix

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale 1

1.2 Aim and objective of the study 2

1.3 Research questions 2

1.4 Scope of the study 3

1.5 Methods of the study 3

1.6 Significance of the study 3

1.7 Structure of the thesis 4

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

2.1 Previous studies 5

2.2 Speaking skills 5

2.2.1 Definition of speaking skills 5

2.2.2 Criteria of speaking skills 6

2.3 Speaking fluency 8

2.3.1 Definition of speaking fluency 8

2.3.2 Criteria for speaking fluency 9

2.4 Role-play as an instructional activity 10

2.4.1 Definition of role-playing 10

2.4.2 Advantages of role-play 10

2.4.3 Disadvantages of role-play 12

2.4.4 Types of role-play 13

2.4.5 How to use role-play in the language classroom 15

2.4.6 The organization of a role-play activity 16

2.4.7 Stages of the role playing activities 16

2.4.8 The teacher‟s role in role-play 17

2.5 Summary 19

CHAPTER III: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 20

3.1 Research approach 20

3.2 Setting of the study 21

3.3 The participants 21

3.4 Data collection instruments 22

3.4.1 The questionnaire 22

3.4.2 Interviews 23

3.5 Methods of the study 23

3.6 The research Procedures 24

3.6.1 Identification of the problem 24

3.6.2 Planning the action 24

3.6.3 Implementing the action 25

3.6.4 Observation 27

3.6.5 Reflection 27

3.7 Summary 28

CHAPTER IV: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 29

4.1 Findings from teacher’s assessment 29

4.1.1 Students‟ Speaking Performance in Cycle 1 29

4.1.2 Students‟ Speaking Performance in Cycle 2 30

4.2 Analysis of students’ questionnaires and interviews 32

4.2.1 Analysis of students‟ questionnaires 32

4.2.2 Interview data 42

4.3 Discussion 47

4.3.1 Students‟ attitudes toward speaking fluency 47

4.3.2 Students‟ attitudes toward role play activity 48

CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION 49

5.1 Summary of main findings 49

5.2 Limitations of the study 50

5.3 Suggestions for the further research 50

REFERENCES 52 APPENDICES I APPENDIX A I SAMPLE LESSON PLAN I APPENDIX B1 IV QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENTS IV APPENDIX B2 VII APPENDIX 2: PHIẾU ĐIỀU TRA CHO SINH VIÊN VII APPENDIX C X QUESTIONS FOR INTERVIEWING STUDENTS X

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

FEL: Faculty of English Language

NEU: National Economic University

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1 The Analytical Scoring Rubric for Speaking Performance 6

Table 2.2 The Analytical Scoring Rubric for Speaking Fluency 10

Table 3.1 Observation checklist 27

Table 4.1: Students' profiles (Total number of students: 27) 32

Table 4.2: Students‟ level at English speaking fluency 33

Table 4.3: Students‟difficulties in speaking English 34

Table 4.4: Activities used most by teachers in speaking lesson 36

Table 4.5: Activities students participate in most actively in speaking lesson 37

Table 4.6: Students‟ attitudes towards role play activity 38

Table 4.7: Teachers‟ frequency of using role play activity 39

Table 4.8: Reasons why teachers use role play activity 41

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 4.1: The level of speaking fluency after cycle 1 29

Figure 4.2: The level of speaking fluency after cycle 2 31

Figure 4.3: Comparison the results between cycle 1 and cycle 2 32

Figure 4.4: The level of students at English speaking fluency 33

Figure 4.5: The difficulties of students in speaking English 34

Figure 4.6: Activities used most by teachers in speaking lesson 36

Figure 4.7: Activities students participate in most actively in speaking lesson 37

Figure 4.8: Students‟ attitudes towards role play activit 38

Figure 4.9: Teachers‟ frequency of using role play activity 40

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale

The process of modernization and industrialization makes English become

a global language with a large number of populations in the world using it for different purposes In globalization situation, people use English as a means of communication with the partner in their work and study In order to get this communication target, people especially students should focus on studying listening and speaking skills However, it is the fact that high school students often focus on grammar and vocabulary in order to pass the university entrance exam more often than on developing their skills in using English for communication Therefore, although teaching program designed consists of four skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) to help students to develop their language competence in an effective way, a great number of high school students

do not pay attention to practice their speaking skill, especially speaking fluency This makes most of the first-year students at university; especially students from the countryside have difficulties in improving their speaking skills in general and their speaking fluency in particular when studying at university

There are various activities as well as methods in ESL classroom to contribute improving speaking English skill for freshmen One of the popular activities applied by English teachers in their lessons to help students to enhance their speaking fluency is role-play activity Barkley (2014, p 150) says that

“Role Play is a created situation in which students deliberately act out or assume characters or identities they would not normally assume in order to accomplish learning goal” As language is acquired through social interaction, role-playing

seems to be promising to the development of the students‟ oral skills

Role play is regarded as a helpful activity for students in learning communication language because it provides students with a chance to practice speaking English in different social situations and in different social roles It also allows students to be more creative and to express their feelings or emotions naturally when they have to put themselves in another person‟s place for a while Students are not only as passive learners but they become active learners since

there are various activities that put them in an active process Therefore, using role-play in communicative language teaching (CLT) approach is very appropriate because this approach is learner-centered and emphasizes communication in real life situation (Fauziati, 2009, p.143)

