The Effect of Role-Playing for Building Students’ Speaking
Motivation and Positive Characters
Lingga Agustina Suganda, Zuraida Zuraida and Dedi Kurniawan
Sriwijaya University, Jalan Raya Palembang-Prabumulih, Indralaya, Indonesia
Keywords: Role-playing, speaking, motivation, positive characters.
Abstract: This study aims at investigating the effect of using role-playing on building students’ English speaking
motivation and positive characters. This case study focused on finding the students’ perception towards the
use of role-playing method during their speaking class in the English Education Department at one of the
universities in Indonesia. The data were collected through questionnaire and face to face semi-structured
interviews with the first, third, and fifth semester students. The results of this study indicated that students
had positive attitudes towards the use of role-playing during their speaking class. They claimed that the use
of role-playing method during the class could lead them to have better communication, interpersonal skills,
and management development since they would have to interact most of the time with one another starting
from preparing for the script, practicing, until performing the plays. Role-playing was believed to build the
students’ speaking motivation and four main positive characteristics, namely cooperation, creativity,
responsibility, and discipline.
1 INTRODUCTION
Many educators agree that teaching methods that use
students’ experiences can help to generate enthusiasm
for active involvement in learning process. Role
playing is one effective method that encourages such
experiences. It provides an opportunity for acting out
conflicts, collecting information about social issues,
learning to take on the roles of others, and improving
students’ social skills (Somervill, 1995, p. 28).
Role playing normally involves students playing
imaginary people in an imaginary situation. Role
playing is one type of active learning which is the
process of having students engage in some activities
that force students to reflect upon ideas and how they
are using those ideas (Michael, 2006, p. 160).
In addition, role playing also provides a
collaborative learning environment in which students
can employ scientific principles in their daily life
(Sloman and Thomson, 2010; cited in Duban and
Duzgun, 2013, p. 47) and become active in
participating in the learning process (Gonen and
Uyar-Dalkilic, 2003; cited in Duban and Duzgun,
2013, p. 47). Role playing can make students
inevitably immersed in a social milieu and create
more experiences for students on learning how to get
along with other people.
Meanwhile, role playing is also claimed as a
group process that always activate and develop social
learning, emotional intelligence, argument on values,
spiritual thinking, intuition and other meta-learning
skills that have been recognized as essential elements
in learning process of a human being (Piekkari, 2002,
p. 13). Pedagogically, sound scenario-based role
plays are activities with a specific learning outcome
designed to create a realistic learning experience for
participants (Neuendorf and O’Connell, 2011, p.
2182), in which with a little preparation, role-playing
activities in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL)
class can help students take control of their learning,
develop as individuals, and learn that English lessons
can be both enjoyable and productive. Therefore,
drama or in this case role playing is invaluable as a
means for developing language skills, encouraging
social interaction and group participation and
teaching students how to listen and respond
appropriately (Thomson and Evans, 2005, p. 14.
The value of role playing lies in the creative
process and its effective opportunity for working with
others. The process of preparing, practicing, and
performing role play in the classroom will lead to the
practice of building good characters for the students.
They will face a lot of opportunities to build good
characters among their classmates as well as their
teachers. For example, Gower (2010) states that role
Suganda, L., Zuraida, Z. and Kurniawan, D.
The Effect of Role-Playing for Building Students’ Speaking Motivation and Positive Characters.
DOI: 10.5220/0007166202950298
In Proceedings of the Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference
on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education (CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017) - Literacy, Culture, and Technology in Language Pedagogy and Use, pages 295-298
ISBN: 978-989-758-332-2
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
295

playing method can build the characters of (1)
developing skills in listening, decision making, and
citizenship, (2) understanding the importance of
respecting others, (3) understanding that everybody is
different and that it is natural to make mistakes, (4)
identifying people (in this case can be the teachers as
well as their classmates) students can trust, (5)
introducing responsibility, (6) developing social
skills and facilitating cooperation by having students
work in groups, and (7) enhancing self-esteem.
However, good character is not formed
automatically; it is developed over time through a
sustained process of teaching, for example, learning
and practice. Therefore, role playing is considered as
one of the most important speaking activities in
teaching a speaking class because it is also assumed
to be a suitable activity to enhance students’ positive
characters. A role play project has always been a
compulsory assignment to be carried out by the first
semester students for the course of Intensive English
Course (IEC) Speaking in the English Education
Department at one of the universities in South
Sumatera, Indonesia.
First semester students commonly face problems
related to their limited English Language ability,
especially in the speaking skill. The problem also
includes social interaction matters among new
classmates. Increasing speaking motivation by having
a group activities to perform a role play project during
the class is expected to overcome these problems.
Therefore, this study aims at investigating the
students’ perception towards the use of role-playing
method during their speaking class in relation to build
their speaking motivation and positive characters
while working in a team for a role play project.
2 METHOD
This study was conducted as a qualitative case study.
The participant of which were 168 first, third, and
fifth semester students from six total classes that had
been exposed with role playing method in the
Intensive English Course (IEC) Speaking class during
their first semester.
The data were collected through a questionnaire
and a semi-structured interview. The questionnaire
consisted of two open-ended and 15 close-ended
questions in a form of Likert-scale, while, for the
interview there were five open-ended questions given
to the sample. Five students from each class were
taken as the sample for the interview, so there were
30 students having the semi-structured interview. The
ten questions for the interview asked about the
students feeling and attitude (comfort, seriousness,
usefulness) when participating in the role play
activities in relation to their speaking motivation and
positive characters.
3 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
3.1 Findings From the Questionnaire
3.1.1 Speaking Motivation
The first open-ended question on the study concerns
the answers of the students to the question “What are
the effects (advantages and disadvantages) of using
role play in your Intensive English Course (IEC)
Speaking class?” Table 1 and 2 show the views and
relevant frequency.
Table 1: Views on the advantages of using role play.
f
Improving speaking skill
162
Self-confidence
122
Fun
151
Comfortable
125
One hundred and sixty two students (96.43%)
claimed that role playing method could improve their
speaking skill, and 122 (72.62%) students assumed it
could build their self-confidence. It was also assumed
to create a fun classroom atmosphere by 151
(89.88%) students, and 125 (74.40%) students felt
comfortable during the role playing activity.
Table 2: Views on the disadvantages of using role play.
f
No disadvantages
110
Time-consuming
58
Noisy class
57
Unequal role
38
Uncomfortable
34
Other friends’ personality
3
Role playing was considered time-consuming by
58 (34.53%) students. Fifty seven (33.93%) students
believed that it made the class become noisy, and 11
(6.55%) students claimed that they could share
unequal role in which some would speak very much
while others would speak very little. Thirty four
(20.24%) students felt uncomfortable because they
were shy or they had to play the role that they did not
like. While, three (1.79%) students even hate to
confront with their friend due to the annoying
personality of the friend. However, one hundred and
ten students (96.43%) claimed that role playing
method had no disadvantages.
CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology
Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
296

