THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY
SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

TRUONG THI KIM NHI

USING ROLE PLAY TO DEVELOP SPEAKING SKILL FOR
STUDENTS IN HUNG SON PRIMARY SCHOOL

(Sử dụng hoạt động đóng vai để phát triển kĩ năng nói cho học sinh
của trường tiểu học Hùng Sơn)

M.A. THESIS
(APPLICATION ORIENTATION)

Field: English Linguistics
Code: 8220201
Supervisor: Dr. Nguyen Thi Viet Nga
THAI NGUYEN – 2018

i


DECLARATION
-----------*****----------I certify that the minor thesis entitled “Using role play to develop speaking
skill for students in Hung Son primary school” is my own study in the fulfillment
of the requirement for the Degree of Master of Arts at Foreign Language Faculty,
Thai Nguyen University.

Signature:

Truong Thi Kim Nhi

TABLE OF CONTENTS
DECLARATION……………………………………………………………….…....i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………….….....ii TABLE OF
CONTENTS………………………………………………..………...iii
ABSTRACT…………………………………………………….…..........................vi LIST OF FIGURES,
ABBREVIATIONS, TABLES AND CHARTS ……….….viii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION.
..............................................................................1
1.1. Rationale ..............................................................................................................1
1.2. Aims of the study .................................................................................................2
1.3. Research questions
...............................................................................................2
1.4. Scope of the study
................................................................................................2
1.5. Significance of the research. ................................................................................2
1.6. Structure of the thesis
...........................................................................................3
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ....................................................................4
2.1. Speaking. ..............................................................................................................4
2.1.1. Definition of speaking .......................................................................................4
2.1.2. Elements of speaking. .......................................................................................4
2.1.3. Types of speaking. ............................................................................................6
2.2. Teaching speaking for primary students. .............................................................7
2.2.1 Teaching speaking..............................................................................................7
2.2.2. How to teach speaking for primary
students.....................................................8
2.3. Using role-playing activities teaching speaking for primary students .................9
2.3.1. Role- play ..........................................................................................................9
2.3.2. Types of role play............................................................................................10
2.3.3. The organization of a role - play activity. .......................................................10
4

..........................................................................................28
4.3.1. The result of pre –
test.....................................................................................28
4.3.1 Findings of the first cycle.................................................................................28
4.3.2 Findings of the second cycle. ...........................................................................34
4.4.3. Findings of the Test Results. ...........................................................................38
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS............................................46
5.1. Recapitulation ....................................................................................................46
5.2. Suggestions ........................................................................................................46

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5.2.1. For teachers.
....................................................................................................46
5.2.2. For students
.....................................................................................................47
5.2.3. For the researchers:
.........................................................................................48
5.3. Limitations: ........................................................................................................48
REFERENCES..........................................................................................................49
APPENDIXES ............................................................................................................ I

6


ABSTRACT
The aim of this research is to enhance students’ activity in learning speaking
skill, to check whether role play is efective learning technique, to know advantages
and disadvantages of role play. The research subject is fifth grade students of Hung


8


process in order to make the students easier in improving their speaking
competence.

vii


LIST OF FIGURES, ABBREVIATIONS, TABLES AND CHARTS
1. Figures:
Figure 1: Kurt Lewin’s Action Research Design………………………………..21
Figure 2: The Phases of Classroom Action Research (Adapted from Kurt Lewin’s
Action Research Design)……………………………………………….………22
2. Abbreviations:
CLT: Communicative Language Teaching……………………………………12
CAR: Classroom Action Research……………………………………………..17
KKM: Criterion Minimum of Completeness………………………………….29
3. Tables:
Table 1: Assessing Students’ Progress…………………………………………..17
Table 2: The Rating Scores of Oral Test …………………………….…………18
Table 3: The students’ participation in speaking during CAR………….…….24
Table 4: The students’ participation in speaking during cycle 1…….….……31
Table 5: The students’ participation in speaking during cycle 2……..……..…36
Table 6: The students’ speaking score of pre – test, post – test 1, post - test 2..37
Table 7: The distribution of the students score…………………………………39
4. Charts:
Chart 1: The Students’ Score Mean Improvement……………………………41
Chart 2: The Students’ Score Class Percentage (pre - test, post - test I, post – test

150) said that “Role Play is a created situation in which students deliberately act
out or assume characters or identities they would not normally assume in order to
accomplish learning goal”. It means the activity helps create interaction in the
1


language classroom. It is practical, entertaining, and gets students to produce
authentic English. Additionally, it can motivate the learners and establish good

2


relationships between the teacher and the students as well as among the
students thereby encouraging a supportive environment for language learning.
Deriving from the above mentioned reasons, “Using role play to develop
speaking skill for students in Hung Son primary school” is made. The researcher
hopes that this study will provide the teachers of primary school a suitable
method to teach speaking for primary students.
1.2. Aims of the study
This study had two aims:
- To find out whether role-play improves the speaking competence of
students at Hung Son primary school.
- To find out the advantages and disadvantages while applying role-play to
students at Hung Son primary school
1.3. Research questons
- How efective are role-playing activities in improving students’ speaking skills
at Hung Son primary school?
- What are the advantages and disadvantages of using role-play to teach
speaking English skill?
1.4. Scope of the study

First, research questions are addressed. Then, instruments for data collection and
participants are described. The chapter ends with analyzing data.
Chapter 4, Finding and Discussion, in this part, the findings of the research will be
presented and then will be discussed.
Chapter 5, Conclusion, summarize the findings of the research. After that, the
limitation of the research as well as the suggestion for further research will also be
included.


CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter provides the theory and research to support and make the study
more clearly. The first section gives an overview of speaking skill including
definitions and its conception. The second section is about teaching speaking
for primary school. The third section discusses using role-playing activities
teaching speaking for primary students.
2.1. Speaking
2.1.1. Definiton of speaking
Teaching English for primary students focuses on four skills: reading, listening,
speaking and writing. Speaking plays an important role in learning and
understanding any language. Bailey and Nunan (2005, p.2) assert that speaking is
an interactive process of constructing meaning that involves producing, receiving
and processing information. It can be perceived that speaking is a kind of
interaction process involving two or more people (as speaker(s) and listener(s)) in
order to convey and receive the intended information.
Meanwhile, Donough and Shaw (2003, p.134) stated “There are some reason for
speaking involved expressing ideas and opinions: expressing a wish and a desire to
do something; negotiating and/or solving a particular problem; or establishing and
maintaining social relationships and friendships. Besides, fluency, accuracy and
confidence are important goal in speaking.”. Therefore, as a language skill,
speaking is as the main tool of verbal communication because it is a way to express

sentences based on the context. Grammar plays an important role in speaking
because second language learners do not use grammar structure accurately, they
cannot speak English well.
- Vocabulary
A significant component of speaking English is vocabulary. Vocabulary means the
appropriate diction or the most important thing in a language especially in
speaking; furthermore, it is easy to express our ideas, feeling and thoughts both in
oral or written form when knowing a lot of vocabularies. In spoken language, the
vocabulary tends to be familiar and everyday (Turk, 2003, p.87). Therefore, to
understand and express an opinion, speakers need to build a system of vocabulary
abundantly. Students need to know words, their meanings, how they are spelt and


how they are pronounced. Thus, when teaching vocabulary, the teachers have to
make sure that they explain the meaning as well as the spelling and pronunciation.
- Fluency


Fluency is defined as the ability to speak communicatively, fluently and accurately.
Fluency usually refers to express oral language freely without interruption. In
teaching and learning process, if the teacher wants to check students’ fluency, the
teacher allows students to express themselves freely without interruption. The
aim is to help students speak fluently and with ease. The teacher does not correct
immediately whereas the idea being that too much correction interferes with
the flow of conversation (Pollard, 2008, p.16).
- Comprehension
The last element of speaking is comprehension. Comprehension refers to the
fact that participants fully understand the nature of the research project, even
when procedures are complicated and entail risks (Cohen et al., 2005, p.51). This
element is discussed by both speakers because it can make people get the


Responsive includes interaction and test comprehension but at somewhat limited
level of very short conversation, standard greetings and small talk, simple request
and comments.
-

Interactive

The diferent between responsive and interactive speaking is in the length and
complexity of the interaction, which sometimes includes multiple exchanges
and/or multiple participants. Some examples of interactive speaking are interview,
discussion, games, and role-play.
-

Extensive

Extensive type includes speeches, oral presentations, and story-telling during
which the opportunity for oral interaction from listener is either highly limited or
ruled out altogether. This type needs more action and interaction to the listeners.
2.2. Teaching speaking for primary students
2.2.1 Teaching speaking
Brown (2000, p.7) states that “teaching is showing or helping someone to learn
how to do something, giving instructions, guiding in the study of something,
proving with the knowledge, causing to know or understand”.
Hornby (1995, p.37) defines that teaching means giving the instruction to (a
person): give a person (knowledge skill, etc). Meanwhile, speaking is how to make
use of words in an ordinary voice. So, teaching speaking is giving instruction to a
person in order to communicate.
Teaching speaking is the process of teaching students knowledge about the target
language and skill in order that they express their opinions, emotions and interact

activities, analysis what their students’ problems while the activities is taking place
and after conducted it. Communication strategies are also implemented by
the teachers for their students. It may be, when their students lack of words,
phrases, or structures when they are speaking.
2.2.2. How to teach speaking for primary students
According to McKay (2006), young learners of English are children between 5 and
12 years old who are learning a foreign or second language. They are easy to be
interested in new things but get distracted due to their short attention span, which


lasts from 10 to 15 minutes only. Therefore, teacher must design many activities
which are not only simple but also creative. Moreover each leaner has
diferent