In this research, the level of improvements of speaking fluency achieved

by students when using role-play in a certain period of time would be found out and discussed Therefore, this action research project was conducted with the aim of examining the influence of role-playing on students‟ fluency in speaking

English

1.2 Aim and objective of the study

This action research, as stated in the preceeding section, was conducted with the aim of finding out the usefulness of role-play activities to the enhancement of the first-year undergraduates‟ fluency in speaking English in the context of the classroom at the Faculty of English Language of National Economic University

The objectives of the study include gaining understanding of whether play helps to reduce the students‟ difficulties in speaking English fluently in the English speaking lessons and assessing the students‟ improvements in their speaking fluency through role play activity from the first cycle to the following cycles of the teaching procedure

3 What do the students report about their likes and dislikes regarding role-play activities in practicing English oral fluency?

1.4 Scope of the study

This action research is carried out with participation of 27 first-year students at Faculty of English Language of National Economic University in second semester of 2018/2019 academic year, including 23 female students and 4 male students The researcher does not analyze improvements of students in all aspects of speaking skill but only focusing on measuring oral fluency in speaking English lessons using role-play technique

1.5 Methods of the study

This action research employed both quantitative and qualitative methods

to find the answer for the research questions Data was collected through a survey questionnaire which was delivered to 27 first-year students at Faculty of English Language of National Economic University Besides, informal interviews with eights students were carried out to collect more information and to reinforce the findings found from the survey questionnaire The study was designed as a collaborative classroom action research The reseacher implemented the action in the form of cycles following Kember (2000) namely, including planning, action, observation and reflection

1.6 Significance of the study

Conducting this research, the researcher expected to help their students to enhance their speaking skill in general and speaking fluency in particular

Theoreotically, the research is hoped to serve as a useful material for learning and teaching speaking English for university students Students aware of the importance and necessity of English speaking fluency and can choose the best method for their English communication learning Teachers can use this research as a reference to have a deep understanding about the types of role-play and other activities in English speaking lessons, so they have much experience in designing the proper curriculum for students In addition, the findings of the paper can be used as a reference material for further studies on related topics to role-play activity in the classroom

Practically, the research is expected to help the researcher-teacher to find out the effective methods and techniques to improve their students‟ speaking fluency

1.7 Structure of the thesis

The thesis consists of three parts

Chapter I: INTRODUCTION, presents the rationale, aim of the study, significance of the study, scope of the study, method of the study and design of the study

Chapter II: LITERATURE REVIEW, displays the theoretical background

on speaking fluency and role play activities Definition of key terms and constructs together with a critical literature review of related studies are also covered in this chapter

Chapter III: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY, illustrates the elaboration on the setting of the study, the participants, data collection method and instruments

as well as the procedure of data collection and data analysis

Chapter IV: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS, gives a detailed presentation of data and detailed description of data analysis This focuses on presenting, analyzing and discussing the results obtained from the study based on the survey questionnaire and interview questions Besides, the chapter also presents some discussion and interpretations of the findings of the study, and then gives suggestions for the teachers and the students in enhancing speaking fluency in NEU The implications of the study are also given in this chapter Chapter V: CONCLUSION, is a review of the study, and points out implications for the improvement, its limitations and suggestions for future research

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter is a literature review on speaking skills and the benefits of role play activities to the development of students‟ speaking skills To begin with, the researcher attempted to clarify some issues related to speaking skill such as its definitions, components of speaking skill including speaking fluency Then the researcher represented the definitions of role playing, types of role play activities, advantages as well as disadvantages of role playing and Finally, I will give brief information on some stages of role play activities and overview of previous studies related to speaking fluency and role playing

2.1 Previous studies

A large number of researches about applying role play activities in teaching English to enhance speaking skills was conducted in many different countries all over the world, including both experimental research and action research

Some followings examples can become an evidence for this claim For example, Chothibul Umam had carried out a micro-scale classroom action research about improving the students‟ speaking ability through role playing technique One another researcher in Indonesia also mentioned the use of role play to improve students‟ speaking skill While both of the above studies analysed enhancemnent of different factors of students‟ speaking skill, this study concentrated on improving speaking fluency of students (one of the criteria of speaking skill)

This study was new when the author carried out basing on the reseach setting of a certain university in Vietnam, where the researcher has been working with the purposes of improving speaking fluency of the students who the researcher-teacher was teaching directly

2.2 Speaking skills

2.2.1 Definition of speaking skills

Speaking capacity plays a crucial part in learning and understanding any language The term of speaking has several meanings

According to Chaney “speaking is the process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts.”

Widdowson (1978) specifies that speaking has two meanings including how language is used to convey meanings and how effective the language use is regarding the achievement of the purpose of communication

Richards (2009, p 19) states that “in speaking we tend to be getting something done, exploring ideas, working out some aspects of the world, or simply being together.”

