IMPROVING STUDENTS’ ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILL THROUGH ROLE

PLAY

https://eprints.uny.ac.id/20414/1/Beauty%20Kharismawati%20Susilo%20092022440

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Abstract

The aim of this study is to improve students' English skills by using role playing

techniques. This role play is expected to improve students' English language skills.

Based on observations, there are two problems in teaching and learning to speak. To

overcome this problem, researchers apply role play as a speaking activity. Researchers

collaborate with English teachers in implementing actions and observers. Data in

quantitative form. This data was obtained from the results of pre-test, post-test 1 and

post-test 2, and also questionnaire data. This research found that: (1) role playing can

improve students' speaking skills and can help them speak confidently, (2) the use of

role playing can give students more opportunities to practice speaking, and therefore

students can lose their fears to make mistakes and be more confident, (3) the use of role

playing can improve student fluency, pronunciation, vocabulary and accuracy.

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Tourism is one way to improve Indonesia's economy. Based on this argument, the

Indonesian Ministry of Education opens a Tourism Program at the vocational school

level. In the tourism and travel profession, students must prepare their skills seriously.

The most important skill or the first skill students must master is language skills.

Language skills are a tool for communicating with others. This is a tool for them to

interact with tourists. In the tourism profession, English has become a common

language for travelers from various countries. Tourism students who will work with

foreigners must be able to speak English well. Furthermore, with regard to the

school-based curriculum for vocational schools, they are required to master spoken and

written English.

There are four skills that must be fulfilled in English. Namely listening, speaking,

reading and writing. Mastering speaking skills is important for students who will work

in the tourism industry. They are required to talk to foreigners in many different

conversation contexts, such as taking reservations, providing information about

tourism, marketing products or services, etc. Therefore, having a high level of English

is very important for students who will work in the tourism industry.

The approach to teaching and learning languages today is communicative language

teaching (Richards, 2006: 2). The purpose of CLT is mainly to achieve communicative

competence. Even so, students who had English subjects before, most of them still had

low motivation to speak English. Their language skills are influenced by their native

language and they often face several problems, such as lack of vocabulary, grammatical

errors, pronunciation mistakes, and more. Basically, they should be the best guide for

tourists when they have graduated from this program. The author conducts action

research to solve students' problems in learning English. The author uses role playing as

an effective solution to a problem. Based on Harmer (2001: 69), activities in

Communicative Language Teaching involve students in a real or realistic way of

communication, where the successful realization of communicative tasks that they do is

at least as important as the accuracy of their language use. One of the communication

activities in teaching English (ELT) is role play, because it can be used to encourage

general mouth fluency or to train students for certain situations (Harmer, 2001: 352). In

other ways, by doing this activity, students can get many opportunities to talk.

The expected benefits of this study are as follows. Theoretically, this research is

expected to be a source of information to improve teaching activities in encouraging

students to speak English. Practically, this research is expected to help teachers to know

the use of role playing activities in the teaching-learning process of speaking. For

students, it is hoped that this research can improve their speaking skills in English and

they can enjoy learning to speak by doing role plays. For researchers, this research can

provide practice in developing knowledge and skills in problem solving teaching and

learning processes.

CHAPTER II

LITERATURE REVIEW

A. Theoretical Review

1. Speaking

a. The Nature of Speaking

Speaking is one of the skills students must master in learning English. Some experts

have various definitions of speaking. According to Louma (2009: 10), speaking is a

process of people who use their voices to speak meaningfully. In the same point,
Chaney (1998: 13) in Kayi (2006) states that speaking is the process of building,

sharing meaning, expressing ideas through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, in

various contexts. In line with the above statement, Thornbury (2005: 2) asserts that the

first point that needs to be underlined is that speech production takes place in real time.

Words follow words and phrases follow phrases. Likewise at the speech level, speech is

produced by speech. Based on the experts above, students can use language to

communicate. Students can share their opinions with others. In addition, they can

communicate verbal and non-verbal communication to establish social relationships.

Therefore, students must master several components to make communication

successful.

b. Speaking Skills and Aspects of Speaking

To talk means to interact with other people. This is an activity that involves two or more

people in which the listener and speaker must react to what they are talking about

(Johnson and Morrow, 1981: 70). From the definition above, speaking does not mean

an easy activity to do. According to Brown (2001: 270-271), there are eight factors that

make speaking difficult. These factors are grouping, redundancy, reduced form,

performance variables, colloquial language, level of delivery, stress, rhythm, and

intonation, and finally, interaction. In addition, Spratt, Pulverness and Spare (2005:34)

state that when people are speaking, they usually use a different aspect of speaking.

There are two main aspects of speaking, fluency and accuracy. Fluency means being

able to communicate with a language easily and well. In addition, accuracy in speaking

is the ability to produce correct sentences using correct grammar, vocabulary and

pronunciation.
2. Teaching Speaking

a. The Role of Teachers and Students in EFL Speaking

Teachers and students act as actors during teaching and learning activities in class.

They have their own role in the teaching and learning process. According to Harmer

(2001: 347-348), there are three important roles for teachers to make students speak

fluently. Explained as follows. First of all is as a prompter. In this case the teacher

cannot help students when they lose ideas. The second role of the teacher is as a

participant. In this case the teacher can be a participant among the students. The teacher

can join one or two groups as regular participants during the teaching and learning

process. The latter is a feedback provider. The teacher can give feedback to students,

when they have completed their activities. The teacher will inform and respond to

students about the contents of the activity and the language used. The role of students is

as a communicator to be actively involved in negotiating meaning.

b. Principles of Teaching Speaking

In speaking activities, it is very important for teachers to get the right teaching skills.

