Role-playing and communicative skills

Abstract

The current research aims to analyze the influence of role-playing on communicative skills. The participants of this research were 34 students in the 5th semester in the career of “Pedagogía de los Idiomas Nacionales y Extranjeros”at "Universidad Técnica de Ambato". This research is quantitative and pre-experimental; moreover, the information of this research was collected in three stages: pre-test, treatment, and post-test, in 8 interventions. The pre-test consists of 2 parts taken from a B1 Cambridge PET which are: speaking and writing. It was of great importance to use a rubric in order to grade the test. It has a total of 20 points per section. The next stage was the intervention process in which the researcher presented slides with information about the elements of role-playing, the different topics to be covered and a small demonstration of each role-playing to be carried out in each class, worksheets to practice grammar skills and other helpful resources. At the end of the research, the researcher took the post-test. It was the same test as the pre-test. The average of the pre-test was 21.8 out of 40 points, while the average of the post-test was 23.12 out of 40 points. Finally, the results show that the students increased their communication skills because unlike the pre-test phase where they used many fossilized errors, after treatment they showed more confidence in speaking, and increased their vocabulary. Given more time to apply the treatment, there would have been a more noticeable improvement and influence.