From the above definition of speaking, it can be concluded that speaking

is a verbal skill in which the speaker uses language and other semiotic resources (e.g non-verbal language) to express opinions, ideas, feelings, emotions, etc The speaking behaviour is thus interactive

2.2.2 Criteria of speaking skills

In order to communicate with the others in English naturally, students have to pay attention to practice all the aspects of speaking skill, including pronunciation, fluency, lexical resource, grammatical range and accuracy These factors were evaluated basing on analytical scoring rubric for speaking performance, which was attached in Table 2.1

Table 2.1 The Analytical Scoring Rubric for Speaking Performance

No Language

5 Able to speak without any hesitation or break in a sentence

4 Hesitates or pauses at a few places in a few sentences but fluency is not seriously affected

3 Hesitation is shown in almost every sentence Ends sentence half-way and then repeats it

2 Hesitates a lot that message is not very clear A lot of repetition of sentences

1 Shows a lot of hesitations that speech is not clear

2 Pronunciation

5 All words are clearly and correctly pronounced

4 One or two words are incorrectly pronounced but meaning

5 Uses extensive vocabulary

4 Uses varied vocabulary

3 Uses adequate vocabulary; some word usage irregularities

2 Uses limited vocabulary

1 Uses not understandable vocabulary

4 A few grammatical errors Meaning is not affected

3 One or two major errors which affect the meaning

2 Almost every sentence contains grammatical error

1 A lot of grammatical errors are made that meaning of messages is not clear

Basing on the table above, the students‟ score ranged from 1 to 5 The researcher organized the students‟ score into five categories Those were 1) grade

1 to 1.9 was categorized as poor speaking performance, 2) grade 2 to 2.9 was categorized as fair speaking performance, 3) grade 3 to 3.9 was categorized as good speaking performance, 4) grade 4 to 4.9 was categorized as very good

speaking performance, and 5) grade 5 was categorized as excellent speaking performance

One of the most crucial factors which students need to enhance in the process of learning to speak English is speaking fluency Mastering speaking skill in general and developing oral fluency in particular are regarded as the goals

of university students because these advantages help them become more confident in communication and gain better job opportunity after graduation

Accordingly, the researcher focused on exploring the most effective techniques applied in classroom to help freshmen in university to improve their speaking fluency

2.3 Speaking fluency

2.3.1 Definition of speaking fluency

The term “speaking fluency” is linked to the meaning of “communication” (Harmer, 2007, p 142) For example, in a conversation, a learner can make a grammatical error, but the s/he can still speak the sentence with some fluency (Crowther et al.,2015) The learner can speak without searching for words, so that his or her speech is quickly understood In fact, speaking fluency has been defined as the “automaticity and speed of speech production” (Brand & Götz,

2011, p 256) However, automaticity and speed of speech production may not always make a speech comprehensible, comprehensibility being “a measure of listeners‟ perceived ease or difficulty of understanding L2 speech” (Crowther et al., 2015, p 81)

Richards (2009, p.14) mentioned brave definition about fluency, “natural

language use occurring when a speaker engages in meaningful interaction and maintains comprehensible and ongoing communication despite limitations in his

or her communicative competence” The definition of fluency has the Latin

origin meaning as “flow” It can be the same as other language define about fluency as flow or fluidity as stated by Kopponen and Riggenbach (2000, cited in Jamatlou, 2011) And nowadays, the definition of fluency itself closer to simple definition of the term in applied linguistics also seem to share at least one feature resembling “fluidity”

Fillmore (cited in Richards, 1990) identifies four abilities that might be subsumed under the term fluency as follows“the ability to fill time with talk, the ability to talk in coherent, reasoned and semantically dense sentences” showing

“a mastery of these mantic and syntactic resources of the language”; “the ability

to have appropriate things to say in a wide range of contexts” (p 75) and the ability to be creative and imaginative in language use

The more recent study about fluency (Jamatlou, 2011) showed that fluency might be rapid, smooth, accurate, lucid, and efficient translation of

thought or communicative intention into language under the temporal constraints

of on-line processing This earlier concept of fluency was acceptable by most of the teachers and researchers since they have to realize that fluency is different in nature from other components of oral proficiency such as range of vocabulary and complexity of syntax which are associated with linguistic knowledge of accuracy

In simple words, according to Riddel (2001, p 118) "fluency is the ability

to talk freely without too much stopping or hesitating" The good English speaker should be able to use English language fluently with no difficulties Brown (1994) stated that “fluent speakers can participate in any conversation with a high degree of fluency” (407) He explained that their speech should be accepted and well understood by native speakers Students who do not care about making mistakes/errors and who have an idea in their minds of what they want to communicate, and they say it with whatever words and language feel the most natural They make frequent mistakes, sometimes in every sentence; their grammar can be a mixture of English and their native language They either do not know or do not care if they are making errors or mistakes these learners have

high fluency, but low accuracy

In the context of language teaching and learning, fluency is defined as the ability to speak communicatively, fluently and accurately Fluency usually refers

to express oral language freely without interruption In teaching and learning process, if the teacher wants to check students‟ fluency, the teacher allows students to express themselves freely without interruption The aim is to help students speak fluently and with ease The teacher does not correct immediately whereas the idea being that too much correction interferes with the flow of conversation (Pollard, 2008, p 16)

