ISSN 2798-0650

Volume 1 Issue 2 2021

DOI: 10.36663/joes.v1i2.159

Improving Students’ Speaking Skill through Role-Play

Technique in 21st Century
I Gusti Ayu Dwi Pradnyandari Pinatih, Universitas Pendidikan Ganesha, Indonesia
[email protected]
Abstract
Speaking is one of hard skill that should be mastered by students in English. In the speaking class,
students faced several problems such as the learners show a low enthusiasm and motivation in speaking,
afraid and shy to speak. It arises because of some factor such a low interest, material, and improper
technique which apply in the class. In solving those problems, it needed an attractive teaching technique.
The implementation of role-play as an appropriate teaching technique in the 21st century that can
stimulate students in learning especially in speaking class can be one alternative. Role-play serve many
advantages, one of them is to urge students in speaking. This study will use library research as the
method for collecting the data. The findings show that role-play teaching technique strongly can improve
students speaking skill in the classroom.
Keywords: Speaking, Role-play technique

Introduction
As an international language, English become the most important language that mostly
should be mastered by all people from different counties, Purnamawati et al. (2015). English is a
language that can be used to communicate with foreigners. Especially when seeing the potential
of Bali as one of the tourist attractions in Indonesia that are visited by many foreigners. This
condition makes English being more important to be learned by all groups, specifically for
students. The basic purpose of learning English is to use and communicate the language as a
human communication tool. As a learner in learning a language, to be able to communicate
correctly in English, students must be introduced to four basic skills in English, such as listening,
speaking, reading, and writing.
Actually, all of those basic skills are important. However, the fact shows that in
communication, speaking is the most important skill. From those four skills, speaking becomes
the harder skill to be mastered. Purnamawati et al. (2015) defined speaking as an interactive
process of oral communication in expressing an idea, feeling and sharing information with the
other. Then, it makes English becomes a skill which important to teach to the students. As we
know that the aim of studying English is to make the learner being understand and fluently in
speaking. Introduce students earlier about this skill is important to make them familiar with this
skill. Towards a good speaking ability, students are expected to be able in applying and using
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DOI: 10.36663/joes.v1i2.159
English in their daily life as well as they communicate in the learning process (Arif et al. 2019).
Furthermore, learners also allow getting a lot of practices and drills to grow a good habit in
speaking. However, those expectations run together with several problems faced by the learners
in the learning process.
The fact shows that in speaking class, students face several problems in the teaching and
learning process. According to Suryani (2015), it stated that students show a low enthusiastic and
motivation in learning English. Inline Arham et al. (2016) mention that students in learning this
skill, they often show that they are afraid and shy to participate in the speaking class. Arif et al.
(2019) stated that students also lack in vocabulary, which makes them confused in
communicating. Those main problems arise because of some factors. As mention by Arham et al.
(2016), firstly student does not has high interest in speaking. Second is the material which hard
to be understood. The third is the implementation of inappropriate teaching techniques. To
overcome this problem, it needed a solution. According to Harmer (1991), a teacher has an
important role as a learning source. It means that teachers need to be a facilitator in creating and
finding the appropriate technique in order to stimulate students to be able to speak in the class.
There are many teaching techniques that can stimulate and urge students speaking skill.
Teaching technique in the 21st century concerns more on 4C skills. They are communication,
collaboration, critical thinking and problem solving, and creativity and innovation. In line with
teaching technique in the 21st century, the relevant teaching technique is role-play. Role-play can
be defined as a simulation or an action in imitating a character, mostly student play act being
someone else in the real world. Role-play is a teaching technique in which students are given
specific roles and they must speak and behave based on the roles they receive. Role-play
technique serves many advantages that can help to solve students’ problem in speaking.
According to the Harmer (1991) said that role-play can facilitate students in speaking
continuously toward the real world. Inline, Arham et al. (2016) stated that the use of role-play
can promote students to communicate in specific situations. The implementation of role-play in
the learning process can be an alternative in the speaking class.

