SỞ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO THANH HÓA
TRƯỜNG THPT HÀ TRUNG

SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM

MAKING USE OF ROLE - PLAY IN TEACHING
ENGLISH AT HIGH SCHOOL

Người thực hiện: Nguyễn Cẩm Thủy
Chức vụ: Giáo viên
Đơn vị công tác: Trường THPT Hà Trung
SKKN thuộc môn: Tiếng Anh

CONTENTS
THANH HÓA NĂM 2015
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CONTENTS
I. INTRODUCTION
1. REASON FOR CHOOSING THE TOPIC
2. PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
3. OBJECTS OF THE STUDY
4. DURATION OF THE STUDY
5. STUDYING METHOD
II. PROCEDURE
1. RATIONALE
2. REALITY
3. RESULT OF THE REALTY.
4. SOME PRINCIPLES OF USING AND MANAGING ROLE - PLAYS
5. STEPS IN CARRYING OUT ROLE-PLAYS

ticket at the airport ….
Through teaching at high school, I realized that I need a new method that meets
those requirements of learners. Using role - play in teaching English is such a method.
Role-play is an effective technique to animate the teaching and learning atmosphere,
arouse the interests of learners, and make the language acquisition impressive. My
subject is "making use of role - play teaching English at high school". So in this
writing, I will mainly focus on how to apply it successfully, make use of it and take
the most advantage of it in English class and the final purpose is to bring daily
situations into classrooms. Therefore learners can communicate in English as the
second language (ESL) in classrooms as well as outside classrooms.
2. PURPOSE OF THE STUDY:
Applying role - play in teaching English at high school is to achieve the
following purposes:
- Contributing in renovation of teaching methods, improving the effectiveness of
teaching and learning, adding knowledge and skills for teachers.
- Making and using various and flexible teaching methods to help students learn and
exploit knowledge actively.
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- Creating excitement for students, and deepening knowledge, promoting selfdiscipline, independence and creativity of students.
- Equipping students the knowledge, values, attitudes, behavior and healthy habits,
eliminating negative habits, to solve the social issues that are of concern.
3. OBJECTS OF THE STUDY:
To implement the subject, I selected four classes: 10A, 10C, 10Đ, 10H in in
school year 2013-2014 and four classes: 10A,10B,10H, 10G in school year 20142015.
Number Of students: 367
Characteristics of Students: The students in the classes above include excellent
and good students (10A), but most of the rest acquire knowledge slowly, they are
timid and afraid of speech. Therefore, when selecting these students, I hope that my

- Teachers select an event or a special situation, which helps to clarify the theory or
may be vital for the research topic.
- When prepared, students are provided reading / basic topics and assigned the role of
partners.
- Forms of interaction between partners can be changed and may depend on the time
and resources available.
- Role - play was concluded by an exchange or reflects, reinforce the concepts
introduced by the role - play method.
Role - play creates a stimulating environment, realistic simulation that allows
students to enhance the understanding of the situations acted by them. Students gain a
deeper insight about the key concepts by acting the discussed issues in class. They
also develop skills for professional practice.
Role - play also introduce important concepts in professional practice as
knowledge, how to create and develop it, especially the use of language and the
construction of language, logic and the prominence of voices. Students learn how to
express knowledge in a meaningful and convincing way.
Moreover, role- play clarifies the division and differences among groups and in
the same group. Acting in the classroom effectively demonstrate that different
partners use different information sources and often organize separately, if not the
opposite opinion, but the solution can be achieved. Students learn to work with
different personalities, beliefs, value systems, capabilities and experiences.
Overall, role - play is a useful teaching method as it helps to develop practical
skills and knowledge of academic expertise. And role - play also meets the demand of
the students who generally prefer practical approach to learn and expand knowledge
through the experience simulation.
2. REALITY:
Through investigation, exploration and attendance my colleagues' lessons and
through the process of teaching at Ha Trung high school over the years I see that the
process of teaching and learning English of teachers and students meet some
limitation. This comes from several reasons below:

- The topic chosen should be real and relevant. The purpose of role-play that applies
to practical usage in communication demands the flexibility of participants' words,
generally speaking, the more approximately the activity access to reality, the more
interests students will take in, so the choice of roles and contexts become very
important
- The teacher:
+ needs 'feed-in' the appropriate language. 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. 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. When the role-play began the students felt 'armed' with the
appropriate language.
+ should create a comfortable atmosphere so that the students wouldn’t feel nervous
and pressed
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+ as facilitator of the role-play, must support students in their role, spectator or
participant.
+ corrects errors in a proper way. There are many ways to correct mistakes when
using role-play. It is rarely appropriate for the teacher to jump in and correct every
mistake. This could be incredibly de-motivating! 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. Self-correction - the teacher should repeat the students' mistake sentence.
They may find it easy to spot their own mistakes. Peer-correction - Fellow students
may be able to correct some mistakes made by their peers or leave grammar
correction to the end.
- Incorporating role-play into the classroom adds variety, a change of pace and

in Reading and Speaking
5.2. Sample lesson plans:
Sample 1
Unit 1: A day in the life of … (English 10)
B. Speaking
Family Role-play
Duration: 45 minutes
Aim:
Oral fluency practice
Summary: There are 4 roles: mother, father, brother or sister and Quan.
(Depending on the number of boys and girls in each group)
Introduction
The teacher introduces that today students will learn Speaking via role-play. The
teacher will divide class into groups of 4 students. They play their roles in a happy
family as mother, father, brother or sister and Quan
Preparation
Designs lesson plan on Power Point to show four cards providing the information that
help each role what to say.
Procedure
A. WARM UP:
- calls two volunteers to go to the board.
- asks one to write the names of the subjects they are learning at school, and the other
write some phrase words about daily activities:
Student 1:
1. Mathematics
6. English
2. Physics
7. Biology
3. Geography
8. Chemistry

