Abstract
Communication is an essential ingredient of any system. It’s effective use can enhance our efficiency in any field of endeavor and improper use can lead to disastrous consequences. Effective communication, therefore, leads to more effective performance and provides information necessary for an enterprise to adjust to changing world. Communication is effective if each step is completed properly and it can break down if any step is incomplete or blocked by barriers to effective communication. To avoid miscommunication or not to communicate at all one needs to learn to speak first. Many people are not able to communicate due to lack of developed speaking skill. This paper focuses on the strategies of teaching speaking skills in context to role play and communicative tasks. If speaking skill is developed properly the person will feel comfortable to communicate. This paper describes an investigation that was conducted on the students of engineering college.
Key Words: Strategies, Communicative tasks, Role play
Introduction
In language education, understanding and expression help each other. Listening of one becomes the speaking for others that has same important factor as interaction process. The structure of human mind is such that in real world whatever experience is gained by communication is tried to express or speak. It is necessary to express his tendency affection. The physical need of a child also fulfills his inspiration of speaking –skills expression. Since the birth whatever the child listens, he gains his own understanding of sounds. As he grows he gains many listening experiences. From that he always tries to do the pronunciation of group, single and double letters. He gets an inspirable encouragement in childhood at this stage only. The process of developing speaking skills starts from family and goes on without any interruption in the school and college. Responsibility of developing speaking skill is on the head of language teacher. It is language teacher’s soul duty to develop the speaking skills do a child. Sometimes some students are so well in their speaking skills that communicate effectively. On the other hand inspite of completing the four years of engineering degree they are like a child in a babbling stage. This is due to lack of training in speaking skills. With the training of speech the important competencies of language Education are obtained .It is also necessary that a student develops the quality of speaking clearly with correct pronunciation, doesn’t feel shy in conversation expresses his ideas in a passionate manner, talks point wise and makes use of imagination, speaks effectively the proper words and sentences and cultivates the quality of clarity. To maintain the position in today’s mass communication mediums, a person will have to make his own expression rich and effective. The seeds of the well mannered speech should be sown in the students from the school time so that in future he doesn’t suffer from it. For this what is needed? The committed efforts which can be achieved by practice. If the child is good in speaking skills then he can be a good communicator. His communication will be very effective. As it is a two way process, but still he will be successful in handling the situation. His communication will leave the pure and clear messages .Today for the sustainability in the corporate world one needs to be good in communication skills, soft skills, enterpreneiourhip etc. It is a big challenge for the students to communicate effectively and softly in the interview for any purpose. This paper describes an investigation that was conducted over the course of my final year teaching practice placement in an engineering college. The research was carried out in a classroom of first year Gujarati speaking engineering students where English was taught as a second language. I decided to investigate the teaching of speaking skill, and this topic was chosen because I noticed over the period of one semester the students have got the exposure of writing in engineering college but speaking and listening were largely ignored.
In addition, English teachers in the engineering college tend to give priority to finish the course book, and they do not concentrate on speaking activities that much. Furthermore, students do not have the opportunity to communicate in English because Gujarati speaking parents, family and friends surround them, so I decided to engage these 18-21 years old students in communicative activities that would improve their speaking skill, especially by using role play.
Research Questions
My preliminary investigation in the first semester revealed that professors regard teaching speaking as time consuming, and having less credits therefore it should not be given more emphasize. They were pressurized to finish the course book. And the professors were using the monotonous method of teaching communication skills where there was no practical impact on the student’s mind in the absence of students’ speaking skills. To practice teaching the professors were not using the interactive activities to practice speaking skills therefore students were performing badly in this skill. I decided to implement some creative strategies to develop students speaking skills, based on the use of role play and communicative task and to find out the effect of these activities on students ‘spoken language, on their motivation and on their participation in class.
My research questions were as-
To what extent do role play and communicative tasks improve speaking?
What is the effect of using role play and communicative task on students’ motivation to speak?
What effects do role play and communicative tasks have on students’ participation?
Limitation
This research was a author’s personal endeavor not conducted for any organization or to acquire any degree. It was conducted for author’s personal interest in the area so element of informality can be revealed trough the study. The students selected for this research were selected engineering 60 students of particular one class not all the engineering students of this college.