2.3.2 Criteria for speaking fluency

Fluency is one of the most important factors to make the learner to speak more naturally and make an impression in communication Accordingly, the author choose fluency to assess the students‟ improvement in communication skill Like other aspects of speaking skill (mentioned in previous part), the researcher used analytical scoring rubric for speaking performance to evaluate

the level of speaking fluency of students more exactly Fluency was divided into five standards of score and was shown in detail in the following table (Table 2.2)

Table 2.2 The Analytical Scoring Rubric for Speaking Fluency

Levels for

speaking

fluency

Very fluently 5 Able to speak without any hesitation or break in a sentence

Fuently 4 Hesitates or pauses at a few places in a few sentences but

fluency is not seriously affected

Fair 3 Hesitation is shown in almost every sentence Ends sentence

half-way and then repeats it

Not fluently 2 Hesitates a lot that message is not very clear A lot of

repetition of sentences Not very

fluently 1 Shows a lot of hesitations that speech is not clear

2.4 Role-play as an instructional activity

2.4.1 Definition of role-playing

Role-playing has long been recognized as an activity that is critical to language students‟ language learning in general and to the development of students‟ speaking fluency in particular For example, Ladousse (cited in Allan Makey (1987, p 7) states, “role-play is one of a whole gamut of communication techniques which develops fluency in language, which promotes interaction in the classroom, and which increases motivation Not only in peer learning encouraged by it, but also the sharing between teacher and students‟ responsibility for the learning process.”Similarly, Nunan (2001) maintains that

“Role play is approved to be a communicative language learning since students are actively get involved in conversations.” Role-play is a kind of technique involving conversation in classroom to help students develop fluency in speaking skill

2.4.2 Advantages of role-play

Some teachers are unaware of the possibilities of role-play They may feel that such an activity is not appropriate for classes which cause discipline problems and that conducting role-play would create chaos In addition, they claim that students may be reluctant to be someone else, or, that their level of language is too low The section below attempts to present rationale for using role-play activities in English foreign language classrooms

Kowalska (1991, p 113) believes that role-playing develops learners‟ fluency in speaking The wide range of language functions, for example apologizing, greetings, etc., is exercised more than in any other activities Learners‟ focus is put on the communication of meaning rather than on the appropriate use of language Therefore, through role-playing teachers may train students‟ speaking skills in any social situations It means that learners are put in conditions which require speech that is used to communicate socially more than the language necessitated by teaching syllabuses (Porter-Ladousse 1987, p 6) The author takes the view that thanks to role-playing learners have the possibility

to develop the language which is necessary in social relationships, but which is neglected in teaching syllabuses He also notices that a lot of students believe that the language in foreign language classes is only used to pass on particular information from one person to another

The next reason for incorporating role-playing in EFL classes is that some people learn for specific roles in life They may want to work or travel in worldwide context It is very advantageous for these students to have tried out in pleasant and safe environment of a classroom with the language they will presumably use For such learners, role-play is a helpful rehearsal and what is more, it allows them not just to acquire phrases, but to learn how to interact in a variety of circumstances (Porter-Ladousse 1987, p 7)

Kowalska (1991, p 113) remarks that role-playing develops learners‟ imagination For the roles given to learners may require creative thinking, players‟ imagination is in high demand In addition, being able to think insensitively might occur a useful skill in the future Some jobs demand imaginative thinking and the best way to practice it is just through role-playing and also by reading books

Another advantage of role-playing is that learners are given a chance to pretend someone else Such a technique may help timid students to overcome their shyness of speaking Reticent students often have difficulty talking about their experiences or about themselves The fact that they are someone else makes them feel that their own personality is not implicated (Porter-Ladousse, 1987, p 7)

Finally, there is no doubt that the element of fun advocates using playing in foreign language classes (Budden, 2004) Apart from being involved

role-in language production, players enjoy themselves and have a really great time

2.4.3 Disadvantages of role-play

However, role-play may have disadvantages, too Thornbury (2005, p 96- 98) indicates that “learners who feel self-conscious performing in front of their peers, especially if this involves a degree of improvisation, and care has to be exercised in choosing and setting up such activities so as not to make even more demands on them than speaking in another language normally requires” To put it

in other words, the author notes that a public performance itself may cause a big problem for some students Then, he adds that the preparation stage may be helpful to overcome the fear of speaking Teachers must be careful during role-playing not to make any learners feel awkward

Rogers (2007) pointed out that there is no method suitable for all situations This means that sometimes role play is not appropriate to be used He added that role play has some disadvantages First, many students avoid performing because they hate it Another disadvantage is that teachers are sometimes incapable to enhance their students to discuss a specific situation Further disadvantage is that when students pay a little attention in preparing a role play on real life, in which there is a huge number of information, this may make them fail in discussing the case without more information Although some teachers think that students should leave out the confusing and conflicting details

on complex role play The most important disadvantage is that role play is never been similar to the real things that include the state of mind and the emotions because you can be realistic the setting, the problem even the unimportant details but you never forget that you are in classroom especially, when teacher told them

that the roles are not their own but other people's role There is always some distance between action and thought (Rogers, 2007, p 210)

