5 of the best points of the Impact of Role-Plays in EFL Classes

Abstract:

Impact of role-plays different scenarios in EFL classes has always been one of the most effective methods to learn and gain experience. Developing communicative proficiency is one of the main goals when it comes to acquiring English as a foreign language. English learners need to use their developing skills in order to function in the right settings. Many modern English teaching techniques are based on the fact that the talking time of the educators should be to of minimum. 

Traditional English teaching is too focused on English grammar instruction. It does not help EFLs much in practicing and applying the basic English skills in real situations. This lack of meaningful exposure to English is solved by implementing role-plays to enhance English oral fluency and better accuracy of EFL students.

The implementation of role plays helps EFL students much in terms of practical use of English basic skills under different real situations. In simple terms, role plays are a set of English teaching strategies providing EFL students with a communicative competent atmosphere to acquire English skills and knowledge well. To be informed of the impact of role-plays in the English learning process in modern EFL classes, you can read the five following sections presenting the impact of role-plays in different areas:

The most tangible impact of role-plays:

The most tangible impact of role-plays on students’ English acquisition is the increase in students’ engagement and talking time. Learning a language is a complex and long process. Transitioning English language from classroom learnings to the real world can be a difficult and frustrating change.

Speaking another language outside the classroom is completely different and often students are entirely lost as soon as they step outside the door. Impact of role-plays or simulation are one the ways English instructors can ease students’ transition. A simulation where students act out a real-life situation, like visiting the doctors’ office or grocery shopping and so many other scenarios that could be played out in a classroom.

Teacher talking time (TTT) : 

Teacher talking time or TTT is the time that teachers spend talking in class rather than the students. Impact of role-plays allows students to explore their learned English abilities in realistic situations by interacting with other students in a controlled and safe environment.

This impact of role-plays allows students to have more opportunities to speak and use English in realistic conversations. The world of the classroom is expanded to include the outside world, offering a much wider range of English language opportunities. Even Quieter students get the chance to express themselves in a more open way.

Impact of role-plays in classrooms

The amazing impact of role-plays can not be emphasized enough. It is massively suggested that English teachers  benefit from the impact of role-plays in their English classes. Some of the benefits of the impact of role-plays are mentioned below:

Easier assessment

Just by bringing a situation to life the engagement of the students in the classroom will dramatically rise and the teacher is just the observer. Simulation of real situations can help teachers know where their students are struggling with learning English and what needs to be worked on. In addition, students who will at some point travel to an English-speaking country are given a chance to practice in a secure environment.

Student talking time versus TTT is extremely controversial and complex area for EFL teachers. Teacher talking time must be limited especially in English classes. The impact of role-plays on TTT is drastic. Now it’s time for the teacher to just sit back and observe in order to help each student individually with what they are having trouble with. The more students participate and use the language the more they are going to learn how they learn how they act in future situations when English is needed to communicate.

Simulating real-life conditions

Teaching English should be done in the most natural way possible, and the most advantageous method to practice the topics learned is through role-plays as they simulate real-life and future events. Impact of role-plays provide students with practice in a non-threatening environment and promotes motivation and involvement in the classroom, resulting in a rise of student talking time and a vast reduction in teacher’s involvement.

The impact of role-plays in English fluency:

Roleplays provide EFL students with the typical daily activities to learn and practice under different situations so that the EFL students can get immersed in the English world. By such impact of role-plays, the students would function well at both oral and written forms of English; plus, they would feel more confident and comfortable towards their English learning progress. This impact of role-plays in the fluency of EFLs also provides teachers to play a more dynamic flexible role in EFL classes.

EFL students can receive meaningful dynamic teaching by the role-play strategies. In this way, the dominant role of teachers in conventional EFL classes turns out to be more flexible to directly suit the EFL students’ educational needs. By this impact of role-plays, EFL students would acquire enough useful repertoire to get much fluency in the basic English skills and feel more confident about their English learning progress and knowledge.

As mentioned, role-plays are the active learning techniques involving students much more deeply in the academic formation; as a result, the students would easily overcome their anxiety, fear, and shame of imitating English sounds in public. Therefore, this impact of role-plays gives EFL students great opportunities of experiencing a unique way of productive English fluency.

The evident impact of role-plays is triggering the active engagement of EFL students in performing well in fictional or real situations, which produces constructive conversations among the students. This impact of role-plays makes EFL students go through a process of achieving conversational competence, experience, exposure, and use of the target language. The students would easily learn difficult complex long English expressions, idioms, and verbs so naturally that they can use them in real conversations spontaneously by this impact of role-plays.

The spontaneous use of English elements in real situations, as a practical impact of role-plays, is the ideal English fluency that any EFL student wishes to have. By this impact of role-plays, the language of the spontaneous conversations sounds natural, appropriate, and even redundant. This impact of role-plays comes in handy for those EFL students wishing to work and live in an English spoken environment and improve their English-speaking skills.

