The Effect of Role-Play on Promoting Functional Use of L 2 in Low-immersion EFL Context of Iranian High school Learners

This study focused on the impact of role-play on Promoting Functional Use of L2 in Low-immersion EFL Context of Iranian High school Learners. Role-play was supposed to have a great impact on the understanding and producing linguistic functions and speech acts. Among all the functions introduced by Halliday (1985), three were utilized in this research. Heuristic function which deals with the use of language to ask for information about things, informative function dealing with the use of language to inform about external things, and the Interactional function which has to do with the use of language to interact socially with others. About 100 students, 60 females and 40 males high school students, were asked to participate in this research. Having assigned them into two groups of control and experimental ones, pre-test and posttest were run. In order to evaluate the results, ANCOVA test was administered. The results showed that gender had no significant effect on role-playing the Halliday‟s functions. Furthermore, it was statistically proved that role-play would lead to a better production of speech acts, especially the three functions utilized in this study. Besides, Implementing Role-play could affect and enhance the scores of Iranian EFL learners. This study would have been a great help to teachers to run their classes more efficiently and proficiently. © 2016 Elixir All rights reserved. Elixir Soc. Sci. 94 (2016) 39960-39964 Social Science Available online at www.elixirpublishers. com (Elixir International Journal) Mohammad Reza Oroji et al./ Elixir Soc. Sci. 94 (2016) 39960-39964 39961 1-Implementing role-play models do not improve the production of correct Halliday‟s functions of Iranian male EFL learners. 2-Implementing role-play models do not improve the production of correct Halliday‟s functions of Iranian female EFL learners. 3-Implementing role-play models aimed at the production of correct Halliday‟s functions does not differ in male and female Iranian EFL learners? 4-Implementing Role-play on promoting functional use of L2 does not affect the scores of Iranian EFL learners. Role play activities Morales (2003) holds that role-play activities have been a part of language teaching for many years. They are popular with teachers and students alike for several important reasons. * They provide the spoken language practice that is vital for all language learning. * They provide us with the opportunity to take our students out of the classroom for a 'test run' of real world language use. * They allow students to become someone else for part of the lesson, and thereby to leave behind their inhibitions and worries. * They involve an element of play that provides an enjoyable contrast to the course book exercises and helps to develop rapport between students. Participants, Instrumentation, procedure, and the design The 100 male and female students who served as subjects for this study were senior high school student from Valliassr girls high school and Shohadae soltanieh boys high school in Zanjan district. In order to select the subjects, a total of 160 students were randomly selected from six classes. Their ages ranged between 16 and 18. In order to make sure that these three classes were homogeneous with regard to their English proficiency, a placement test was administered. The questions were selected from among the standard provincial and national high school questions. As many as 100 students whose scores ranged from 17 to 20 were ultimately selected to be included in this research. Since the study was gender-based, 60 female and 40 male students were eventually selected. The female students were divided randomly into two groups, 30 in the control group and 30 in experimental group, the case is the same for the male students. The 40 male students were randomly divided into two groups; 20 in the control group and other 20 students in the experimental group. Having homogenized and placed the subjects in two control and experimental groups, a pre-test was administered to all the four groups (two control and two experimental groups). This test was designed to elicit a comprehensive range of examinees‟ language function abilities in an efficient manner. Three unseen conversation tests were used. The tests included a teacher-made conversation text randomly selected from the texts included in the third grade high school textbook. Each test included three functions out of seven functions stated by HallidayHeuristic, informative and interactional ones. The students were required to produce these functions in each conversation text based on the information obtained from the conversation text. To guarantee the appropriateness of the tests, three university professors were consulted, and they confirmed the appropriacy of the texts selected. After the treatment process, a parallel test was conducted as post-test to evaluate any plausible improvement among the groups. The following steps were taken: This study was conducted for a period of three months (12 weeks) in an environment where students received English classes (speaking section) two hours each week, all of the three speaking passages were introduced to both of the groups. One of the passages was taught to the experimental group through “ditto” processes, in the following way: 1) An audience member volunteers to be the narrator. 2) The narrator (or the teacher) chooses the actors to play the roles. 3) The narrator tells a story. 4) When the narrator has finished the story, the audience shouts ditto! 5) The performers prepare the stage and perform the story 6) During the performance, three functions, that are, heuristic, informative, and interactional are taught to the learners. 7) When the performers have finished their presentation, the teacher will ask the experimental group members for the role they played and the function they learned. The process followed for the control groups was the traditional method of teaching speaking without including role-play and function practices to indicate the effect of the two different methods of instruction on the students and role playing on promoting functional use of L2 achievement. The test scores obtained after treatment of the two groups both among the girls and boys were compared as posttest. The data was analyzed using SPPS software. The teaching method utilized for the control group was based on the explanation and directions that existed in the textbook. The researcher focused on the placement test, speaking skill, and pronunciation using traditional method and grammatical points. The functions were not taught to the students in this group through role-play. The instruction of the selected texts was implemented for the experimental group through performance, discussion and sharing of ideas through role-play; student went on imaginative journeys as they rehearsed for the given functions studied in the research. The design that was employed in this research was quasiexperimental design: Table 1. Representation of the research design. group Placement test treatment Posttest