- shows slices on power point that tell each role what to say.
- asks them to looked at the slices and then play family role to tell about their daily
activities.
Father's routine:
Mother's:
- get up at 5:30
- wake up at 5:00 a.m
- take exercises
- prepare breakfast for everyone
- water flowers and plants
- rush into the market to buy food
- go to work and then start work at - go to the school to give lectures for
7:00
the students
- have lunch in the factory
- go home and cook lunch
- continue to work at 13:00 p.m
- make lesson plan from 14:00 to 16:00
- drink beer with some fellows after pm
work
- go shopping with the colleagues
- go home at 18:00
- reach home at 18:15
Brother's or sister's:
Quan’s:
- get up at 5:20
- wake up at 5:45
- jog round the garden in 20 minutes
- sweep the house
- have breakfast

in the afternoon?
Quan: I have Physics, Literature, Biology and Chemistry, History, mom. First, I read
books at 14:15, watch TV at 16:30, then play football with classmates at 17:15,
finally, ride home and take a shower.
Father: well done dear! What about you, my little boy (girl).You have English lesson
today, right? What time do you have it?
Brother/sister: me? Oh yes. I have English at 7:50.I also have Maths and
Vietnamese. In the afternoon, I continue to learn Maths and Vietnamese.
……..
- leaves students some time to practice in group.
- goes round to help them.
- calls some groups to speak out before class.
- feedback and corrects mistakes.
D. POST - SPEAKING:
- Asks students to close the books and talk about their daily routine (only mention
their main/important activities.
- calls some students to present in front of class.
- feedbacks, then give them marks.
Sample 2
Unit 4: Special education (English 10)
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A. Reading
The guests of VTV3 Role-play
Duration: 45 minutes
Aim:
understand the reading passage deeply
Summary: There are 3 roles: an MC of the show, a teacher and audiences who play
their roles in the live show called "The guests of VTV 3".

+ Do you like your job?
+ How many students in your class?
+ Are they disable?
+What is the most difficult when teaching them?
+ What do the parents of the disable children think? Are they against or for sending
their children to your class?
+ How can you teach them to add and subtract?
……
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- explains that the students can add extra details that aren't on the card. For example:
What do you plan for the future? Do you need any help? To encourage this, give the
students an extra minute to think of one detail to add.
D. POST -READING:
- asks students to work in pair and read the summary of the passage carefully.
- encourage Ss to guess the missing words.
- has students complete the summary in pairs.
- asks students what they know about Ms Thuy and her job.
- feedbacks at the end and gives them marks
III. CONCLUSION AND SUGESTION
1. THE RESULT OF THE SUBJECT:
To test the feasibility of the method, I have tested, evaluated the learning result
of students in some classes at Ha Trung high schools in the academic year 2013-2014
and some classes in 2014 - 2015. the results are as follows:
Before applying role - play in teaching English lessons, the quality of student
learning in the classes 10 A, C, Đ, H in school year 2013-2014 are as follows:
Excellent
NumS
Class

SL

%

SL

%

SL

%

12
11
11
11

26,1
23,9
26,2
24,5

24
26
23
25

52,1
56,5
54,8

48
10 H 45
10G
45

Excellent
SL
%
13
26
11
22
9
20
7
15,5

Good
SL
%
29
58
28
56
26
52
29 64,4

Average
SL

0
0
0

With this result we clearly see the use of role - plays in teaching has created
excitement for the students in the learning process. The content of the lessons are
sometimes hard, teachers with their capacity needs to explore and apply the method
so that lectures achieve the highest results. Thereby, attracting students to find out the
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knowledge and self-training and know how to connect to reality are so important.
Especially through the English lessons, students will be educated the outlook on life
and world intensively.
2. CONCLUSION:
Role-plays require more imagination by students and teacher and can be
difficult to manage because they are unpredictable. The initial scenario develops from
the students interacting with each other and can literally go in any direction. This
gives students practice in a non-threatening environment, and gives the motivation
and involvement where they have to think in English. Role-plays are interesting,
memorable and engaging, and students retain the material they have learned. In their
assumed role, students drop their shyness and other personality and cultural
inhibitions, making them one of the best tools available for teaching a second
language.
So, back to my subject, I always want my English lessons to be more
interesting for the students. To have the process of teaching and learning that takes
place smoothly and achieves superior results, I often combine teaching methods with
the use of role - play flexibly. Because I think, no method is universal, and if a
teacher wants a successful lesson, he or she has to create excitement, attention to
students during the lesson. To do this, each teacher must know how to use synthesis

Nguyễn Cẩm Thủy

REFERENCE BOOKS

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1. Phương pháp dạy tiếng Anh Trung học phổ thông (Nguyễn Hạnh Dung)
2. Sách giáo khoa Tiếng Anh 10, 11, 12.
3. H. G. Widdowson. (1984). Explorations in Applied Linguistics.
4. Harmer, J. (1991) The Practice of English Language Teaching. Longman.
5. Johnson, K & K. (1981). Morrow. Communication in the Classroom. Longman.
6. Practical handbook of language teaching (David Cross)

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