The impact of role-plays in memorization capacity

One of the essential positive impacts of role-plays is enhancing the memorization capacities of EFL students. Through interactive exercises, EFL students’ memorization powers get much stronger and more active. Such educational entertaining exercises effectively grasp EFL students’ attention and keep them more engaged in EFL classes.

The most practical impact of role-plays is bringing joy and flexibility in the English acquisition process so that both EFL students and teachers can function in a friendly competitive atmosphere. Humans usually tend to remember positive sweet memories and experiences and forget negative bitter moments. Therefore, the impact of associating role-plays with English lessons is the enhancement of students’ memorization capacity and the betterment of the English learning process.

The stimulation of fear and knowledge triggers EFL students’ long-term memories. Humans tend to seldom forget the moments in which they were emotionally engaged in something; take “receiving a compliment from an English teacher” as an example, when an EFL hardworking student is truly praised for his efforts in English learning by his teacher in front of his friends, he becomes so proud of himself that he gets motivated to enhance his English studying quality and never forget that sweet moment provoking him to be much more hardworking than before. We can conclude that sparking emotions and feelings, as an important impact of role-plays, incredibly enlarges the memorization capacity.

One of the role-play activities is instructional modeling. In this activity, an EFL teacher initially gives a standard model such as a formulaic expression to his students so that the students would reproduce the model in a verbal or nonverbal manner. Constant repeating as one of the main principles of instructional modeling enhances EFL students’ memorization capacities. 

The impact of role-plays in social skills development

Role-plays underline the roles of EFL students in the English learning process as they lessen the superior determining role of EFL teachers in the process. That is, it mainly depends on EFL students to how well they can learn in EFL classes by such active learning strategies under the observation of teachers. By this impact of role-plays, the students would become more self_reliant towards their English learning progress and expand their social interactions.

The expansion of social skills, as an impressive impact of role-plays, makes EFL students ready to function well in their careers in the future. It helps the students in making faithful friends, shaping much more stable positive teacher-student relationships, sharing their ideas, thoughts, or feelings, and respecting others’ opinions. This impact of role-plays also prevents students from being shy, stressed out, bored, and anxious in EFL classes; as a result, the students would feel much happier and alive; plus, they would better take their teachers’ orders carefully and participate in EFL class activities with much enthusiasm and care.

The impact of role-plays in English accuracy

As mentioned, the role-play activities of instructional modeling provide EFL students with accurate standard models so that the students would make English errors or mistakes much less. Therefore, role-plays are not only good activities for expanding memorization power but also are good choices for the enhancement of English accuracy. When it comes to English accuracy, the impact of role-plays becomes increasingly more evident and stronger, in comparison with English oral fluency, in most cases.

Role-plays help students to proceed much more in terms of gaining English accuracy than achieving the highest level of English fluency since language fluency requires a large deal of prior knowledge. With that being said, many EFL teachers take advantage of this impact of role-plays to implicitly correct the common errors of their students and help them reproduce the correct forms in oral or written English forms.

By such impact of role-plays, error correction is taken place by one of the three ways including teacher correction, self-correction, and peer correction; at any way of error correction, EFL students implicitly learn English and naturally apply the correct forms without much hesitation step by step.

Error correction must not interrupt the role-play conversations. Most students should usually correct their errors while speaking English. To maintain students’ confidence, the teachers should wait till the end of the role-play conversation to implicitly warn the players of their errors; otherwise, there would not be any positive impact of role-plays resulting from the imagery conversation.

The impact of role-plays in sparking creativity and imagination

As mentioned, role-plays are a collection of practical active learning strategies used in almost imaginary or unreal situations in EFL classes. In such activities, EFL students can perform the role of so many characters such as a police officer, a Queen, a doctor, a baker, etc. They can also act upon their made stories under the observation of their teachers.

It is recommended for EFL teachers to encourage their students to creatively bring up useful suitable role-plays’ activities. To increase the competitive atmosphere of EFL classes, the teachers can give positive marks to the best performers of the suggested role-play activities or the most creative inventors of the activities. In this way, the imagination and creativity powers of the students would get triggered and increased.

This impact of role-plays empowers EFL students to perfectly give presentations and have an enriched elegant word choice in either their speech or writing. EFL students would better put different elements of English together to convey a certain meaning effectively and clearly by such impact of role-plays. We can conclude that this impact of role-plays not only can help EFL students to be good actors but also to be good creative writers.

Conclusion

As a result, English teachers should benefit from the impact of role-plays in their classroom. It is significantly suggested to measure the impact of role-plays in the English classes for children to help them understand and learn various English skills.

On the whole, the impact of role-plays in helping EFL students get much better, practical perfect education gets more vital and stronger as the English teaching quality is gradually losing its importance due to its lack of sparking and motivating learners’ enthusiasm and participation. By the impact of role-plays, the focus of education is now on students’ participation and involvement. It is recommended for each teacher to try out role-plays to their results in the modern world.