Literature Review
The skill of speaking skill is as crucial as any other language skill. The four skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) naturally appear together in every English class, even in the EFL context. Affective factors are the most important issues that may promote students’ speaking. Affective factors include self esteem, emotion, attitude, anxiety and motivation. Shumin believes that “L2 or foreign language learning is a complex task that is susceptible to human anxiety, which is associated with feelings of uneasiness, frustration, self doubt, and apprehension”.(1997,para.2) These are the factors that affect student’ speaking in most EFL context and there are other issues as well. From example, the language level may be too difficult or too much is given at once and the amount of the language the teacher gives the students in each session may be too much, according to shumin(1999)Learning speaking has many purposes one of them are to communicate effectively. If speaking skill is used properly them it is sure that communication will be enhanced. As Communication is the life blood of social as well as corporate world. We exist because we communicate. Even our silence communicates a lot. We all have a layman’s idea of what communication is, but it is very important to understand the concept fully so that we can use it effectively. Communication is a word derived from the Latin word ‘communicare’ that means ‘To share’, Sharing the ideas, emotions, feelings, knowledge, information etc. This sharing is possible only when speaking skill is developed properly as effective communication network is central to all business functions. no business can prosper in the absence of efficient internal & external communication. Besides, communication skills of the employees are given higher importance at the time of their appointment as well as promotion. The effective internal communication is considered important for better Coordination as well as advantageous work atmosphere. External communication includes government agencies and department, distributors, retailers, individual customers and general public. Role play, as defined by Livingstone (1983), is a classroom activity which gives the students the opportunity to practice the language they may need outside the classroom. It is a speaking activity which improves communicative competence and provides practice in contexts which simulate real-life experience
The Role of Effective Communication Skills
Effective communication is vital to the smooth and successful functioning of any organization. It helps to build the healthy atmosphere among various departments. It enables the various departments to have better coordination. It also helps to create conducive work atmosphere where everyone lead to the higher. The effective communication also improves the management especially in terms of the relationship with labor union. It is also helpful in better relationship with government and financial institutions. In order to increase the sale of a product an effective communication skills is very useful. If anyone wish to show the image in the public it is possible with effective communication. In short it is now well established fact that effective communication is made possible with the help of language and language learning has four skills i.e. listening, speaking, reading writing among all the four skills speaking skill is very useful for effective communication. All the seven stages of communication process are to be completed successfully for effective communication and they are possible with the help of listening and speaking. In order to promote in life and work place as well as in group or for the recruitment of any post one must be using effective use of communication.
Thus it is very important to teach speaking skills. Today the methods and approaches of teaching speaking skills have been modified so to cope with the present scenario it is very necessary to learn it and get the mastery over it. Speaking skill has various aspects to learn in various manners. It has many factors affecting learning. Communicative activities include any activity that encourage and require a learner to speak with and listen to other learners as well as with people in the program and community. Communicative activities have real purposes: to find information, break down barriers, talk about self, and learn about the culture
Basic Factors of speaking skill
Speaking and listening competencies are interrelated on each other. For this the teacher has to create a good atmosphere. A student imitates the same pronunciation a mannerism. In this situation it is a prime duty of a teacher to provide the students the training of oral skills by exposing good illustrations. If the teacher does not provide the proper exposure of language then the students will not be able learn in a better way. For their teacher must take care of the following characteristics of listening skills mentioned below.
Good listening and proper speed
Sequence of thinking
Pure and clear pronunciation
Proper stress on vowels
Sweetness and lucidity
Proper selection of words
Pure and clear pronunciation
Pronunciation is the main characteristic of speaking skill. Pure and clear pronunciation is a sign of purification (sanskarita).Students that come to school bring his own ‘dialect’ and a manner of his region .His pronunciation is based on his culture. E.g. ‘Ch’ becomes ‘sa’. In such circumstances to improve the manners of regional dialect and to imbibe the manners of pure pronunciation, the teacher should do efforts patiently and by keeping equality.
Sequence of Thinking
While speaking one should take care for natural expression. It should be arranged such that it fulfills the aim of speaking with successive words and should have sentence formation and thoughts. If this order is not maintained then there will be no meaning. E.g. Pure milk of cow, but if we speak milk of pure cow it is not true.
Proper stress on vowels
It is necessary to keep proper stress on vowels to make the words clear. This will give the original look to the words.
Good listening and proper speed
For making the effective communication it is necessary that students should have proper speed and good listening. Students can listen properly for that he should be given training; his clear pronunciation should not be too slow or speedy.
Sweetness and Lucidity
In speaking skill, sweetness and melody are necessary parts. Lack of this two makes the speaking skill incomplete. If we have to maintain easiness and cordial relation in life communication, it is very necessary to have sweetness and word discrimination in speech.
