Role Play Method of Teaching
Role Play Method
The role-playing method is a teaching method that is more routinely used in the language teaching process, which is able to return to the student as the main body of the teaching process. Besides, it has strong interest and emotional rendering ability, reflecting the fragments of real life in the form of games, and requiring participants to step out of themselves, play different roles, and reproduce the fragments.
It is an acting method which is concerned with the development of cognitive and social skills. This can bring about a change in the interest, aptitude and attitude of the students. In this, importance is given to exemplary teaching. In this character acting or dramatic method, the class is divided into small groups and they are made to imitate the experiences of others. In this, students have to play both the role of teacher and student respectively.
Through this one student becomes the teacher and the rest of the students in that group act as the real students of that teacher and express their feelings and experiences naturally. In this, the students are not given any practice for acting and they are given some role without any practice which the students have to perform.
Definition of Role-playing Method
Role playing can be defined as an attempt to make a situation clear or to solve a problem by uncharged dramatization.
Application of Role Play in English Teaching
Applying this method to adult education in English teaching requires students to fully use their vocabulary, grammar and speaking skills to integrate themselves into practical situations. Teachers can select some scenarios in a targeted manner, such as selecting tourism, conducting business negotiations, medical treatment and other common communication occasions for simulation. Students are required to play different roles, such as guides, tourists, doctors, etc. According to the behaviour patterns of daily activities, the language is converted from the Chinese environment to the English environment for daily activities.
The role-playing method is to train students' compreher sive abilities, such as vocabulary, grammar, on-site reaction speed, cultural habits, and communication strategies. Therefore, it is a more comprehensive method. At the same time, this teaching method provides students with a real English teaching environment. Although it is different from the foreign environment, it can be entertaining, which can develop students' language skills through a relaxed atmosphere, and enhance their spirit of cooperation and on-site response.
Role of Role-Playing Teaching Method
The most important role of role-playing teaching method is to ghlight the main position of students in teaching activities. The author summarizes the unique role of the role-playing method by comparing the role-playing method with the traditional method of education.
Problems of Role-Playing Teaching Method
First, under the design of the actual scene pattern, it is out of touch with the actual demand or the content is too shallow, and the composition of authenticity and communication is too low. Most of them organize simple conversations based on textbooks. The plots and dialogues are relatively old-fashioned, which cannot attract students' interest and lose the original teaching significance.
Second, in the classroom teaching, the teacher can directly grasp students' learning situation through the form of questions and tests, and can teach students for the problem many times. However, the role-playing teaching method only selects some simple expressions, and does not play the role of learning English language.
Third, the role-playing teaching method focuses on forms, and students group is simply organized for teaching needs. As this teaching mode is relatively new, teachers can't accurately respond to students' classroom performance. Teachers have a kind of attitude towards the performance of students that good students are not recognized, and students with poor grades have no goals and efforts.
Fourth, accepting the traditional teaching methods and the requirements of exam-oriented education for many years, the focus of students is still focused on the study of language knowledge. Meanwhile, teachers can not effectively guide students to switch between the two teaching modes, affecting learning effect.
Solutions to Problems of Role-Playing Teaching Method
Interest is the best teacher. To learn English well, teachers must first help students to change the sense of "awe" in English learning. Successful English teaching needs to help students build an interest in English. In response to the above problems, solutions are showing as follows combined with the actual needs.
First, do the task design. The scene chosen for role-playing teaching cannot be based solely on the content of the textbook. In order to achieve practical and useful teaching effect, it is still necessary for the teacher to make some preparation. Besides, the dialogue of the scene should be down-to-earth as much as possible, instead of using the textbook dialogue.
Second, in the teaching process, teachers should guide students to pay attention to language forms. Students are not only to say it, but also to express a sentence with accurate grammar and pronunciation. Teachers should integrate the learning of English language knowledge into role-playing teaching, and at the same time pay attention to correcting the pronunciation of students and strive to overcome the "Chinese-speaking English."
Third, teachers should carefully observe each student's performance of each group and establish a comprehensive and reasonable evaluation mechanism. Teachers should actively give feedback and guidance on the performance and problems of students in the role-playing process. Teachers should give encouragement to good students, and give guidance and help to students with poor performance.
Fourth, teachers must form their own unique teaching style. Teaching style is a direct manifestation of the teacher's personality charm. The humorous, funny and friendly teachers can directly influence the students' interest in learning. In the process of teaching, teachers should patiently communicate with students, use a friendly and peaceful attitude to help the shy students, and by more patient with students with lower grades. At the same time, teachers should find out the problems in the students' learning process in time, and help then to solve it.
In the application of role-playing teaching method in college English teaching for adult education, teachers must pay attention to the design of fresh and practical topics, and comprehensively mobilize students' interest in learning. With the continuous development and maturity of this method, it will play an important role in the college English for adult education, as well as the English teaching in primary and secondary schools and higher vocational colleges.
Characteristics of Role Play Method
- Useful even in small classes.
- It is possible to review and improve teacher behavior.
- This helps the impulses in composition, physical expression and academic development.
- Students get a chance to express their feelings and emotions.
- It is an imitation of experience that is made real.
- It is one of the very important teaching policies in subjects like history, literature, civics and science, etc.
- By this the desired objectives (cognitive and social) are achieved.
- It affects the low and medium level of knowledge, understanding and ability to apply.
- The students enjoy (they are also entertained) while using it.
- There is change and development in the attitudes of the students.
- It is a law related to human relations.
- The skills related to the life of the student teacher are developed through experiences.
Suggestions for Role Play Method
- The teacher should be in the class the whole time while the character is acting.
- At the end of the character performance, both the students and the teacher should review the work together and have a detailed discussion on all aspects.
- In this method the students are simply given various information about the situation and after that the students should be left free to talk and take the topic further.
- Opportunities should be given for its practice before starting the actual teaching work.
- The internal principles and method of this method should be well understood.
Steps of Role Play Method
The 'Role Play Method' is done by following the following steps-
- Program design.
- Telling students which characters they will play and when.
- Choice of topic or text.
- Determining the method of monitoring the behavior of the teacher.
- To practice teaching (actual acting).
- Reviewing character performances.
- To discuss suggestions for improvement for the future.
Purpose of role playing
- To motivate or launch units O To culminate units
- To change attitudes
- To teach values
- To teach content having to do with human relationship
- To develop citizenship skill by showing both the successful and unsuccessful methods.
Advantages
- Development deep understanding.
- Developing problem solving skill and attitudes.
- Develop interpersonal communication.
Disadvantages
- Pupils who are not well prepared for role playing may not take it seriously.
- Role playing will not work unless the atmosphere in the classroom is supportive.
- Pupils find it difficult to enter the roles properly, especially if they are not well briefed on the assignments.
- Role playing does not always take the direction one hopes.
- Role playing is time consuming.
- For role playing to work well, one needs a group of sensitive. imaginative, open minded pupils who know each other well enough to be at case with each other.