The Study Of Promoting Peer Interaction In Role Play

Although the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach was introduced into China in the early 1980s, not much improvement and effect have proved in China's EFL teaching. As a type of communicative activity, role play is a very valuable method to help learners to interact and provide them an opportunity to practice the target language in context. However, we still have great difficulty in using role play. So the present research aims at exploring the possible ways to promote peer interaction (PI) in role play in English classroom. Thus, underpinned by a frame of reference a questionnaire was developed, classroom observations were carried out, and the teaching experiment was carried out to prove whether it is valid and efficient or not.This paper first introduce the interact theory, then it turns to explore the definition of role play, role play steps, types of role playing activities and its values.In Chapter II ,we set up the frame of reference of this paper. It refers to the intersubjectivity, constructivist learning theory, interaction hypothesis, humanistic learning theory and the "acting" in "the school theatre", all of which are outlined in this chapter.Based on the frame of reference constructed in Chapter II and Chapter III, questionnaire, observations and interviews were conducted, and data were analyzed in Chapter IV.A questionnaire with 26 questions was developed. The principal component analysis was undertaken of 407 students' responses to the questionnaire.In order to investigate the conceptions of teaching and learning, of language, of students and of interaction, the observation form was made by ourselves , according to the result of the questionnaire analysis. The observation was carried out in four classes in Grade One and four in Grade Two. From the observation, we find out the factors which play great part in peer interaction.Chapter V is about the teaching experiment, in which the author applied the principles, strategies and concrete methods to the practical teaching. The experiment result proves that role play is both valid and efficient in facilitating the peer interaction and developing the learns' spoken English.At last, the author summed up the whole paper, and then several problems which should be paid more attention to in further research were raised.