levels OF interest of 11TH FORM STUDENTS AND Teachers in ROLE-PLAY in SPEAKING LESSONS, THEIR REASONS FOR LEVELS OF INTEREST AND ACTIONS DURING ROLE PLAYING PROCEDURES

Abstract

Recently major changes have been made in the methods and techniques used for the Teaching English as a Second Language. To be more specific, a number of communicative activities namely group discussions and role-play have been applied in the English lessons. However, whether these activities have been used effectively at high schools is still an open question. For this reason, the study was carried out to investigate the levels of interest of the teachers and the students in role-play, their reasons for these levels of interest, and their actions during role playing procedures. For the accomplishment of the purposes, 100 tenth form students of English classes and 8 English teachers at the Foreign Language Specialized School - ULIS - VNU were invited to answer the questionnaires and 5 semi-structured interviews with the teachers were administered. Descriptive analysis and statistical analysis with the use of mean only were employed for questionnaire analysis while key word analysis was used for interview analysis. The results showed that the students liked role-play because of the innovation in the teaching method and the opportunities to use the language freely and creatively. Meanwhile, the teachers admitted enjoying it or staying neutral because of its stimulation to student’s use of real life conversations and the freshness in the teaching method. This research also found out main actions of the students and the teachers during role playing procedures, which showed the student’s active participation in role-play and the tendency to have actions requiring beforehand preparation than language and material preparation. It was proposed that teachers should do more factual and linguistic preparation to prepare students for the activity and be careful with choosing the situations and roles for role-play.