The effect of using role play on students' speaking achievement

One of the language skills required for international communication is speaking. In learning to speak English, students often find some problems. There are always some students who do not talk in class because they are too shy, anxious, and afraid of making mistakes. This happens not to beginners but also to the students who are fairly advanced. Perhaps it is because they do not have chances to speak or the teacher gives too much criticsm so that the students do not feel confident with themselves. There are also many factors that cause problems in the students’ speaking skill, like the poor material, the medias and so on. One of the techniques to solve that problem is through role play because the aim of role play in teaching English is to encourage students’ thinking and creativity, let students develop and practice English, and behavioral skills in a relative setting, and can create motivation and involvement for learning to occur. This study concerns the effect of role play and students’ speaking achievement which is aimed at knowing whether the speaking achievement of the students can be improved after being taught using Role Play. This research was accomplished in the third year of X Junior High School which consisted of 27 students as the subject. The writer used Pre Experimental Design one group pre test post test as her research design. To answer the research question; “Is there any significant difference between speaking achievement of the students before and after being taught using role play?”, the writer collected the data. First, the writer gave a pre test which was an oral test in the form of role play. After giving a pre test, she conducted the treatment which was established for six times and then she gave a post test to the students. For scoring she used a rubric based on David P. Haris (1978). After she collected the data (pre test and post test scores), she calculated the means then she analyzed them to find out whether there is a significant difference between the students’ speaking achievement before and after being taught using role play using T-test. The result of the study showed that the use of role play in teaching speaking could overcome the students’ problem effectively. The conclusion drawn from the results were as follows: The improvement of the students’ speaking ability could be seen in the improvement of their post-test score. The average of pre test score was 70,55926 and the average score of post test was 80,34321. It showed that teaching speaking using role play was significant and it could be said that teaching English using role play was effective. The writer also saw that the use of role play can improve students’ speaking skill. In the sense that the students were more creative, more active, and more confident in expressing what they had learned than before and even all the students had a chance to be active and cooperative in the speaking activity. Due to that they could speak English bravely and fluently, moreover they can interact well and enjoy the activity with their peers and they can also exchange knowledge with their group partners