The Impact of Role Play on Thai EFL Learners’ Interactional Competence: A Case Study of Pre-engineering and Pre-architecture Students in Vocational Education
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Abstract
Interactional competence (IC) is necessary for second/foreign language learners in using the second/foreign language in face-to-face interaction. Since social interaction is a complex process. It requires the participant’ s ability to; manage turn-taking; repair conversational troubles; articulating ideas and topic; organizing the sequence of acts; and fully participate in conversation framework. This study views that EFL learners’ IC can be promoted through teacher’s use of effective teaching methods. Thus, this study investigated whether role-play benefits the teaching of IC for Thai EFL learners (i.e. participation framework, turn-taking strategies, repair mechanism, sequential organization of acts, and topic management). Hence, thirty-nine Thai students of mixed gender studying in a pre-engineering college were recruited. The data collection took place in English for Everyday Communication lesson. The topic dealt with “shopping”. The learners’ face-to-face interactions during the topic-based role play were videotaped. Conversation Analysis was adopted for data analysis. The findings suggested that role play benefited the teaching of IC. Appropriate use of role-play promoted interactive learning by moving the learners’ participation framework towards the learning center. Passive learners became interactive in the discursive practice. Self-initiated turn-taking strategy and the ability to articulate relevant topics for face-to-face interaction were adopted by the learners during the task. Other-initiated repair and self-initiated repair strategies helped the learners carry out their role-play successfully. This increased the learners’ ability to organize multiple sequences of acts and increased their interactional abilities in using English in face-to-face interaction. However, role-play can be more effective in developing EFL learners’ IC when the learner’s planning time is adequate and script reading is avoided during role-play.
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