Proper selection of words
For this it is necessary that a student should have rich vocabulary-for which listening exposure should be provided in proper proportion Words are originated from his experiences only. students can express their own experiences and thoughts in front of others, for that it is necessary to give him practice with different examples that where to use which word and should have proper habit of dictionary reference.
When a good model for the students is provided then students never fail to get success. In order to make students successful in effective communication there are some influences which affect on it. They are as-
Memory Power
Language of family members
Inspiration
Mass Media
The above mentioned points affect the speaking skills to a large extent especially inspiration works very much. If a student is highly motivated he the learning becomes fast. So in order to make the students learn faster the teacher should motivate them.
Motivating students to Speak
To motivate students in EFL context, teachers should include activities and strategies that attract students’ attention and make them interested in the lesson. As Peck (1978), cited in Celce- Mircia (2001), states “Activities need to be child centered and communication should be authentic. This means that children are listening or speaking about something that interests them, for their own reasons, and not merely because a teacher has asked them to”(1978,p139).Also, Peck (1978),cited in Celce Murcia (2002),P.139),outlines some points that the teacher should consider in the activities: a focus on meaning and value, not correctness; a focus on collaborating and social development; the provision of rich contexts, and teaching the four skills through a variety of activities. A superior teacher encourage his/ her students to speak English as much as possible inside and outside the classroom
EFL teacher must encourage students to use language for social interaction in the classroom. Brown (1994) advocates that students get enough opportunities to practice the language. This helps them to acquire the language in more natural contexts. Through interaction, students can build their own conversations and create meaning that they und3rstand, and that supports and helps them. Krashen and Terrel (as cited in Lightbown and Spada, 1999) find that communication provides students with opportunities for them to focus on using the language rather than talking and learning the structure of the language. Therefore, the topics or themes around which students learn language should capture their attention and encourage them to interact more with each other. Teacher’s emphasis should be on making meaning, not on error correction.
Strategies to foster Participation
The strategies the teacher should focus on should be interesting and should capture students’ attention. In the young learners’ classroom, these activities are usually centered on songs, poems, chants, drama, stories, games and total physical response activities. (TPR)All these activities can affect young learners and enhance their learning the language. Deestri (2002) believes that many teachers consider games as merely fun activities that are a waste of time, but he states that games in the EFL context are much more than that. He believes that games include many factors such as a rules, competition, relaxation, and learning which are all useful in promoting speaking. Games are useful because they offer situations that lower students stress and give students chance to engage in real communication. It is asserted that students are encouraged when they have friendly competition with each other, so each student will participate in the classroom. Consequently, teachers can use these games to present and review new knowledge, vocabulary, and grammar. Games are good teaching tools that can be used to develop students’ language learning and practice communication.
Teachers should take into consideration that role play can develop language skill and bring enjoyment and fun into the classroom. As we know that the enjoy aspect of learning language through communicative games is directly related to affective factors. The affective filter is one of the five hypotheses. Positive attitude towards learning should be present. Language practice, stimulation for discussion, attitude and feelings provide a comfortable atmosphere variety and fun to learning.
The strategies the teacher uses can be fun and enjoyable, and at the same time achieve academic goals. Teachers should choose activities that enhance students learning, and avoid ones that are a waste of teachers’ and students’ time. Good and Brophy (2000, p.30) state that: “learning should be fun and motivation problems appear because the teacher somehow has converted an inherently enjoyable activity into drudgery.” It can therefore be concluded that interesting and fun strategies can be used to promote speaking in the EFL classroom. According to Brown (1994), if strategies are intrinsically motivating and appeal to students’ goals and interests then it can have a positive impact on their speaking.
The teaching Strategies
I decided to implement the use of role play and communicative tasks as everyday activities to encourage students to speak about the set themes in their class. Students participated in the communicative tasks, that I created which were based on their unit of the course (unit-14 Grammar and vocabulary) as warming up activities. For each topic I created one or two activities based on the structures and vocabulary. In addition I had made the various role plays to make them participate. As they are the students who will have to deal with the corporate houses, workers, managers, sight engineers, etc. They need to do complain of all types and their reply, presenting proposals, submitting the reports and many more things they should do. For that many roles were prepared, many situations were created to act upon and their dialogues prepared by the students. The students used role play to talk, using dialogues that they were given practice and then present to their colleagues. After that, the students add to create their own dialogues and practice them, and then present them to their classmates. This was a regular routine of my class as some students were very enthusiastic for role play.
