Content introduction chapter I. Communicative language teaching prioritizes developing students’ communication and interaction skills

CHAPTER II. COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH TO ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODS
2.1. Encourage student-student interaction role-playing and collaborative tasks.
Student-student interaction plays an essential role in applying a communicative teaching approach. As the more traditional teaching styles have usually been rather teacher dominant with students mainly learning through passive listening, student-student interaction, on the contrary, focuses on the active interaction among the students themselves during language classes. Student-student interaction embraces the strategies of cooperative learning in which each student’s learning success is dependent on the whole group’s input during the classroom sessions. This is an effective way of engaging the whole class as such exercises engage all students, not just the minority of active students who typically participate in a regular class. One popular CLT activity is role-playing. There is a playful component in role-playing that helps students practice speaking without feeling pressure. You can for example assign parts to your students, or let them decide on a specific setting. Choose a topic that is relevant to students, or one that connects to other topics explained in class. This will ensure that role-playing is an integral part of language lessons and not only a stand-alone experience. Collaborative tasks like assigning student groups to solve a puzzle using only the target language are also popular activities in CLT. This type of exercise allows not only to enhance students’ communication skills but also to experiment with the peer-learning approach, which is useful in strengthening relationships among students. Communicative language strategies are skills which learners need in order to maximize effective communication when they are not so accurate in their use of language. In teaching English, the teacher has to be able to make the students participate in discussing the materials actively, so that they will be able to understand what they are learning in the class and also express their own ideas orally. The most important thing to carry out the English teaching is that the teacher has to be able to use the appropriate approach, design, and procedures. One of the ways in improving students’ speaking skill is by giving role play as a form of English learning activity in the classroom. Role play is a created situation in which students deliberately act out or assume characters or identities they would not normally assume in order to accomplish learning goal. Speaking competence plays a necessary role in learning and understanding any language. The term of speaking has several meanings. Widdowson says that speaking has two meanings. First, it refers to the manner in which language is manifested. Second, it refers to the manner in which language is realized as communication. The meaning of competence is “the speaker hearer’s knowledge of his language”. It is seen as overall underlying linguistic knowledge and ability thus includes concepts of appropriateness and acceptability. The target or the goal of language teaching is that the students become communicatively competence in target language as capability of using language well. Richard and Roger state [1] that Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is an approach that aims to create communicative competence and develop procedure for the teaching of the four language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) that acknowledge the interdependence of language and communicative activities. To develop communicative competence, the teacher is suggested to use CTL. CLT is used to create communicative competence as the object to use and to develop some procedures for teaching four basic skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) function as the foundation to master English. The students are engaged to use the language they learnt through communicative activities One of the four language skills being existed in English language teaching is speaking. Therefore, speaking component has the same importance as the other language skills such as listening, reading and writing. Role play is a speaking activity where learners participate either as themselves or as somebody else in a specific situation. In this way they can act in various interaction patterns. Role play includes “all sorts of activities where learners imagine themselves in a situation outside the classroom, sometimes playing the role of someone other than themselves, and using language appropriate to this new context.” Role play is an example of “learning by doing” The word role indicates that the students must actively apply knowledge, skill, and understanding to successfully speak and act from different, assigned perspective. The term play indicates that the students use their imaginations and have fun, acting out their parts in non-threatening environment The use of role play as teaching technique improved the students’ speaking competence. The improvement in their speaking competence is quite significant. It was reflected from the students’ attitude inside the class during the English teaching learning process. Role-play is especially helpful in teaching writing. According to Scarcella and Crookall, it facilitates writing in the following three ways. [2] First, it provides students with situations in which writing occurs naturally. In a traditional writing class, the students are always required to write in vacuum about the given topic. The process is dull and painstaking. Role-play can change this situation and offer the students chances to write about interesting, relevant and motivating experiences. For example, the teacher can ask the students to play the role as an unsatisfied customer and write a letter to complain to the company about the product he/she purchased. The students can discuss in groups about the content and format of the letter, and the teacher can choose to give them instruction or writing samples either before or after their writing. Second, role-play, like all simulation activities, can help students overcome writer’s block by producing a “high degree of student involvement rarely found in ESL writing activities”. Third, it can be particularly helpful in the brainstorming and revising stages of the writing process. “It provides students with opportunities to see their ideas in action and to observe the consequences of their ideas and the alternatives”. Role-playing takes place between two or more people, who act out roles to explore a particular scenario. It's most useful to help you or your team prepare for unfamiliar or difficult situations. For example, you can use it to practice sales meetings, interviews, presentations , or emotionally difficult conversations, such as when you're resolving conflict . By acting scenarios like these out, you can explore how other people are likely to respond to different approaches; and you can get a feel for approaches that are likely to work, and for those that might be counterproductive. You can also get a sense of what other people are likely to be thinking and feeling in the situation. Also, by preparing for a situation using role-play, you build up experience and self-confidence with handling the situation in real life, and