All the above positive factors were indicated with the purpose of making full use of the strengths and minimize the disadvantages of role play technique to implement this activity in the classroom to help students to improve their speaking fluency

2.4.4 Types of role-play

Role play activity is a drama like classroom activity in which students take the role of different participants in a given situation and act out what might happen such takes can be grouped into two forms, scripted and unscripted role play (Byrne, 1986) In details, those types of role play activities described as follows:

2.4.4.1 Scripted role-play

According to Byrne (1986), this type involves interpreting either the textbook dialogue or reading text in the form of speech The importance functions of the text after all in to convey the meaning of language items in a memorable way In order to clarify more this type, (Doff, 1998) gives the following example of scripted role- play dialogue and reading text and how the process is:

Example:

Angela: Good morning I want to send a letter to Singapore

Clerk: yes, do you want to send it by air mail or ordinary mail?

Angela: I think I will send it by air mail I want it to get there quickly How

much does it cost?

Clerk: to Singapore? That will be 30 pence, please

Angela: (give to Clerk 50 pence) here you are

Clerk: here‟s your stamp, and here‟s 20 pence change

Angela: thank you, where is the post box?

Clerk: you want the air mail box It is over there, by the door (Doff: 1988)

Doff provides the following procedures to demonstrate a role activity based on the dialogue:

First of all, the teacher guides the role play by writing these prompts: (where? / Air / mail / how much? /post box? / thanks) Talk as you write to show what the prompts mean

Then, if necessary, go through the prompts one by one, and get students to give sentences or question for each one

After that, call two students to the front: one play the role as Angela and the other one is the post office clerk They should improvise the conversation using the prompts to help them Point out that the conversation should be similar to the one

in textbook, but not exactly the same; the conversation can be shorter than the presentation dialogue

Finally: call out a few other pairs of students in turn, and ask them to have other convert based on the prompts

2.4.4.2 Unscripted role-play

In contrast to scripted role-play; the situations of unscripted role-play do not depend on textbooks It is famous as a free role-Play or improvisation The learners themselves have to decide what language to use and how the conversation should develop In order to do this activity the teacher and the students should be well prepared

Doff (1988) provides an example of this type in his book:

- One student has lost a bag, he/ she is at the police station

- The other student is the police officer, and asks for details In order to bring out this ideas the teacher could prepare the whole class by :

a - Discussing what the speakers might say (the police officer asks the students how he / she lost the bag)

b - Writing prompt on the board to guide the Role-play and any key vocabulary The teacher could divide the class into pairs and let them discuss together what they may say The teacher should let them all try out the role-play privately, before calling on one or two pairs to act out in front of the class

For these reasons mentioned above, the author of the study decided to use

a combination of both types of role play activities, including scripted and unscripted ones for each stages during the process of teaching, which is dependable on the students‟ improvement

2.4.5 How to use role-play in the language classroom

According to Pollard (2008, p 36) “Role play is a technique that involves

students taking on a role and carrying out a discussion with each person playing their role.”

In guiding teachers to use role-play in the classroom, Porter-Ladousse

(1987, p 3) writes, “role play activities range from highly-controlled guided

conversations at one end of the scale, to improvised drama activities at the other; from simple rehearsed dialogue performance, to highly complex simulated scenarios.” The author of these words puts a lot of emphasis on a wide scope of

role-play activities Such a speaking task may be a limited one and be supported

by prepared cues, for example by dialogues; or, conversely, role-play might be an activity where students rather improvise than rely on the practiced dialogue Porter-Ladousse also points out that role-play may differ in complexity, that is, some performances may be very short and simple, whereas some utterances may

be very structured The difficulty of the activity depends, therefore, on the language level

In role-play, learners are usually given some information about a role (e.g

a person or a job title) These are often printed on role cards Learners take a little preparation time and then meet up with other students to act out small scenes using their own ideas, as well as any ideas and information from the role cards A simple role card could do nothing more than name the role e.g mother, detective

or alternatively they could offer guidance as to what to do rather than the role itself, e.g buy a train ticket to Brighton (Scrivener 2005, p 155) It is clearly stated that students are assigned particular roles to play Scrivener also has it that role cards have an important function, thus, thanks to them learners are equipped with crucial information about their roles Guidelines put on such cards help students in conveying important facts about their characters to be played and also make the speakers feel more secure, as basic clues are included on paper The weaker learners may base their utterances only on a card, while the strong ones find role cards as prompts A good set of role cards is frequently designed so that the participants may have different points of view and obvious disagreements (Scrivener 2005, p 156) This author also inclines that students need an

appropriate amount of time to prepare ideas and language before playing their roles What is more, he says that learners not only use the ideas put on role cards, but also try to add any language they possess