Literature Review
a. Speaking Skill

Speaking is one of four basic skills in English. The existence of English in Indonesia is as
a foreign language (EFL). This situation also makes speaking skill being essential to be learned.
Purnamawati et al. (2015) define speaking as an interactive process of oral communication in
expressing an idea, feeling and sharing information with the other. The main purpose of learning
English is to be able in using English as the communication tool when speaking with others,
especially with foreigners. It is in line with (Arif et al., 2019) stated that speaking is a productive

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DOI: 10.36663/joes.v1i2.159
skill which uses language to deliver information from one to another. According to
(Purnamawati et al., 2015), there are two components of speaking that students should be
mastered when they learn the speaking skill. Those components are accuracy and fluency.
Accuracy is the correct use of language in terms of grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation.
Fluency is the ability to convey a language at a continuous speed. It means fluently in speaking.

b. Role-play Technique

Role-play is one of teaching technique in the 21st century. According to Umam (2011),
role-play can be defined as a simulation or an action in imitating a character, mostly student play
act being someone else in the real world. Suryani (2015) stated that role-play is a technique
which can promote students to speak in the classroom. Role-play is a teaching technique in
which students are given specific roles and they must speak and behave based on the roles they
receive. Arham et al., (2016) stated that the implementation of role-play technique improves
students’ both in speaking ability and self-confidence. According to Osuafor (2017), mentioned
that role-play teaching is a technique that has many advantages:
- Role-play emphasize on students centered.
- Role-play can increase students’ interest in learning.
- Role-play serves many opportunities to practice the language and their social skill.
- Role-play can help students to grow a real-world concept and get more deepen
knowledge.
- Role-play can grow a good habit for students in their social life. They learn how to
behave in a specific situation

According to Jakob (2018), to make the role-play teaching technique run smoothly in the
classroom, here are several steps of the implementation of the role-play teaching technique:
- Explain to students about the technical implementation of the role-play
- Dividing students into groups
- Tell a story or situation to students
- Provide vocabulary that reflects the story or situation
- Give students time to prepare the dialogue from the role-play that will be present
- Give time to students in each group to present their role-play in front of the class
- Allow each student an opportunity to provide feedback among the group

Thus, from these steps, the use of role-play in improving students' speaking skills already
reflects the 4C concept of teaching technique in the 21st century. Firstly, when students are given
some vocabulary in the story which is used as keywords in making role-play, this clearly reflects

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the critical thinking concept. Second, when students make the dialogue of the role-play, it
reflects creativity and innovation concept. Third, when students display the role-play that has
been made, it reflects collaboration and communication concept.

Method
This research was a library research method. A library research method is known by a
method of collecting the data from some articles, journals, or even books to develop a certain
study. Library research refers to a method that combines some data from articles, journals and
books as a data source that is used as a reference. The data that has been collected from several
literature sources will be analyzed qualitatively. Library research is used as a method to make the
researcher easier in collecting the data without directly goes to the fields. Then the data will be
used as references to support the recent study, which is about the use of role-play technique in
improving students’ speaking skill. In collecting the data, there are several steps that the
researcher should be done. Those steps are found the related sources, read the source, classify the
supporting point, and analyzing the data based on the purpose of the research descriptively.