The second open-ended question on the study
concerns the answers of the students to the question
“Do you agree with the statement “Using role playing
can increase my speaking motivation in the class”?
Why?”
All students agreed with the statement. One
hundred and fifty two (90.48%) students claimed that
role playing activity can build their self-confidence,
so they were more confident to speak in front of the
class. Moreover, 109 (64.88%) students also stated
that they always got feedback from the lecturer, so
they became more confident with their grammar and
pronunciation. Ninety eight (58.33%) students
claimed that they had more preparation before
performing in front of the class, and it could decrease
their anxiety.
3.1.2 Positive Characters Building
Four questions in the close-ended questionnaire
directly related to how the students’ see role playing
activities to build their positive characters. Table 3
gives the percentage on how the students’ perception
toward the use of role playing to build the characters
of cooperation/teamwork, creativity, responsibility,
and discipline.
Table 3: Role playing to build students’ positive characters.
%
Cooperation/teamwork
57.74
Creativity
51.79
Responsibility
58.93
Discipline
55.95
The data showed that responsibility is the most
well-built character, followed by cooperation,
discipline, and creativity.
3.2 Findings from the Interview
The data from the interview supported the finding
from the questionnaire. They revealed the proof that
the students had positive perception towards using
role playing to build their higher speaking motivation
and positive characters.
They enjoyed the fun and exciting role playing
activities, in which they could avoid the textbook-
based and conventional learning strategies. However,
they still followed each stage in the role playing
activities (sharing roles, preparing script,
practicing/rehearsal, and performing/recording the
final plays) seriously because it was part of the
speaking class assignment. Therefore, they believed
they had to force themselves to increase their
speaking motivation.
Besides the four characters (discipline,
responsibility, cooperation/teamwork, and
creativity), the data from the interview showed that
the students’ self-confidence, tolerance, and
leadership skills are other positive characters that can
be built using role playing.
3.3 Discussion
The results of this study indicate that students had
positive attitudes towards the use of role-playing
during their speaking class. They claimed that the use
of role-playing method during the class could lead
them to have better communication, interpersonal
skills, and management development since they had
to interact most of the time with one another starting
from preparing for the roles/script, practicing, to
performing the plays.
Students had fun working cooperatively to plan
and act out because most of them agree that
enjoyment leads to better learning. They gained
higher self-confidence, so their motivation to speak
increased. Having adequate preparation and feedback
also led to the students’ higher speaking internal
motivation. Furthermore, since role playing was one
of the projects/assignments compulsory for the
speaking class, some students claimed that their
speaking motivation was forced to increase due to this
reason.
In addition, preparing for a role play project
requires a great deal of time and effort to be
successful. However, the class atmosphere was
considered fun and engaging, although some students
would claim that it was too noisy. Indeed, having a
classroom full of students having fun while learning
can be loud, but it is actually productive noise (Wong,
2014).
Working together as a team in a role play project
put students in an engaging as well as uncomfortable
situation. Therefore, students then learn to manage
themselves for the sake of their individual and group
needs, in which they could still gained higher
motivation and well-built good characters.
Responsibility, cooperation, discipline, and creativity
are the most well-built character besides self-
confidence, tolerance, and leadership skills. It is in
line with Joyce and Well (1986, cited in Somervill,
1995), who believe that role playing plays an
indispensable part in human development and offers
a unique opportunity for resolving interpersonal and
social dilemmas.
4 CONCLUSIONS
Role playing provides an authentic learning
experience for students. Using role playing to learn
English results in real communication, involving
The Effect of Role-Playing for Building Students’ Speaking Motivation and Positive Characters
297

ideas, emotions, feelings, appropriateness and
adaptability. It can also be a fun and engaging way to
nurture values and develop positive characters and
skills of initiative, communication, problem-solving,
self-awareness, and working cooperatively in teams.
In this study, role play is believed to build the
students’ speaking motivation and four main positive
characters respectively, namely responsibility,
cooperation, discipline, and creativity.
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Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
298