2.4.6 The organization of a role-play activity

Teacher gives students the plot of a story, a short episode or a specific situation and students are divided into groups to discuss and work Each student

is in charge of a role and have duty to put oneself in character‟s position, learn by heart what character says in the story or film and imitate the behavior, gestures, especially voice and intonation of the character as same as possible

Teacher lets students practice and reheard together at home and then students are going to play a role to perform at class Researcher is an audience who only observes performance of students for a variety of lessons using role-play activity and get data from this observation

2.4.7 Stages of the role playing activities

For the purpose of obtaining feedback from the learners, the teacher

recorded what the learners had expressed at two different times:

First,their feedback was recorded when the teacher started explaining the role play and the procedure to the class The learners‟ feedback was recorded for second time after the presentation Besides recording, casual interviews were conducted with the learners in order to allow them to reflect on their presentation

(Crookall, 1990, p 76)

Krish (2001, p.3) states that learners‟ feedback was divided into three categories: The preparation stage, the presentation stage and the learners‟ overall

impression regarding the activity:

The Preparation Stage

The learners were uncomfortable and uncertain Towards the end, their shyness left them and they began prompting each other with ideas Some learners said that the activity gave them a chance to do group work and allowed much free interaction especially to clarify the meaning of difficult words, that develops their confidence

The Presentation Stage

The learners attempted to perform a real life talk show Throughout the presentation, they showed enthusiasm and a sense of fairness listening to others

in the group to express their views Some learners were seen taking down notes, perhaps to be better prepared in handling their turn They also played their role as the audience by clarifying and giving their opinion at the end of the presentation

The Post Presentation Stage

In this stage the opportunity of the students to give their views and opinion of the activity Such comments and criticisms can help the teachers to prepare better future activities in other classes Comments given by learners when the role play was explained by the teacher

2.4.8 The teacher’s role in role-play

Having analyzed the definition of role-play, the organization of such an activity, its advantages and another very important issue has to be explained, namely, the teacher‟s role in a role-play activity During speaking activities, a teacher needs to play number of different roles Harmer (2001, p.275-276) suggests three roles if the teacher is trying to get students to speak fluently

One of the teacher‟s function is being a facilitator As learners practice role-play they may discover that they lack words or phrases (Budden, 2004) They may need new language to be given by the educator This role makes the teacher act

as a kind of a „walking dictionary‟, evaluating the class and offering help when it

is necessary However, if rehearsal time is long enough, offering assistance might not be required At times, teachers may want to become involved in a speaking activity The teacher should help his/her students when they get lost, or cannot think of what to say next or in some other way lose the fluency the teacher expects of them Sometimes, the best option teacher can do is to leave the students to struggle out on their own However, the teacher may offer discrete suggestions to help the students This will avoid students' sense of frustration when they finish their ideas.This way they can prompt the exercise, introduce new information to help the role-play along and ensure continuing student engagement in the speaking (Harmer, 2001, p 276) Although educators have to bear in their minds that they should not participate too much, that is, take control over the task and draw all the attention to them

The third role of the teacher is being a spectator His or her task is to watch the role-play and then give remarks and advice at the end of the performances (Budden, p 2004) The teacher walks round the classroom listening to the students talking and putting down the mistakes that should be discussed (Porter-Ladousse, 1987, p 15) Then, Porter-Ladousse adds that after role-play, the educator can correct forms from the learners by writing them on the board, or by giving some kind of remedial task that he or she had predicted would be needed This author also suggests that the teacher should include such a remedial exercise into a later lesson and he also puts emphasis on the fact that while role-play is in progress, the teacher should not let the consideration of errors suppress the exercise, as the first priority is developing fluency Role-play seems to be an important tool in teaching speaking skills Although there is no one definition of role-play and there are some weak points about that activity, its‟ numerous advantages far outweigh the disadvantages The activity gives a chance

of having a rehearsal for the language one day students may be exposed to, for example ordering food at a restaurant

Furthermore, teachers can participate in discussions or role-plays themselves to prompt covertly, introduce new information this will help the activity along, ensure continuing student engagement, and maintain a creative atmosphere But there are some situations where teachers have to be careful and

do not participate too much because when they dominate the speaking, they focus all the attention to themselves In addition, teachers can be a feedback provider They should be aware of when and how to give feedback in speaking activities because over-correction may inhibit students and take the communicativeness out

of the activity On the other hand, positively and encouragingly correction may get students out of difficult misunderstanding Everything depends upon teacher tact and the appropriacy of the feedback provided As Harmer (2001) said

“When students finish their activity, teacher should correct what they have done and tell them about what went well; in response to the content of the activity as well as the language used." (p 196)

In summary, when teacher being a facilitator, a prompter, a spectator, a participant, even a feedback provider, they have to be careful that they do not force students, do not participate too much, and do over correction

2.5 Summary

This is the chapter which give a review about the previous studies related

to using role playing to improve students‟ speaking skill This chapter also covered some definitions about speaking skill, speaking fluency and role-play Additionally, the criteria for speaking skill as well as speaking fluency were provided

