THE EFFECTS OF THE ROLE PLAY INSTRUCTIONAL MODEL: LEARNING ATTITUDE, SOCIAL SKILL AND MOTIVATION

THE EFFECTS OF THE ROLE PLAY INSTRUCTIONAL MODEL: LEARNING ATTITUDE, SOCIAL SKILL AND MOTIVATION

Arailym Bolatova

Master student of Education and Humanities Faculty Suleyman Demirel University,

Kazakhstan, Almaty

Use of the role-play instructional model can help students obtain social skills that    need to be explicitly taught [1]. These skills include acknowledging another’s contribution, asking others to contribute, and keeping the conversation calm. In this instructional model, although students work together, each student is individually accountable. Consequently, students also can learn responsibility and accountability.

In this model, language acquisition is facilitated by students interacting in the target language. Each student in a group should be encouraged to feel responsible for devoting effort and participating in learning whether it is from a language or social aspect. As a result, leadership is distributed [2]. The key in the role-play activity is that teachers not only teach language, they teach cooperation as well.

Role-play activities require teachers to carry out their instruction carefully to fit the needs of learners and to teach students how to listen to, talk with, share with, and negotiate effectively with others. Communication in role-play is embedded in meaning-focused activity [3]. Students have to learn how to use verbal and nonverbal communication as their language skills develop. Consequently, the give-and-take exchange of messages enables them to create discourse that conveys their intentions in real-life communication.

In addition to the general learning advantages presented by role play, it promotes a more positive attitude toward learning. This is because role-play in all its forms, means asking people to image they are either themselves or another person under a specific situation. The role-players are required to act out the behavior as they believe are appropriate to how another person may behave. As a consequence, the player and the class will be in a better position to understand the reactions of, and to clarify the feelings, values, and attitudes of the person or the situation. Students in the role-play activity can build up their confidence and stimulate their learning since students can feel free to create their own drama they would like to act out. Therefore, role-play can be regarded as one of the most creative ways to engage students in their learning. In addition, the instructor in the role-play activity is required to patiently guide and monitor students’ activities and discussions so that students make their own discoveries and progress to a higher level learning outcomes. Consequently, students are more interested in learning under this pressure-released environment.

How role-play affects social skill ability. Holt and Kysilka stated that role play activity is defined as the spontaneous practice of various roles that exist in society. It provides a safe environment for people to study social behavior and values. [4] It  is a way for learners to explore and learn about the problems of human relations.

Students perceive other people’s points of view and see their behavior in a new light when they engage in human interaction by acting out problem situations. In addition, role-play is referred to as “reality practice” [5]. The major purpose of role-play activity is to have students identify with others and recognize how their behavior and thoughts can influence others.

Medina and Campano noted that drama is unique in that it provides an interactive context where participants can comprehend and stretch the limits of their day-to-day activities or realities through crucial reaction and both rehearsed and extemporaneous action [6]. Participants co-construct a make-believe world parallel to their own lives. They design and arrange a person’s character and an unreal situation animated in a drama by multiple social positions. Moreover, they reconcile their own experiences of the world with those roles enacted in the play [7]. In this active reconciliation, the participants start to interpret the world and to critically reflect on the various positions [8].

In role play activities, participants have the opportunity to take action and talk back to dominant social, cultural, and linguistic practices that may devalue their own cultural resources and identities in the imaginative space that is created through drama [9]. Through speaking and physical response, students can develop and reinterpret various aspects of their lives and critically assess forms of marginalization [10]. This also means that drama is not just limited to the study of other people, times, and places.

As an added benefit, Gallagher stated that role-play can offer a critical literacy perspective and a space to expose power relationships and adjudicate between competing beliefs and values, which become alive and tangible through role-play [11]. What makes role-play so critical is that learners will act on their roles based on their own interests, linguistic resources, and forms of cultural expression to the classroom community. Furthermore, during the role-play activity, students are allowed to mobilize their cultural and social identities and engage issues relevant to their immediate lives. They are free to fictionalize reality and enact it so that they can learn from each other in the group.

Jacobs suggested that instructors can teach students cooperative or social skills so that they can work together more effectively in cooperative learning [12]. Manifestly, collaboration is not only a way of learning but also a way for people to communicate. Many researchers have observed a positive impact when a cooperative learning approach is adopted in the curriculum.

McGroarty asserted that academic performance and language skills are increased because language learners are provided chances to practice the target language more through the use of a cooperative learning approach [13]. Students can become real communicators and develop their skills in the target language only if they are given the appropriate environment and many chances to speak in the target language.

As stated previously, role-play activity enables students to think in terms of positive interdependence, to learn how to work better together, to help not only the individual to be rewarded but others in the class, to acknowledge another’s contribution, to ask others to contribute, to keep the conversation calm, to feel responsible for participating, and to help the teacher and students cooperate. These are the techniques that can help students improve their social skills.

There are reasons why role-play should be infused in daily classroom instruction. For example, it enhances social skills such as cooperation, confidence, and concentration. Children in Kazakhstan right now are not communicating with their parents enough, and role-play provides a good opportunity to assist these children to regain their social skills. It also offers a chance to help them practice speaking in the target language. Moreover, one of the basic assumptions about the use of role-play is the belief that students have the ability to cope with their life situations and grow in their capacity to deal with problems intellectually in a safe, open environment.

How social skills improve English learning. McInnis declared that role-play activity is especially appropriate for observing and practicing socio-cultural variations in speech acts [14].  For example, learners in a role-play activity can practice such skills as complimenting or complaining. Role-play activities allow for various kinds of performances. They can be played from prepared scripts or created instantly via classroom discussion. Depending on student level, teachers can arrange or design the types of role-play they would like to use in the classroom.

How role-play affects students motivation toward learning. Role-play can engage an entire class, and it can be fun and lead the whole team to more effective learning. Students develop verbal and nonverbal communication skills when they are involved in role-play activity. In other words, students can establish fluency in language learning and the use of the body, face, and voice in communication.

Role-play is particularly profitable for EFL students who may not speak the foreign language at home. Students who participate in role-play activities are aroused to employ the language and improve fluency, pronunciation, and intonation. It is essential that language instructors come up with opportunities and the environment for role-play in the classroom due to the broad view among linguists that language is primarily a spoken art. It is essential to add role-play to the language arts curriculum if teacher desire to give students the opportunity to develop language and language-related abilities.

Thus, summing up, based on the studies cited, it is obvious that role-play is one of the most creative ways to engage students in their learning. Simply speaking, role-play is defined as asking students to imagine that they are either themselves or another person in a certain situation or environment. In general, during the role-play activity, participants are required to behave exactly as they feel the other person would behave in that particular situation.

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