Communicative language strategies are skills which learners need in order to maximize effective communication when they are not so accurate in their use of language.
In teaching English, the teacher has to be able to make the students participate in discussing the materials actively, so that they will be able to understand what they are learning in the class and also express their own ideas orally. The most important thing to carry out the English teaching is that the teacher has to be able to use the appropriate approach, design, and procedures. One of the ways in improving students’ speaking skill is by giving role play as a form of English learning activity in the classroom. 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.
Role play is very important in communication language teaching because it gives students an opportunity to practice communicating indifferent social context and in different social roles. Therefore, communicative language teaching (CLT) approach is very appropriate to support the problems because this approach is learner-centered and emphasizes communication in real life situation.
Speaking competence plays a necessary role in learning and understanding any language. The term of speaking has several meanings. Widdowson says that speaking has two meanings. First, it refers to the manner in which language is manifested. Second, it refers to the manner in which language is realized as communication. The meaning of competence is “the speaker hearer’s knowledge of his language”. It is seen as overall underlying linguistic knowledge and ability thus includes concepts of appropriateness and acceptability.
The target or the goal of language teaching is that the students become communicatively competence in target language as capability of using language well. Richard and Roger state [1] that Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is an approach that aims to create communicative competence and develop procedure for the teaching of the four language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) that acknowledge the interdependence of language and communicative activities.
To develop communicative competence, the teacher is suggested to use CTL. CLT is used to create communicative competence as the object to use and to develop some procedures for teaching four basic skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) function as the foundation to master English. The students are engaged to use the language they learn through communicative activities
One of the four language skills being existed in English language teaching is speaking. Therefore, speaking component has the same importance as the other language skills such as listening, reading and writing.
Role play is a speaking activity where learners participate either as themselves or as somebody else in a specific situation. In this way they can act in various interaction patterns.
Role play includes “all sorts of activities where learners imagine themselves in a situation outside the classroom, sometimes playing the role of someone other than themselves, and using language appropriate to this new context.”.
Role play is an example of “learning by doing” The word role indicates that the students must actively apply knowledge, skill, and understanding to successfully speak and act from different, assigned perspective. The term play indicates that the students use their imaginations and have fun, acting out their parts in non-threatening environment.
The use of role play as teaching technique improved the students’ speaking competence. The improvement in their speaking competence is quite significant. It was reflected from the students’ attitude inside the class during the English teaching learning process.
Role-play is especially helpful in teaching writing. According to Scarcella and Crook all, it facilitates writing in the following three ways. [2]
First, it provides students with situations in which writing occurs naturally. In a traditional writing class, the students are always required to write in vacuum about the given topic. The process is dull and painstaking. Role-play can change this situation and offer the students chances to write about interesting, relevant and motivating experiences. For example, the teacher can ask the students to play the role as an unsatisfied customer and write a letter to complain to the company about the product he/she purchased. The students can discuss in groups about the content and format of the letter, and the teacher can choose to give them instruction or writing samples either before or after their writing.
Second, role-play, like all simulation activities, can help students overcome writer’s block by producing a “high degree of student involvement rarely found in ESL writing activities”.
Third, it can be particularly helpful in the brainstorming and revising stages of the writing process. “It provides students with opportunities to see their ideas in action and to observe the consequences of their ideas and the alternatives”.
Role-play is best used in teaching language when the teachers fully understand their roles and take responsibilities using certain techniques, following necessary procedures to accomplish the tasks.
References:
1. Richards, J. C., & Rodgers, T. S. (1986). Approaches and methods in language teaching. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
2. Scarcella, C.R. & Crookall, D. (1990). Simulation/gaming and language acquisition. In D.Crookall & R. L. Oxford (Eds.), Simulation, gaming, and language learning(pp. 223–230). New York: Newbury House.
