An Empirical Study On The Application Of Role Play In Oral English Teaching Of Non-English Majors In Higher Vocational College

Today,the globalization of economy and the rapid development of science and technology make it necessary for people to constantly adapt to the changing world.Mastering a foreign language,especially English,has become an important means for people to obtain international information.However,due to the influence of the traditional teacher-centered and examination-oriented English teaching methods,many college students acquire “dumb English”,namely poor oral English.This has a direct impact on college students’ communication and self-development.The communicative learning theory emphasizes the essence of language-communicative function,which encourages foreign language learners for more active use of language through a variety of interactive activities.Among various communicative approaches,role play has attracted educational experts and front-line teachers by its unique advantages.More and more researchers introduce role play into classrooms in primary schools,middle schools and universities.However,there are few researches on the effect of role play in college students’ oral English teaching.This study aims to examine the effectiveness of role-play in oral English teaching.There are two research questions to explore: 1.Can role-play improve non-English majors’ oral English in higher vocational colleges? 2.Can role-play improve non-English majors’ interest in learning oral English in higher vocational colleges? Two classes of non-English majors from Cangzhou Medical College were taken as subjects.One class was randomly assigned to the experimental group,and the other class was set as a control group.Each group has 40 people.A self-designed questionnaire was used to measure the effectiveness for each group.The experimental group received a 10 week intervention,that is,the teacher used the role-play method in the English class,while the control group continued the traditional teaching method which was teacher-centered and examination-oriented.Pre-test and post-test were conducted for two groups and all the collected data were analyzed statistically by SPSS22.0.At the end of the intervention,10 subjects in the experimental group were randomly selected for structured interview.There were no significant differences between the experimental group and the control group in their English learning level before the intervention.But after that,the students in the experimental group got significantimprovement in oral English than those in the control group.Moreover,the results also show that role-play activities can effectively enhance students’ interest in oral English.To sum up,this thesis discovers that role-play method assumes a crucial role in improving college students’ oral English learning performance and learning interest through questionnaire survey,experimental intervention and structured interview.Accordingly,the researcher gives some suggestions for organizing role-play activities: defining the teacher’s auxiliary role,exerting the initiative of students and setting reasonable goals for role-play activities.