Research Approach
Mills has defined action research as “any systematic inquiry conducted by a teacher in the teaching environment together information about how their particular schools operate, and how they teach and how well their students learn.(Mills 2003, p.5)This makes it an ideal research approach for teachers as it gives them an opportunity to solve problems in the classroom. It inspired me and provided me with a framework to investigate the use of creative strategies to encourage students’ speaking skills. Action research is made up of a four steps process: Identifying an area of focus, collecting data, analyzing and interpreting the data, and developing an action plan, which is again evaluated, and the process continues until a satisfactory result reached. It follows a reflective cyclic pattern which makes is an ideal approach to improve teaching.
Burns has stated that there are three principles in the ethical conduct of action research:”Responsibility (p.71) therefore I explained my research to my colleague the HOD of the branch selected for the research. “Confidentiality” (p.71), so I assured the participants that their names or identities would not be disclosed and third is “Negotiation” (p.71) therefore before I started collecting data I sought permission by letter from the college administration, from the Principal councilor and from the parents.
Data collection Tools
The data collection tools that I chose to give me information on the effectiveness of my teaching strategy were observations, surveys, questionnaires interviews and a research diary. For the observations non-participant observer was invited into the classroom twice a week for about four weeks to record students’ reaction towards using the role play and communicative tasks I was teaching them. Bell believes that it is difficult to observe your own classroom, because as a participant observer, you can be biased and subjectivity can occur while observing. Also as a student teacher, I was familiar with the students’ personalities, strengths, and weaknesses and this may create a biased response (Bell 1999). Through observation guidelines that were given to the non-participant observer, I was able to find out the effect of the role play in promoting and improving students speaking.
According to Burns(1999) a survey is form of collecting data where the same questions are asked to acquire information from a representative range of participants .In the third week I used an attitude scale survey to figure out students’ attitude towards the role play I was teaching them. A questionnaire, which is very similar to a survey, was also used. Burn and Hood (1995) as cited in Freeman, 1998) define “a questionnaire as a set of questions to which respondents write out their responses to the questions provided. This questionnaire, which I used in the fifth week, was used to find out the students’ opinions and reactions to use communicative tasks to encourage them to speak. The difference between these two tools is that the questionnaire was used to get a response from selective group, whereas the survey was used to collect data from a large group quickly; the reason behind choosing the survey and the questionnaire methods of data collection is that they are relatively quick ways to collect data.
I interview the class councilor as well as the Head of the department to find out his opinion about students’ improvements in speaking after implementing my strategies. As Macintyre state “an interview is a face to face interaction which allows the interviewer to ask carefully prepared questions and in addition to probe the respondents so that further information is obtained” (2000.p.84) I conducted semi structured interview because I could add some more questions that popped up as we spoke, and at the same time I could probe further if there were gaps in the data.
I also filled in a daily diary to record my private thoughts from specific observations made each day where I could express my feelings and judge any situation without fear of any criticism, and where I could reflect on the effectiveness of my lessons while implementing my action plan. According to Wallace (1998), “a diary is a private document where in the writer keep and writes his/her feelings and thoughts.”
Data Analysis
Three themes emerged as a result of my analysis of the data collected. First, it seems that my use of songs and puppets resulted in more language being produced by students; that students’ speaking actually improved; and that students were more motivated to participate in class as a result of the introduction of these activities.
Abundance of Language Production
Reflections noted in my daily dairy show that I believed that the students started to produce more oral language. At first I noticed that they were memorizing their dialogues to present to their classmates, but after using communicative tasks and role play in the classroom to help students to produce and acquire more language, they were able to speak more spontaneously. Using communicative tasks and role play daily seemed to make them more relaxed and confident, and therefore they gradually started to speak without memorizing, and began to create their own dialogues. My daily dairy observations are supported by the semi-structured interview with the branch HOD and councilor. When I asked them what they thought of the students’ level before and after implementing the role play and communicative tasks, they replied.-“Before they hesitated to answer a simple question and they were struggling to complete one correct sentence. They refused to speak English in the class; they only used Gujarati. I think this is because they were afraid of making mistakes. But after implementing your strategies I am surprised and shocked at the results. They can even create their own simple dialogues. I can see my students are producing more language than I expected. I think this is big step that you took and succeeded”.
This impression is further supported by a non-participant observer who attended my sessions once a week for about four weeks. To get another perspective, I asked another English teacher in the school to observe the implementation of my strategies, and she noticed that the students enjoyed the role play, and that they helped the students to produce the language related to the prescribed topics in an enjoyable way.
