The Effectiveness of Role Play Strategy in Teaching Vocabulary

The research significance 
The current study is significant for the following reasons:- 
1. It might provide EFL teachers with solutions for developing vocabulary effectively and may attract them to 
practise role play strategy in the classroom. 
2. It may benefit and help learners use role play to master and enrich vocabulary. 
3. It may help students to overcome problems they face in acquiring and conveying meaning of vocabulary though 
communication. 
4. With specific reference to current attempts to improve EFL vocabulary learning and teaching in Saudi Arabia, it 
might contribute suggestions for course designers, and curriculum developers for using role-play in Saudi schools. 
5. It might open up new vistas for researchers for further studies in the field of learning vocabulary using role-play in 
the classroom as it puts theory into practice. 
Research Delimitation 
This study was conducted in a girls' secondary school which is located in Al-Madinah, Saudi Arabia, in the first term 
of 2015. The participants in this study were using the "Flying High for Saudi Arabia" textbook, including units 2 and 3. 
The study was delimited to the use of role-play strategy in teaching vocabulary to 40 female first year secondary school 
EFL students who were at the first level of secondary school English proficiency, with an average age of 15 to 16 years 
old. Their mother tongue was Arabic. 
Terminology 
Vocabulary 
The term vocabulary has a range of meanings. For example, some teachers use the term to mean sight-word 
vocabularies, referring to students’ immediate recognition of words in print; other teachers refer to words students 
understand as their meaning vocabulary. Still other teachers use the term to mean listening vocabulary, or students’ 
understanding of words that they hear in the spoken language. Content teachers use the term academic vocabulary to 
refer to content-specific words (Snow, Griffin & Burns, 2005). Within this research, the term vocabulary has been used 
to refer to students’ understanding of and ability to use words through role-play strategy. 
Vocabulary Learning Strategy 
It refers to " any set of techniques or learning behaviours, which language learners use to understand the meaning of 
a new word, to restore the knowledge of newly learned words, and to expand one's knowledge, of vocabulary" 
(Intaraprasert, 2004, p. 53. Cameron (2001) describes vocabulary learning strategies as “the actions that learners take to 
help themselves understand and remember vocabulary items” (p. 92). 
Role-play Strategy 
According to the Oxford Dictionary (2015) role play is acting out of the part of a particular person or character, for 
example as a technique in training or psychotherapy. Role-play is a strategy in which students are required to act 
specific roles through saying, doing and sharing (Altun, 2015). 
In relation to the research purpose, role play is used to encourage students to make connections between vocabulary, 
experiences and the content that is being studied. The students are introduced to new vocabulary and then given the 
chance to use the words in context through role- play. The process of role- playing the words helps to increase the 
students’ understanding of the words and how to use the words in a real world context.