CHAPTER III: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

In the preceding chapter, the literature on the research topic was briefly summarized for the theoretical basis of the whole study This chapter presents the research methodology An action research design was employed in this study with strict adherence to justified methods of data collection and analysis in order

to ensure its validity and reliability Information about the research setting; the subjects, the instruments as well as the procedure of data collection and analysis are also presented in this chapter

3.1 Research approach

Action research is actually suitable for any person who wishes to improve his or her performance; or any group or organization who hopes for doing the same As a matter of fact, action research is widely used in education, especially

by teachers who use it to improve their teaching Teachers from all over the world, from the United States, The United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand to Vietnam have employed action research as a part of their teaching and research Obviously, action research well matches with education and benefits both teachers and students in their teaching and learning since it meets the need of education and enables continuity in research with its cyclic process

The purposes of an action research are developing and improving students‟ learning and teachers‟ teaching Glickman says that action research in education setting is a study conducted by teacher researcher to improve problems

in their classrooms In addition, Burns claims that it is possible to say that action research can be looked at as a professional development tool since it tries to enhance the capacity of teachers as generator of professional knowledge in contrast to enhancing their capacity to apply someone else‟s knowledge The teachers are researchers who need to plan the steps to solve the problem, take actions, analyze and report or reflect the results and findings to test the effectiveness of their teaching in the classroom Therefore, the main purposes the researcher carried out this study are helping students enhance their English speaking fluency, which is proper for the purpose of an action research

3.2 Setting of the study

The study was conducted with first year students, coming from two classes of Faculty of English Language (FEL) at NEU, where students have entrance exam score in high level in English The textbook used during the course is the speaking book provided by teachers from the beginning of the course By using this textbook, teachers hoped to enhance students‟ communicative competence by providing the useful structures and common situations related to their future work Students are asked to work in groups of three people to practice English in situational contexts It also means that when taking the first course, students have already been equipped with basic knowledge of English such as vocabulary and basic grammar and communicative skills The materials used during this course include the course book of speaking, further handouts from teachers, slideshow from lecturers The total number of teaching periods is 30 hours including one class hours for mid-term test Students have one speaking lecture each week equivalent to four in-class periods Therefore, with the limitation of class teaching, it requires students more hours for self – studying and preparing new lessons These textbooks aim at providing students with a great deal of situations which can be applied in their future jobs and developing students‟ speaking skill The exercises and activities designed in the textbook focus on improving speaking English, especially role play activities which are designed further by lectures to helpstudents to have more chances to practice speaking skill more regularly and effectively

3.3 The participants

This study was conducted with the participation of 27 first-year students coming from Faculty of English Language at National Economic University in academic year 2018/019, which consists of 23 females and 4 males At the time the study was being carried out, these students had recently finished their course for one year The researcher decided to select this class because a large number

of students in class had difficulties in speaking English naturally and fluently The 27 students who were chosen in this research have more limited English speaking abilitythan the others so role play activity was applied to improve the

students‟ speaking English skill

3.4 Data collection instruments

Two instruments were used to collect the data for the study These are the questionnaire and interviewing

in speaking English fluently

The questionnaire consists of 11 questions divided into three sections The types of questions are mainly closed ended (yes / no questions or multiple choice questions), and open ended questions were included The three sections are as follows:

Section 1: Demographic information about the participants: it is meant to

gather data about personal characteristics of students

Section 2: The speaking skill (Q1- Q4): this section seeks information

about the speaking fluency, difficulties of students in speaking English fluently and the main activities used by teacher to teach speaking

Section 3: Role plays in EFL classes (Q5 – Q8): this section seeks

information about role plays activities It investigates students‟ personal attitudes towards Role plays implementation in their English class (see Appendix B for a full questionnaire)

Questionnaires were directly distributed to participants (N= 27) A brief introduction of the purpose, the nature of the research topic as well as the purpose of the questionnaire and the great role of the respondents and instructions on what to do were given The students were given carefulexplanationand instructions to each question and encouraged to answer

truly and frankly Also, the respondents‟ confidentiality was confirmed Notably, all delivered questionnaires were returned

3.4.2 Interviews

Interviews were implemented after the researcher had a careful look at the returned questionnaires to get better understandings into the research questions and to discuss further issues raised in the questionnaire Eight students were purposefully selected out of 27 questionnaire repondents for the post-questionnaire interviews The criterion for selection was the students‟ oral fluency in English, which was measured subjectively by the teacher-researcher Eight students were selected for the interviews because they were assessed by the teacher-researcher as less fluent in speaking English than the others among the questionnaire respondents Three of the eight students who were selcted were the least fluent speakers of English as indicated by their oral performancce in the classroom lessons The interviewees, who were coded as A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, A6, A7, and A8 They were asked some questions to further clarify the results of questionnaire survey (see Appendix C for the sample interview questions)

The interviews were given in a friendly and natural way to maximize the participants‟ responses During the interview, questions were asked one at a time and participants took turns to give answers Besides, recording the content of the interview, the researcher took notes of important points throughout the interviews, which helped with the interview transcription later on

3.5 Methods of the study

In this study, the researcher used the role play technique to solve the problem of poor speaking fluency of students The researcher implemented the action in the form of cycles following Kember‟s model (2000) namely: planning, action, observation, and reflection

