Педагогические науки/ 2 Проблемы подготовки специалистов

O.O. Volkova, A.O. Reva

Donetsk State University of Management, Ukraine

Role playing as a way of enhancing group work

at the lessons of business English

Role playing as one of the kinds of group work has become an accepted part of learning as a consequence of the widely recognised benefits of collaborative group work for student learning. When groups work well, students learn more and produce higher quality learning outcomes. Role plays should provide business students with an opportunity to participate in lively and interesting discussion about a wide variety of business-oriented topics, to develop fluency and other communication skills for their future jobs.

As role play is a very good way for students to develop fluency by forgetting themselves and concentrating on the task in hand it provides the opportunity for extended interaction. This kind of group work needs careful setting up and staging. If your students haven’t done any role plays before or aren’t used to doing them, start gently and don’t launch into a really challenging activity immediately.

You can easily turn ordinary conversation practice into a mini role play. Ask students who are supposed to be on the phone to sit back to back so that they can’t see each other’s faces, etc. Give students time to get into their characters. Tell them to think about the meaning and the situation. Encourage them to use facial expression and pronunciation (stress and intonation) to express emotion, e.g. politeness, rudeness, anger, irritation, excitement, etc.

As you plan your teaching by using role playing you make choices on what you think is the best way to learn a particular skill, knowledge or attribute. If you go a small step further and make these goals clear to your students, then the written objectives will serve a useful purpose in assisting your students' learning. The most direct way for students to understand what is needed to achieve the subject's learning objectives is through the assessment criteria. The criteria will be used to judge whether the desired level of performance has been achieved. The ideal outcome is for students to analyse and evaluate themselves; the next best thing is for them to analyse and evaluate each other.

Among assessment criteria are:

-Peer assessment, in which students comment on and judge their colleagues work.

- Self-assessment, in which students identify standards and criteria to apply to their work, and make judgments about the extent to which they have met these criteria and standards. This form of assessment is commonly a supplement to teacher assessment of students, but in some cases it may replace it.

Each strategy has its own advantages and disadvantages. And only combination of them in a strong methodically constructed system will bring you a desired success.

	Advantages	Disadvantages
Peer assessment	·helps students to become more autonomous, responsible and involved ·encourages students to critically analyse work done by others, rather than simply seeing a mark ·helps clarify assessment criteria ·gives students a wider range of feedback ·more closely parallels possible situations where judgement is made by a group ·reduces the marking load on the lecturer ·several groups can be run at once as not all groups require the lecturer's presence	·students may lack the ability to evaluate each other ·students may not take it seriously, allowing friendships, entertainment value, etc. to influence their marking ·students may not like peer marking because of the possibility of being discriminated against, being misunderstood, etc. Without lecturer intervention, students may misinform each other
Self-assessment	·increases the level of consciousness concerning learning ·encourages students to critically analyse work done by themselves, rather than simply seeing a mark ·reduces the level of fear of teacher or peer assessment ·provides a fair understanding of failures and drawbacks as well as success	·does not provide the opportunity to rank the results ·creates no positive rivalry in the group

Reviews of student feedback demonstrate that many students benefit from learning in groups as long as the groups are well managed and there are clear and fair assessment requirements. In a group assignment the students want a system that gives them every opportunity to receive a high grade that also reflects the level of contribution made by individual students.

To sum up, role play rules are basically simple: role plays must be focused; the objectives must be clear and understood; instructions must be clear and understood; feedback needs to be specific, relevant, achievable and given immediately, assessment should not affect personal feelings and encourage participants for further actions.

The greatest teacher’ success in evaluating the results of such activities is when students tell you they actually enjoyed the experience; that they forgot it was a role play, and found it the most powerful learning they've ever experienced.

Literature:

1. Ellis M., Johnson C. Teaching business English. – Oxford: Oxford Unіversity Press, 1994. –237 p.

2. Jones K. Simulations in language teaching. – Cambridge: Cambridge Unіversity Press, 1982. – 122 p.

3. Scrivener J. Learning Teaching. A guide book for English language teachers. – Macmillan Publishers Limited, 1998. – 218 p.

4. Tarnopolsky O. Business English teaching: Imaginative continuous simulation and critical analysis tasks// Business Issues. The publication of the Business English Special Interest Group. – 2000a. – No.2.

5. Тарнопольский О.Б., Кожушко С.П. Методика обучения английскому языку для делового общения. – Киев: Ленвіт, 2004.- 191с.