Findings & Discussions

Based on previous studies, which talking about improving students’ speaking skill
through the use of role-play technique, it found a significant improvement in students' ability in
speaking. All of the previous studies proved that the used of role-play technique in teaching
speaking can regularly boosting students ability especially in speaking. There were a lot of
advantages which can get from the implementation of the role-play technique in teaching
speaking. According to the Osuafor (2017), he stated that the used of role-play technique as a
teaching tool can give many positive advantages for students. Those advantages were firstly is
role-play can emphasize on students centered. By role-play students speak individually and
demonstrate their ideas individually. It proved that by doing role-play, it showed that students
turn to students centered. Secondly, role-play can increase students’ interest in learning. The
used of role-play as a teaching technique is more fun rather than learning by using book only. By
using role-play students will not feel like learning and they will be more enthusiastic and
interested in the lesson. Thirdly, role-play serves many opportunities to practice the language and
their social skill. Role-play is a technique that teaches students to socialize and practice the
scenes they get. With this practice, students get more time to develop their speaking skills.
Fourthly, role-play can help students to grow a real-world concept and get more deepen
knowledge. By doing role-paly students build a real-world concept when they did the scenario
which tells more all about life. Lastly, role-play can grow a good habit for students in their social
life. They learn how to behave in a specific situation. It refers to the way students interact with
the other and they practiced scenarios that reflect real life. Of course this is such a good lesson
for student life.
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All of these advantages were supported by the finding on several previous studies.
According to Purnamawati et al., (2015), the use of role-play teaching technique in the speaking
class gives a great improvement for students’ speaking skill. Inline, Arham et al., (2016) Role-
play is an attractive learning which improves students’ both in speaking ability and self-
confidence. Furthermore, Jakob (2018) found that role-play technique is a fun activity to do that
can trigger students to participate actively in speaking class. It was happened because role-play
teaching technique serves many benefits for students, especially in speaking. Jakob (2018)
mention that there are some benefits of role-play such the first, role-play is a fun activity to do.
Second, role-play can trigger students to participate actively. Third, role-play is an attractive
learning. Fourth, role-play teaches many things in simply. The last, in conducting role-play
technique, there is no complicated preparation. Those are the benefits of role-play teaching
technique. From these studies, it can be concluded that the use of role-play technique in the
learning process can improve students’ speaking skill. Then, the implementation of role-play
technique improves students’ both in speaking ability and self-confidence.

Conclusion
This research conducted in order to improve students’ speaking skill by using role-play as
one of 21st century teaching technique. Based on the findings and discussion of the study, it
simply concluded that the use of role-play technique significantly can improve students’
speaking ability. This can be proven from the results obtained by several researchers in the
previous studies. It can be seen from the difference in student scores during the pre-test and post-
test. Students’ score at the post-test stage were higher than those at the pre-test stage. This shows
that there is an improvement in student score after the implementation of the role-play teaching
technique. So it can be concluded that one alternative to improve students’ speaking skill is by
the implementation of role-play technique which also reflects a 21st century teaching technique.

References
Arham, R., Yassi, A. H., & Arafah, B. (2016). The Use of Role-play to Improve Teaching
Speaking. INternational Journal of Scientific and Research Publication, 6(3), 239–241.
Arif, F., Sunarmo, & Indriiyanti, C. (2019). Improving Students’ Speaking Skill through Role-
play Technique. REGISTER Journal of English Language Teaching of FBS-Unimed, 3(2),
1–7. https://doi.org/10.24114/reg.v3i2.1126
Harmer, J. (1991). The_Practice_of_English_Language_Teachin.pdf.
Jakob, J. C. (2018). Improving the Students Speaking Ability Through Role-play Method. IJET
(Indonesian Journal of English Teaching), 7(1), 331.
https://doi.org/10.15642/ijet.2018.7.1.331-340
Osuafor, A. M. (n.d.). ROLE – PLAY: An Effective Strategy For Teaching And Learning Of
Basic Science In Primary Schools.

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Purnamawati, S., Sofian, & Suhartono, L. (2015). The Use Of Role-Play In Teaching Speaking.
Jurnal Pendidikan Dan Pembelajaran, 4(9), 1–13.
Suryani, L. (2015). The Effectiveness Of Role-Play In Teaching Speaking. 3(October), 106–109.
Umam, C. (2011). Improving the Students’ Speaking Ability through Role-Playing Technique.
Phys. Rev. E, 3(10), 53.

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