Additionally, two methods of data analysis, quantitative and qualitative, were also adopted in this study The questionnaire data was analysed quantitatively The students‟ responses to the questionnaire were analysed by means of descriptive statistics so that the common pattern was identified By contrast, the interview data was analysed qualitatively The interview transcripts

were first read carefully so that general categories were identified These categories were further analysed to identify the emerging themes

The data collected were firstly classified into different categories, such as students‟ general information, students‟ attitudes towards the speaking fluency and students‟ attitudes towards role play activities Based on categories established, data were then analyzed by using descriptive statistics (percentage) Moreover, typical quotations from the interviews, the answers to open-ended questions in the questionnaires were cited when necessary Interpretation and conclusions were drawn after analyzing the data

3.6 The research Procedures

3.6.1 Identification of the problem

According to Kember (2000) the process of action research is cyclical or spiral process where each cycle consists of planning, action, observation and reflection, which usually leads to revise or totally a new plan and continuation of the action research process in second cycle, and so on until the student‟s achievement have reached particular limitation as purposed The teachers are the researchers who have duty to make plans for students to take action, then they observe the performance of students in the classroom in each lesson and record the result through subjective evaluation of the teacher and self-assessment of students in the questionnaire and interview The process may occur for a long time but it helps the researcher have more comprehensive outlook on the improvement of their students and then suggest proper solutions to help their

students enhance their speaking fluency through role play activities

3.6.2 Planning the action

In this stage, the researcher made a preparation for the action The preparation covered designing role-playing procedures, preparing the lesson plan, designing instruments and technique of collecting data, and setting the criteria of

success In relation to the first preparation, designing role-playing procedures,

the researcher planned to implement seven major steps in the procedure for the role play activities Those were 1) deciding on the teaching materials, 2) organizing the group of the students, 3) providing the situation and dialogue to be role played, 4) teaching the dialogue for role plays, 5) having the students

practice the role plays, 6) having students modify the situation and dialogue, and 7) having the students perform the dialogue in front of the class

In this study, it was agreed that the researcher acted as the practitioner who taught the students and the collaborators acted as the observers during this action research At this stage, the researcher and his collaborator designed the lesson plan as the guide to conduct the instructional activities It was developed based

on the syllabus of the School Based Curriculum and was focused on the implementation of the role-playing technique in the speaking class The lesson plan covered instructional objectives, instructional materials and media, teaching procedure, and assessment procedure To obtain the required data, it is very crucial for the researcher to use the appropriate instruments

The selected and developed instruments were based on the nature of the required data The data were collected during the instructional process and covered the performance of the students during the instructional process In addition, the data also included the students‟ responses to the teaching of speaking by using role-playing technique In this study, the researcher used observation checklist, questionnaire and interviews as the research instruments The criteria of success were set in advance as a basis to determine whether the action implemented was successful or not In this study, the researcher used two criteria of success The action was considered successful when 60 % of the students or over reach score 4 (fluently) and score 5 (very fluently) that described

in the analytical scoring rubric for speaking fluency in their performance of play activities in front of the class

role-Concerning the first criterion of success above, the researcher needed to assess the students‟ performance In assessing the students‟ speaking performance, the researcher applied an analytical scoring rubric that described in detail the level of fluency compatible with its band score In assessing the students‟ speaking performance, the researcher used observation checklist Because this observation checklist was used to assess the students‟ speaking performance, then analytical scoring rubric was provided The analytical coring rubric for speaking fluency was shown in Table 2.2

3.6.3 Implementing the action

The intervention, which is the adoption of role-play activities in teaching

speaking, was undertaken within a period of 15 weeks (one lesson/week) and evaluated the improvement of speaking fluency through the teacher‟s evaluation combining with the students‟ self-reports from survey questionnaires and interview of the students In the context of classroom, the researcher designed role play activities which consists of three main parts used in the classroom activities, including pre-activities, whilst-activities, and post-activities which discussed as follows (see sample lesson plan in Appendix A)

Pre-activity

Teaching and learning process was started with pre activity In thisactivity, the researcher also acted as a teacher, the aim was to activate students‟ concentration and interest to the lesson that would be given In this activity, the teachergreeted students by saying "Good morning/Good afternoon, students How are you today?” Then,the teacher led the students' attention by asking a few questions related to the topicor based on the material that had been planned in the teaching scenario The pre activity was planned for about 10 minutes

Whilst-activity

In whilst-activity, the teacher applied role play to teach speaking skill for the students When the students found difficulties in learning process, the teacher explained the lesson by giving more examples In this activity, the students were also instructed to construct a short dialogue with their partner based on situation given by the teacher and it had to be performed in front of the class with their partner It was intended to measure the students‟ fluency in speaking skill This activity was planned for about 60 minutes There are from 7 to 9 groups giving their performance in front of class in each lesson during 15 weeks of the course

Post-activity

The last activity was post activity In this activity, the teacher concludedthe lesson that had been given and gave the students chance to ask questions aboutthe lesson In addition, teacher also gave some feedbacks about the performance of pairs and groups to help them to avoid some mistakes as well