you can develop quick and instinctively correct reactions to situations. This means that you'll react effectively as situations evolve, rather than making mistakes or becoming overwhelmed by events. You can also use role-play to spark brainstorming sessions, to improve communication between team members, and to see problems or situations from different perspectives. It is easy to set up and run a role-playing session. It will help to follow the five steps below. Step 1: Identify the Situation To start the process, gather people together, introduce the problem, and encourage an open discussion to uncover all of the relevant issues. This will help people to start thinking about the problem before the role-play begins. If you're in a group and people are unfamiliar with each other, consider doing some icebreaker exercises beforehand. Step 2: Add Details Next, set up a scenario in enough detail for it to feel "real." Make sure that everyone is clear about the problem that you're trying to work through, and that they know what you want to achieve by the end of the session. Step 3: Assign Roles Once you've set the scene, identify the various fictional characters involved in the scenario. Some of these may be people who have to deal with the situation when it actually happens (for example, salespeople). Others will represent people who are supportive or hostile, depending on the scenario (for example, an angry client). Once you've identified these roles, allocate them to the people involved in your exercise; they should use their imagination to put themselves inside the minds of the people that they're representing. This involves trying to understand their perspectives, goals, motivations, and feelings when they enter the situation Step 4: Act Out the Scenario Each person can then assume their role, and act out the situation, trying different approaches where necessary. It can be useful if the scenarios build up in intensity. For instance, if the aim of your role-play is to practice a sales meeting, the person playing the role of the potential client could start as an ideal client, and, through a series of scenarios, could become increasingly hostile and difficult. You could then test and practice different approaches for handling situations, so that you can give participants experience in handling them Step 5: Discuss What You Have Learned When you finish the role-play, discuss what you've learned, so that you or the people involved can learn from the experience. Role-play is best used in teaching language when the teachers fully understand their roles and take responsibilities using certain techniques, following necessary procedures to accomplish the tasks. Roleplaying is where you pretend to be another character in a make-believe setting. There are three main types of roleplay: text-based, live-action, and tabletop. Text-based roleplaying takes place online and focuses on writing. Live-action roleplaying takes place face-to-face; you interact with other people through talking, acting, and occasionally combat. Tabletop roleplaying can be done in-person or online, and focuses mainly on verbally describing your character's actions. All three are fun, immersive, and a great way to meet new friends. Find a place to roleplay on and obey its rules. There are many websites that allow roleplaying. Some of them are entire websites dedicated to roleplaying, while others have roleplaying sub-forums, such as GaiaOnline and Neopets. Pick a site that suits your interests the most. You will be prompted to create an account and log in. Some websites are geared towards only certain types of roleplays, while others allow a broader spectrum. For example, you may find a site that focuses only on vampire-themed roleplays. You can play with people you already know, or play with people you don't know. Roleplayers often become best friends! Wherever you choose to roleplay, be sure to read the rules and respect them. Breaking these rules can result in suspension or even banning. Learn the terminology in the roleplaying community. The terms might vary depending on where you choose to roleplay, but in general, they are the same. Here are some common terms you might see: RP stands for roleplay. You will often see this in search threads. OC and Canon: "OC" stands for "original character," while "canon" refers to a character from an existing book, game, or movie, such as Harry Potter, Cloud Strife, or Tony Stark. Pairing: this refers to two characters in an rp; they interact with each other the most, and often end up in a relationship. OOC stands for "Out of Character." It is usually followed by a colon to signify the writer him/herself speaking. People use these for comments and questions about the role. Literate, Semi-literate, and Advanced-literate refer the amount of writing expected per post. These terms are arbitrary, as every one has different ideas of what means what. In general, "semi-lit" refers to posts that are less than a paragraph, and "advanced-lit" refers to posts that are several paragraphs long. Create your character, if needed. If you are playing a canon character, then you will not need to create a character for the rp; you should be prepared to portray the canon character as accurately as possible, however. When creating an original character, you will need to make them believable; if you are in a group, you may need to submit them to the creator for approval. Consider the following when creating your character: Physical appearance: Describe your character's hair, eye, skin colour, and whatever else is most important to you. This will help other writers to visualize your character. You can also use an image instead, if permitted. Personality: What is your character like, and how do they act around other characters? You should also think about your character's goals, motives, and desires. Likes and dislikes: What sorts of things does your character like and dislike/fear? It could be as simple as a love for chocolate and a fear of spiders. It could be as complex as having a hobby (ie: painting) and having a fear (ie: being abandoned). Skills and talents: Everyone is good at something, and your character should too! It might be a good idea to include something your character is bad at in order to make them more believable. Backstory: This will root your character in the fictional world. You will need to consider your character's history, family life, occupation, and so forth. Collaborative activities are any activities where learners are working co-operatively in pairs or group discussions. Completing shared tasks in a pair or group, e.g. Matching, sorting, ranking. Beginners are typically not ready for role play. They simply lack the structure and vocabulary for it. Learners at the advanced levels are capable of free-thinking types of exercises such as debate, discussion, news reports, and reading or watching then paraphrasing. Learners at the intermediate level can benefit from the integration of structure and free-speaking role play.Prepare a context for your learners. For this lesson, let’s say, deciding what to eat when eating out with a friend. Now, if you’ve been using the previous sample lessons for one lesson or as modules, students will likely be warmed up for this activity. Break them into teams with a server and two friends then game on! Observe and be ready to give assistance and or feedback. But try not to interrupt if at all possible. Let them work through it first.