Recorded-Role Play in EFL Classroom: A Way of Maximizing Students’ Potential in Speaking
Krismiyati
Faculty of Information Technology, Satya Wacana Christian University
krismi@staff.uksw.edu
Abstract
Teaching English for non English Department students will be quite a challenge as the students have various background and interest. Handling those students in a big number in a class that requires them to speak is another impending challenge. This is an action research on role-play in English classroom for Information Technology students. This study tries to see whether recorded-role play could maximize students’ potential in speaking. This study involved 30 students taking English course in Information Technology Faculty. The students were given a situation in which they had to act the role play. They drafted the role -play before they recorded it. The result shows that students felt less tense in acting the role. They also got more time to practice their pronunciation before recording. It even gave students who felt reluctant and shy in the class to actively participate. In addition, students could play around with the supporting background sound to show their creativity. Surprisingly, most students do their best to show their effort in their speaking as the end-product would be played in the classroom, even the most quiet students performed really well. Finally, this recorded-role play proved to be an effective way to maximize students’ potential in speaking.
Key Words : recorded-role play, speaking, pronunciation, potential
Introduction
fear that they want to avoid if it is possible. Hearing themselves pronouncing wrong English words will create another shame for them. Whenever they are given chance to speak then what comes into their mind is thinking of good and accurate grammar to utter. They consider being silent as a safe way to avoid the shame they might get. It is pretty clear that students in this context of study are reluctant to participate in English speaking class due to their preference of using their first language and their fear of making mistakes in their oral practice. In order to cope with the situation faced in the teaching learning process, this study tries to implement recorded-role play, an alternative way to get students to speak. Besides, it also a way to see whether it could maximize students’ potential in speaking.
Teaching Speaking
Mastering speaking skills for foreign language learners will likely be their priority in learning (Richard, 2008). Therefore, it is important to make all the students actively participate in a speaking class so that they could improve their speaking skills. This could be able achieved when there is a synergy between the teacher and the students. Wallace, Stariha, & Walberg (2005) mention that there are some things those teachers should do to improve students’ speaking skills. Some of them are, providing opportunities for the students to practice their speaking skills. They could also sharpen their adaptability in various speaking circumstances, as normally certain circumstance will differ from the other in term of form of speech that they could use. In addition, Wallace et al. (2005) explain that it is also important for the teachers to help the students reducing their speaking fears. It is quite common that for EFL students, speaking the target language is not an easy thing to do. Students have many considerations on whether they have to speak the language. The teachers could provide the opportunity for the students to overcome their fear by assigning them to speak in a larger group. The more the students are given this kind of opportunity, the more likely the students will be able to improve themselves in handling larger audiences.
Other aspects that need to consider in teaching speaking is style of speaking and function of speaking (Richard, 2008). Style of speaking is different from one to other circumstances. It also reflects role, age, and status of participants in interactions (Richard, 2008, Wallace, et al , 2005). Style of speaking will also create politeness in social interaction which is important in creating harmonious social relations (Richard, 2008). Further he mentions that speaking function is another important aspect that establish and maintain social interactions. Students need to understand each function to be able to address any situation appropriately. In short, teachers should always bear in the mind with the focus of the activity that they want their students to master in order to perform their communication appropriately.
mentions that “role plays are the ideal vehicle for practicing speech acts with intermediate learners. Role-plays allow students to try out appropriate English utterances in potentially difficult situations, before they must use them in real life”. It suggest that role play could carry out the interaction function students could explore in practicing their speaking skills. It could be the safest way that students perform repeatedly before they immerse in real life situation they may encounter. Assigning role play to students will demand the students to effectively use their linguistics and discourse strategies (Bailey, 2005). It means that students will have to apply their competences appropriately as the situation in the role play required.
