Role plays and speaking skill

Abstract

Education has been transforming over time, for this reason, it is necessary for teachers to adapt to changes and create new and innovative ways of teaching specially to teach English speaking skills. The present research was developed with the aim to study the use of role-plays activities to improve speaking skills. There were 22 participants from fifth semester of “Pedagogía de los Idiomas Nacionales y Extranjeros” major at Universidad Técnica de Ambato. This research had a mix-method approach because qualitative and quantitative approaches were used. Also, it had a quasi-experimental design. The experiment was carried out in 5 weeks. The class-sessions of the research were in an online modality. The PET exam (Preliminary English Test) part 3 of speaking paper was applied as a pre-test at the beginning and as a post-test at the end of the research. The test consisted on speaking for one minute to describe a picture. The test was graded using an adapted rubric from Cambridge for speaking performance. Role-plays activities were applied as a treatment. Finally, the results of the pre-test and post-test were carefully analyzed with the SPSS program and using the T-test. The final results showed that the use of role-plays improve the students’ speaking skills.