Up gradation in Speaking
In the questionnaire the students were asked to give their opinion about using communicative tasks in their conversation and whether it helped them to improve their language. One student responded that using role play increased her vocabulary, and that she had learnt how to create her own dialogues. Another student remarked:
First I was afraid of making mistakes, but when we started working with the role play in groups, it gave me a chance to improve my language and I learnt from my classmates.
This showed that the students felt confident when they worked with the role play as a group, and suggests that social interaction and an enjoyable approach helps the students to acquire the language more naturally.
The interview with the classroom teacher also showed that the students’ levels had improved. Answering a question regarding the benefits of the role play and communicative tasks, she answered:
I admit that students’ speaking improved. Students can now speak and make conversation. I notice that students are more confident to work in groups. I think this is the reason behind the improvements in students’ speaking.
This again illustrated that students felt confident about speaking in groups while using the role play and communicative tasks, and working collaboratively with the role play built their confidence and increased their self-esteem and they therefore took more interest and produced more language.
Higher level Motivation to Participate
The attitude scale survey results showed that attitude towards using role play and communicative tasks in the classroom were positive. Everyone in the class said that they were motivated to participate in playing the roles and communicative games and. They also commented on the students’ level of participation during my interview with him, saying that:
“Students’ participation is better when you use these strategies. In my class they do not speak English so much.” Furthermore, I realized through my reflective daily dairies that having a variety of interesting activities and strategies encouraged students to participate. Through reading the reflection in my daily diary, however, I saw that while they enjoyed role play and communicative tasks, they preferred communicative tasks because they were new activities for them.
Conclusion
The time allowed by the HOD for me to implement my strategies was limited, as he was under pressure to cover other subjects’ syllabus and time was also a limiting factor in this research insofar as it would be better if the strategies were implemented over a longer period. Time was also a limiting factor due to the fact that data collected over a longer time period produces results that can be considered to be more reliable and valid. None the less, conducting this action research made me aware of the importance of the teaching of speaking in the EFL context. I recommend that teachers of language to under graduate level learners should use a variety of strategies that encourage the students to speak in the classroom. Materials from the prescribed syllabus can be adapted to include more speaking activities. Additionally, I recommend that teachers encourage students to work collaboratively on speaking tasks. I also strongly recommend that teachers consider implementing other strategies to promote students’ speaking skills, such as presentations, interview, and one minute speaking and show-and-tell sessions.
Through this research, I learnt about many strategies that help to promote speaking in the under graduate level language learners’ classroom, and it gave me an opportunity to implement the use of role play and communicative tasks to enhance students’ communicative skills. The data collected seem to support my assumptions that using role play and communicative tasks would have a positive impact on students’ spoken production, and would increase students’ confidence in acquiring the language, and would improve their speaking skills.
Appendix 1
STUDENT SURVEY
Rate the following statements using the scale below:
1 – Strongly Disagree 2 – Disagree 3 – Neutral 4 – Agree
5 – Strongly Agree
1) I enjoy role-playing projects.
2) If given a choice, I would prefer to do projects that include a role-playing activity.
3) Role-playing helps me remember information more than traditional methods.
4) I enjoy working with others during role-playing projects.
5) I prefer hands-on activities compared to lecture note learning
Appendix 2
INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
1) What did you think about the programme?
2) What did you learn by doing the programme?
3) What do you think of role-playing? Why?
4) Have you ever done role-playing before? How was it different?
5) Do you believe role-playing makes your student’s learning more meaningful? Why or why
not?
6) Do you believe role-playing was helpful in understanding how presidential?
Debates work? Why or why not?
7) Would you enjoy similar projects in the future? Why or why not?
8) What types of teaching methods do your teachers use?
Appendix 3
ROLE PLAYING QUESTIONNAIRE
1) What is role-playing?
2) Do you enjoy role-playing?
3) Have you role-played in any of your classes before? If yes, which classes?
Appendix 4
For communicative Tasks
Activity –1: Conversation Grid
Activity –2: Information Gap
Activity –3: Language Experience Approach
Activity–4: Games
References
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About the author
Heera G Rajwani has eleven years of experience in teaching of English at under graduate level. She is working in the noble Group of institutions Junagadh since 2010, and teaching communication skills and Contributor Personality Development to Engineering students before this she was working with Patel Kelvani Mandal PTC College Junagadh where she was teaching English Method. Her areas of inters are ELT, preparation of small courses for students as well as faculty members, communication skills and Soft skills.