The use of role play activities in enhancing 10th graders’ motivation and speaking performance at Nam Cao High School

The use of role play activities in enhancing 10 th graders’ motivation and speaking performance at Nam Cao High School Trần Thị Phấn Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ Luận văn ThS.. Thus, to m

The use of role play activities in enhancing 10 th graders’ motivation and speaking performance

at Nam Cao High School

Trần Thị Phấn

Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ Luận văn ThS Chuyên ngành: English teaching methodology; Mã số: 60 14 10

Người hướng dẫn: Dr Đỗ Tuấn Minh

Năm bảo vệ: 2013

Keywords: Tiếng Anh; Phương pháp giảng dạy; Kỹ năng nói; Lớp 10

Content

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

Nowadays, English has become one of the most important languages in the world Especially in the globalization trend, it is spoken as a second language and an official language

in many countries, and as a foreign language in the global world as well Almost all the people from many different countries around the world use it to communicate At high schools in the whole country, English is now a compulsory subject for all students In traditional teaching, students were required to acquire English grammar; however, nowadays in the light of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), they are required to acquire various skills and language items In the international relationship, English speaking ability is very important for people to be able to integrate into the wide world The speaking skill is measured in terms of the ability to carry out a conversation in the language Therefore, in some recent years, the focus of teaching has been promoting oral skills in order to respond to the students’ needs for effective communication and the ability to communicate in it efficiently has been the goal of every learner However, how to teach and learn speaking effectively is still a challenging question to

both teachers and students at many high schools in Vietnam Evidence shows that too many school students are unwilling to take part in speaking activities in class despite teachers’ efforts

to provide students with opportunities to develop their communicative skills This may be caused

by a variety of factors coming from teachers’ side, students’ side and others including classroom environment, types and contents of activities, etc Among those factors, students’ lack of motivation has been considered as the important one Motivation is one of the key issues

in language teaching and it has long been believed to have a good impact on success or failure of

a language learner Skills and techniques to motivate students to practice the four basic skills, especially speaking skill, are essential for language teachers Thus, to motivate students in a speaking lesson, teachers often use a wide variety of communicative activities such as discussion, role-play, simulations, information gap, jigsaw, etc Among them, role play is regarded as a very typical and effective way to improve students’ speaking performance According to Ladousse (1987), a role play uses different communicative techniques and develops fluency in the language, promotes interaction in the classroom and increases motivation Role play can improve students' speaking skills in any situation, and helps them to interact As for the shy students, role play helps provide a mask, where students with difficulty in conversation are open minded Besides, Jeremy Harmer (1986) advocates the use of role-play for the following reasons:

- It's fun and motivating

- Quieter students get the chance to express themselves in a more forthright way

- The world of the classroom is broadened to include the outside world, thus offering a much wider range of language opportunities

- Real situations can be created and students can benefit from the practice

- Mistakes can be made with no drastic consequences

From my point of view, it is of great importance to investigate the effectiveness of role-play activities in enhancing students’ motivation and speaking performance That is the reason why I

would really like to conduct a study on “The use of role play activities in enhancing 10 th

graders’ motivation and speaking performance A case study at Nam Cao high school” It is

hoped that the research will be a certain contribution to the improvement of teaching speaking

skill for students at Nam Cao high school

2 Aims and research questions

The study is conducted with the aim of investigating the use of role play activities in

speaking lessons at Nam Cao high school In details, the aims of the study are:

- Explore the attitudes of students at Nam Cao high school towards applying role-play to speaking lessons

- Investigate the use of role-play activities by teachers at Nam Cao high school in teaching speaking to 10th graders

- Investigate the effectiveness of role- play activities in enhancing motivation and speaking performance of 10th grade students at Nam Cao high school

The present study is designed to answer the following questions:

1 What are the attitudes of students at Nam Cao high school towards using role-play activities

in a speaking lesson?

2 How do teachers of English at Nam Cao high school teach speaking to 10 th grade students with role play activities?

3 In what ways do role-play activities improve motivation and speaking performance of 10 th grade students at Nam Cao high school?

3 Significance of the study

The research is a great attempt to investigate the effectiveness of role-play activities in motivating 10th grade students at Nam Cao high school to participate in English speaking lessons Once completed, it will be a useful source for those who are English teachers at high schools Moreover, this study provides teachers at Nam Cao high school suggestions to apply role-play activities successfully Thus, the results of the research will make a great contribution

to the improvement of teaching speaking skill for students at high schools

4 Scope of the study

Although there are many different ways to motivate students in English speaking lesson, all these issues cannot be fully covered in this paper Due to the limited time and the length of the study, the researcher only focuses on exploiting role-play activities as a way of motivating 10th grade students at Nam Cao high school in English speaking lessons Besides, the target that the study investigates and serves is just 90 students from 2 classes of grade 10 in the context of Nam Cao high school

5 Method of the study

With the aim of addressing the research questions, techniques of an action research are used: survey questionnaires and classroom observation Both quantitative and qualitative methods are employed to carry out the study

6 Thesis organization

This study consists of three main parts:

Part I, Introduction presents the rationale of the study, the aims of the study, research questions,

scope of the study, significance of the study, methods of the study, and organization of the study

Part II, Development includes three following chapters

Chapter 1, Literature Review displays the theoretical background of motivation, teaching

speaking skills and role play

Chapter 2, Methodology presents the context of the study, participants, research instruments and

data collection procedures

Chapter 3, Data Analysis and Discussion, provides an analysis of the data as well as the

interpretation of the results

Part III, Conclusion summarizes the findings, and pedagogical implications, limitations of the

study and suggestions for further study are provided in this part

References and Appendices are presented in the last pages of the study

REFERENCES

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20 http://iteslj.org/Articles/Kayi-Teaching Speaking.html

21 http://ebookbrowse.com/skripsi-using-role-play-in-teaching-speaking-pdf-d183222236

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http://findpdf.net/pdf-viewer/IS-ROLEPLAYING-AN-EFFECTIVE-TEACHING-METHOD-A.html

23 http://www.scn.org/ip/cds/cmp/modules/tm-rply.htm

24 http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/articles/role-play