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6373APPLYING ROLE-PLAYS IN A TEACHING PROCESS: ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES Matkarimova B.H.
Matkarimova Barno Habibullaevna - Teacher of English, TEACHING LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT, MANAGEMENT IN PRODUCTION FACULTY, FERGANA POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE, FERGANA, REPUBLIC OF UZBEKISTAN
Abstract: the article under discussion describes applying role-plays in a teaching process, their advantages and disadvantages. The author of the article suggests several tips for teachers to apply successfully role-plays in teaching process to motivate students to master a foreign language.
Keywords: role-plays, interaction, learners, activity, involve, real, world, relevant, a foreign language, practice, to master.
Learning a foreign language is a complex and long process as anyone who has tried will agree. One of the most difficult and frustrating things is making the transition from the classroom to the 'real' world. In the classroom, everyone knows you are a student and mistakes are allowed, and the environment is contained and safe. Speaking another language outside the classroom is completely different and often students are lost at sea as soon as they step outside the door. Lists of memorized vocabulary are suddenly useless when ordering in a restaurant.
According to Gillian's opinion, students or learners need some practice during the lesson. There are a lot of interaction patterns in which we can involve our learners during the lesson and one of them is applying role-plays in teaching foreign languages [1, p.p. 34-45].
Jeremy Harmer described Role Play as an activity: role play is an effective activity for adults and teenagers, because it increases learning retention, provides hands-on training, and enables better teamwork and communication. When students take part in Role Plays, they usually get lots of fun and they try to show their ability in acting as famous actors or actress: that is a fact; we also
use some drama acting during the lesson to get students' emotional abilities [2, p.p. 13-25].
The advantages of applying role-plays are:
• Students immediately apply content in a relevant, real world context.
• Students take on a decision making that might let them diverge from the confines of their normal self-imposed limitations or boundaries.
• Students can transcend and think beyond the confines of the classroom setting.
• Students see the relevance of the content for handling real world situations.
• The instructor and students receive immediate feedback with regard to student understanding of the content.
• Students engage in higher order thinking and learn content in a deeper way.
• Instructors can create useful scenarios when setting the parameters of the role play when real scenarios or contexts might not be readily available.
• Typically students claim to remember their role in these scenarios and the ensuing discussion long after the semester ends.
The disadvantages of applying role-plays are:
• It requires expert guidance and leadership.
• Sometimes participants may feel like threatened.
• Strongly depends on students imagination.
• Participants may be too shy.
• It becomes difficult for teachers to evaluate the student individually .
• Its a time consuming process.
• Its a failure when the group does not understand.
One of the biggest challenges of the role playing technique is to get all students to participate and be truly engaged. Instructors might want to consider ways of increasing the likelihood of strong student participation. The instructor might offer a participation grade somehow tied to a short product students produce from their perspective in their given role. It is a good
idea to find ways to increase student awareness of the likelihood their group might being called upon to share their answer with the entire class if they are playing their roles in a group context. The instructor might also consider using some of the role playing tasks in questions on exams and make it clear to students that that is the case. The instructor could even tell them that they might have to answer a question from the perspective of any of the roles, not just the one they were assigned [1, p.p. 34-45]. Try to think through the language the students will need and make sure this language has been presented. Students may need the extra support of having the language on the board. I recently did a 'taking a loan' role-play with business course students and we spent time beforehand drilling the structures the students would need to use. When the role-play began the students felt 'armed' with the appropriate language. At higher levels the students will not need so much support with the language but they will need time to 'get into' the role.
Rearranging the furniture can also help. If you are imagining you are at the tourist information office or at the doctor's surgery try to make it as real as you can. Students can even leave the room and make an entrance by knocking on the door.
Try to keep the roles you ask students to play as real to life as possible. It may be hard for students who have little opportunity to travel to imagine they are in 'Ye Olde Tea Shop' in the heart of the English countryside. However, it may be within their schema to imagine they have been asked to help an English speaker who is visiting their own country. This may involve using some L1 to explain about the local culture or to translate local menus into English for the guest to their country. Students working in the business world may find it easy to role-play a business meeting with colleagues visiting from abroad.
As students practise the role-play they might find that they are stuck for words and phrases. In the practice stage the teacher has a chance to 'feed-in' the appropriate language. This may need the teacher to act as a sort of 'walking dictionary', monitoring the class and offering assistance as and when necessary. If you are not happy doing this and you feel that the process of finding the
new language should offer more student autonomy, you could have 'time-out' after the practice stage for students to use dictionaries to look up what they need.
As mentioned above, feeding-in the language students need is fundamental. By doing so, they will learn new vocabulary and structure in a natural and memorable environment. It is a chance to use real and natural language.
There are many ways to correct mistakes when using role-play. It is not appropriate for the teacher to jump in and correct every mistake. This could be incredibly demotivating! Some students do like to be corrected straight after a role-play activity, while the language is still fresh in their minds. Sentences with errors can be written on the board for the group to correct together or self/peer corrected after a role-play.
In conclusion, role-play can be a lot of fun. If you still feel reluctant to use it in the class I suggest you begin to integrate it slowly. Why not extend an appropriate reading or a listening from a course book and turn it into a role-play? You may be pleasantly surprised by the results and your students will be motivated to master any foreign language!
References
1. Gillian Porte Ladousse. Role Play. Oxford Press., 1997.
P.p. 34-45.
2. Harmer Jeremy. The Practice of English Language Teaching.
Longman, 1999. P.p. 13-25.
