focusing on maintaining and establishing social relationships, but in transactional speaking the focus is primarily on the meaning of the message. According to Nunan
1991:42, interactional speech is much more fluid and unpredictable than transactional speech.
b. Role Plays
According to Paulstan and Bruder 1976:70, role plays are exercises where the student is assigned an untrue role from which he has to improvise some kind of
behavior toward the other role character in the exercise. They also stated that role play has four basic elements that are; situations, roles, useful expressions and
background knowledge. Golebiowska 1990:5 confirmed that role play is a communicative activity in which the learners are given a task to complete. In order to
ensure a lively and unpredictable course of activity, the learners are told who they are and what their opinions are.
Littlewood 1981:50 said that in role playing, learners are asked to imagine themselves in a situation that could occur in their daily activities or outside the
classroom. They are asked to adopt a specific role from this situation. They are asked to act as if the situation really exists.
Albert P’Rayan 2007 stated that a role play is an activity in which the participants or students of a language course assume the roles of some imaginary
characters and, as a team, create a story based on a situation and enact the play in front of an audience. Through this activity the students can practise certain language
functions and learn speaking skills. Moreover, he proposed some features of a good role play as listed in the next page.
Table 2.1.
The features of a good role play P’Rayan, 2007
The features of a good role play A good role play is based on a familiar situation.
The group of characters does not exceed two to three members. It gives extensive speaking practice to the participants.
It is based on real world contexts and allows students to speak naturally. It is interesting and enjoyable.
It develops the participants’ creativity. It fosters their critical thinking skills.
It breaks monotony and makes other students participate.
.
By considering those features, the teachers are expected to understand the technique of role play and as a result the role play could be used effectively.
Mcguire and Priestly 1981:87-91 stated that there are three types of Role play; those are Simple Role Play, Modeling Exercise and Structures Role Play. Simple
Role Play is a role play that can be used on fairly simple level, concentrating and beginning with situation that will be familiar to the learners, and involving only two
or four ‘actors’ at a time. This type of role play has two aims; those are to help those who are unable to do so to get better at dealing with particular situation, and to
introduce role play as a communicative exercise that can be used to help them learn to cope with more complex events
The second type of role play is Modeling Exercises. It consists of the role- played demonstrations of social skill or response by someone who is competent in its
execution for someone who is not. It can be carried out “live” face to face or recorded on video. The last type is called a structures role play. If we want to look at
encounters in which people have more complex sets of expectation, then it is possible to run role play in which individuals are given more elaborate instruction
about who they are supposed to be and what would like to happen. In preparing a role play, teacher needs to create an imaginary situation close to
students’ background of knowledge, thus in the role play it must be a fictitious role; PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