According to Shumin in Richards and Renandya (2002: 208), speaking is one of the

main elements of communication. In EFL teaching, speaking is an aspect that requires

special attention and instruction. To provide effective teaching, it is necessary for EFL

teachers to carefully examine the factors, conditions, and components that underlie

speaking effectiveness. In addition, interaction in teaching speaking is also the key to

improving the speaking abilities of EFL students. Harmer (2001: 87) argues that there

are three basic reasons for giving students speaking assignments that encourage them to

see all and all languages under their control. The first is the activity of giving students

the opportunity to discuss and practice material outside the classroom. This is a way for

students to feel how communicating in a foreign language is really like. The second is

Activities provide feedback to students. Then, good speaking activities can and should

greatly motivate students. These reasons can encourage students' language needs if the

teacher does all the components.

In conclusion, there are several principles in teaching speaking that must be mastered to

become a good English teacher. By keeping the principles in teaching speaking,

problems that usually occur in the teaching-learning process of speaking can be

minimized and students can learn English maximally in class.

c. Criteria for Speaking Tasks

Task design begins with an assessment of student needs. The purpose of the test and the

practical circumstances under which general guidelines will be set, the most important

factor in the assignment being designed is the score that the user needs to know about

the exam's speaking skills, Louma (2009: 29). Furthermore, Thornburry (2005: 90)

states that there are several criteria needed to make a good speaking task. First of all is

productivity. This means that speaking assignments must provide a great opportunity

for students to speak in the target language. The teachers must make a good assignment

to invite students to join in speaking activities. This shows that many students take part

in speaking activities.
d. Classroom Speaking Activities

In the teaching and learning process teachers must be innovative to make interesting

material, practice various teaching techniques and also use interesting media. This is

suitable for students to help them speak the language. Harmer (2001: 348) explains that

there are many speaking activities in the classroom that can be used in teaching

speaking. Its activities are explained as follows. The first is acting from the script. In

this activity, the teacher asks students to act out scenes from the drama, their dialogue is

made on their own. Students are asked to act in front of the class. The teacher must give

students time to prepare their dialogue. The second is a communication game. There are

many communication games. The aim is to make students speak in the teaching and

learning process, which speaks as fast and smoothly as possible.

e. Problems in Teaching Speaking

There are many problems in teaching speaking. In line with this statement, Rivers

(1981: 88) argues that teaching speaking requires more teachers than teaching other

language skills. The problem may stem from learning the language itself, and also from

technical problems in teaching speaking. According to Thornbury (2005: 28), there are

some problems in speaking English as a second language / foreign language. The first is

the L2 speaker knowledge. When students speak English, students must have more

vocabulary and grammar input. This is to improve students' speaking abilities. Many

students cannot speak English, students cannot speak fluently when they have no input

(vocabulary and grammar). The second is the process of regulating grammar. The last is

the lack of opportunities for practice. However, the teacher might find more problems

in teaching speaking related to functional problems. Problems in speaking learning

faced by students differ from each other. It may come because of age, self-esteem,

anxiety, motivational attitudes, opportunities, and so on. These factors will affect the

background knowledge of students about speaking skills. Teachers must analyze the

factors faced by their students and solve them using appropriate speaking class

activities.

f. Assessing Speaking

Assessment is an important aspect in language learning. Assessment is an ongoing

process that covers a broader domain, where every time a student responds to a question

or provides a comment, the teacher can make an assessment of student performance

(Brown, 2004: 4). Assessment can be used to see whether students have achieved the

learning objectives. In addition, Louma (2009: 5) asserts that evaluating speech is a

process with many stages in one cycle. Based on the explanation above, before

assessing speaking, the teacher needs to prepare students with sufficient pronunciation,

vocabulary, and language functions to be used in communication. Through these

conditions, students are expected to speak fluently and accurately and student

achievement in speaking can be assessed optimally as well. .

3. Role Play Activities

Role play is a method of acting out particular ways of behaving or pretending to be

other people who deal with new situations. In this case, Ladousse (1995:5) argues that

when students assume a “Role”, they play a part (either their own or somebody else) in

specific situation. “Play” means that is taken on in a safe environment in which students

are joyful and playful as possible. From the explanations above, role play is appropriate
activities to improve the students speaking skills at Travel Tourism Program, which

will involve fantasy or imagination to be someone else or to be ourselves in a specific

situation. It aims at the students to encourage thinking and creativity, let the students

develop and practice their speaking skill in the target language, which is English

language.

B. Review of Relevant Research Studies

This section deals with previous related studies. Based on theoretical reviews,

researchers will use role playing to improve students' speaking skills. Role playing has

been shown to improve students' speaking skills in the context of teaching and learning

English. Some research on the use of role playing in teaching speaking has been done

by several researchers. Kayi (2006) concluded that teaching speaking is very important

part of second language learning. The ability to communicate in a second language

clearly and efficiently contributes to the success of the students in class and success

later outside the class. Therefore, it is essentially for teachers for pay attention to the

teaching learning process of speaking rather than leading in memorization.

CHAPTER III

RESEARCH METHOD