Apart from those competences, students will also apply their extra linguistics knowledge when they perform the role play. The extra linguistics knowledge may consist of topic, cultural knowledge, knowledge of the context, and familiarity with the other speakers (Thornbury, 2006). It is clear that the students will use this extra linguistics knowledge in their role play. The more familiar the students with the topic, the easier the role play will be. It is usually easy for the students to talk about something that is close to them or that they have been exposed in their daily life (Thornbury, 2006 &Louma, 2004). It also applies with the familiarity with other speakers, the more familiar they are, and the less tense they feel. When the students are assigned to work with someone they know well, they will feel more secure affectively.
Elements of Role Play
The students will be able to communicate effectively once their linguistic competence has been developed (Bailey, 2006). Therefore, it is important for the teacher to help students in developing this competence such by providing them with phoneme, morpheme, words and grammar. Louma (2004 p.96)) explains that “speaking activities involving a drama element, in which learners take an imaginative leap out of the confines of the classroom, provide a useful springboard for real-life language use”. One of speaking activity that involves drama element is role play. Role play needs situation or context and it does need to be performed by the students. In this case, students are assigned with particular situation and they need to act out as if they are in the real life situation. It is a way of simulating a situation that students may encounter in the real world (Louma, 2004). She then explains that context usually refers to anything in the speaking situation. The situation normally describes the time, place, or setting of the play and it usually replicates the situation in real life. Besides, it may cover other aspects such as cognitive and experiential like the language use experiences that the speaker may bring into the situation and the goal that the conversation has to achieve (ibid). Further she mentions that it provides a greater range of vocabularies compared to those normally available in classroom talk (ibid).
by several factors such as cognitive, affective, and performance (Louma, 2004). The cognitive factors cover the familiarity with the topic and participant or partner. Meanwhile, the affective factor includes the feeling towards the topic, such as whether the students are interested to the topic. For the performance factor, it usually relates to the planning and rehearsal time for the role play (Louma, 2004). The more time that students allocate for planning and rehearsing their role play, the easier the role play will be.
Method
This section discusses the method implemented in the study. It starts with explanation on the context of the study. It then continue with how the recorded –role play works. Finally it describes how the study will see the response of the students regarding the implemented recorded role play.
This study involves 30 students taking English course with different level of English ability. They also have different major such as informatics engineering, visual communication design, information system, ICT teacher education, and public relations. All of them have passed Basic English course offered at faculty level.
This study follows Burns (2009) action research consisting of plan – act- observe- and reflect. The planning phase covers what will be the focus of the research. In this case, what things to be done to overcome the reluctance of the students in speaking class. It then comes to the point of planning of activity that students have to carry out in relation to role-play. Further step is
determining which language item will be covered as the basis of the role-play. The acting phases is the implementation of the planned activity and see how it goes. The final step is reflecting on the implementation, identifying which one goes well and which part does not work as it is supposed to be.
The students were assigned to work in pairs. In organizing this pair work, the students were paired based on friendship principle. This was to make sure that students were put friends with friends to avoid that they may work with somebody that was unpleasant (Harmer, 2007). Each pair was given a situation of role-play to work. They were assigned to draft the role-play. Then the draft was checked to see the grammar and word choice. Done with checking the draft, students then were given the chance to practice their role-play script. This was also the time for the students to get their pronunciation checked. After the students felt that their role-play was fixed then they had to record themselves acting the role-play. Once their role-play recorder, it was played to the whole class so that each student could hear and comment on their recorded role-play.
implementation of recorded role-play. The main reason of using questionnaires is its
impersonality. It means that the questions are the same for every participant. It does not change according to the way the replies develop (Walliman, 2001).
Discussion
This section will discuss the implementation of recorded -role play method and how the students respond to it.
The first step done for the recorded role play was pairing the students in the classroom. After explaining the language item needed for the role play, students were given chance to practice the language item explained before through exercises in group or in pairs. The students were then paired to work on a given situation later on. After all students were paired, they were given the situation. There were two situations for the whole class. Once each pair got their situation, they had to work with their partner to script the role-play.
Before doing their role-play scripting, they were explained that they needed to use the language item had been discussed. It was also the time for the students to have discussion for the pairs to explore of how their role play should look like and what things needed to include. Once they were done with the script, the teacher then check for the diction and grammar. After being corrected by the teacher, the scripts of role play were returned to the students. The students then got the chance to practice their pronunciation. It was the time for the students to get feedback on their speaking performance such as pronunciation and intonation.
Having finished their practice, the students could carry on to their next step, which was recording the role-play. The recording itself was done by the students at home. It was done so to give the students more time to rehearse and edit their record before finalizing and submit them in class. The students were given a whole week to worked on the recording and editing. Before they recorded the role-play, they were informed that apart from pronunciation and the content of the role-play, their creativity would be part of the assessment. Surprisingly, most of the pair submitting the role-play, they put any necessary music, sound or noise as the background to make their role play sound naturally as if it happens in real life situation.
script with less care of the pronunciation and intonation. It might be caused by the limited practice in the classroom. Besides, it there was still lack of organization here and there as this was something new for the students. Apart from these unexpected results, most of the students were satisfied with the result. From the recorded role-play, it could also tell that students, who usually were less active in the class, showed their effort and involved in the role-play.
In order to address the lack of the first cycle, the second cycle of action research was carried out. The next cycle followed the same phase of the first cycle. The only difference was that the time allocated for in class practice after the script writing and correction. The students were given face to face to practice their role-play. Apart from whole class practice, there was face-to-face practice in pairs with direct feedback from the teacher. The teacher got the opportunity to work with students in pairs while the other pairs were practicing on their own. It was done one by one until all the pairs got the chance to do so. The same as what had been done in the previous section, the students then had to record their role-play with their partner. They got a week to do the recording and submitted their work. In the next meeting, all recorded role-play were played in the class and it was followed by discussion on how they had worked on the role play. Having discussed their work, the students were then given a questionnaire that they had to fill in consisting of three open-ended questions. The questions were about students’ opinion on the method – recorded role-play-, the aspect of the method that they like most, and what could be improved in the coming implementation.
From the questionnaire given, most of the students felt that recorded role play was very helpful to them in practicing speaking. One student said “I do not need to feel the pressure of performing in front of the class with my whole classmates judging my English” (Student 25). Similar opinion was written by another students saying that he felt less tense because he did not need to perform in front of their friends. Most of the students’ opinion mention positive thing about the implemented method. This reflects what has been explained by Wallace et al (2005) that teachers should help students to reduce their fears in speaking. It has been proven that students feel less tense or fear about the task they have to complete.
The last information was about how the method could be improved in the next implementation. Most students said that it would be much better if they did not only record their voice but sometimes put their acting along with the voice in a video. Some students mention that actually the method was good for reducing their fear and a good way of expressing their creativity. It shows that students were really engaged in the activity, not only were enthusiastic in recording their role play but also they wanted the method to improve. One interesting fact was that students who were usually passive or often ignore class activity in the class became active and did a good work of recording. The performance factor of the students in this method was proven (Louma, 2004). They got more time to practice and rehearse resulted in a good quality of work seen from the recording and the creativity put into it.
The potential that has been maximized in this study was students’ ability in speaking. They got more time and guidance on their pronunciation, language item use, word choice and intonation. It gave them learning experience which was different from the usual task they had in the classroom. Not only their ability to speak but it also explores their creativity side. When students carried out the work to result in a recorded role play, they were free to add or mix sound and music background to make their role play into a more vivid and live one. In addition, students got an interesting media to deliver their idea expressed in the target language and combined with their creativity. What motivates them in doing the recording was also the fact that they would keep their end product for future reference. Most of them who did their best said that it was just like their masterpiece during their time learning English apart from their main major which was not related to English learning.
Conclusion
Recorded role-play is an alternative to get students actively involved in speaking activity as it gives them more time to get prepared. Students enjoy this activity because they get more time to rehearse and practice. Apart from that, they also get the opportunity to express their creativity. Students were very creative in integrating the skills they have learned in other course to support their language performance. This method has succeeded in exploring students potential to maximize. The potentials that could be maximized through the recorded role play are speaking ability covering pronunciation, the use of word, the appropriate language item use and intonation when students have conversation. Besides, it explores students creativity in producing the recording using what they have learned in other courses.
References
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