The whole class reviewed partial video clips of pair presentations in different role-play activities and filled in the questionnaire of preferences for four role-play questionnaires for students’ perceptions of role-play activities, sub-sample interviews, and teaching journals.
3.4.1 Five questionnaires for students’ perceptions of role-play activities
In order to investigate students’ perceptions of different role-play activities, the researcher modified Section Three of H.C. Su’s (2007) questionnaire to work out the one which was more suitable for the present study. There were altogether five questionnaires, the first four of which were for the four types of role-play (see Appendix A, B, C, D) and the last of which was for comparing all types of role-play (see Appendix E).
The first questionnaire was composed of two parts—students’ learning background information and students’ perceptions of the first type of role-play (i.e.
role-playing through skeleton dialogues) (see Appendix A). Part one pertained to students’ background information, including their names, gender, the time when they started to learn English, whether they had the experience of taking GEPT at the basic level, whether they had passed it, whether they liked English, whether they went to English cram school, and how often they read English magazines or novels. The rationale of proposing the last question is that the researcher suspected the input from reading might help students enlarge their word bank and even enhance their ability to make a dialogue. Part two was regarding students’ perceptions of role-play, with totally thirty-six items in five sections—students’ interests in role-play (N=9), students’ viewpoints toward Stage One: Pre-role-play (N=11), students’ viewpoints toward Stage Two: Role-play (N=6), students’ viewpoints toward Stage Three:
Post-role-play (N=6), and open-ended questions (N=4). The first four sections were all 5-point Likert-type scaled—5 points for “Strongly agree”, 4 points for “Agree”, 3 points for “No comment”, 2 points for “Disagree”, and 1 point for “Strongly disagree.” This questionnaire was completed by the participants at the end of the debriefing stage of the first type of role-play.
The second, third, fourth questionnaires were respectively used for investigating
students’ perceptions of the rest three types of role-play (see Appendix B, C, D).
Compared with the first questionnaire, all of them had no Part one but Part Two with thirty-six items in total. Every questionnaire was also given to the participants at the post-role-play stage.
After conducting all the types of role-play activities, the participants were asked to complete the last questionnaire which consisted of two parts: Part One, with four items, was regarding students’ preferences for different types of role-play (see Appendix E). A 5-point scaled was used here as well—5 points for “Extremely like”, 4 points for “Like”, 3 points for “Ordinary”, 2 points for “Dislike”, and 1 point for
“Extremely dislike”. Part Two, with sixteen items, tapped on students’ comparisons of different types of role-play. For example, do you think that Type 1/2/3/4 is easy, interesting, useful, or suitable for incorporating into English class? Again, the 5-point Likert-type scaled was used in this part—5 points for “Strongly agree”, 4 points for
“Agree”, 3 points for “No comment”, 2 points for “Disagree” and 1 point for
“Strongly disagree.”
3.4.2 Sub-sample interviews
Besides exploring the participants’ perceptions of role-play activities through the questionnaires, the researcher further conducted sub-sample interviews in Chinese after each type of role-play activity for the purpose of eliciting more specific data without bias or narrow perspectives. After the completion of each type, three pairs/groups were randomly selected from the three levels: one high-level, one intermediate-level, and one basic-level. To make the interviewees as comfortable as possible, the one-on-one interviews were held in an individual counseling room during lunch break. The interviewer tape-recorded the whole process of each interview and mirror responses by neutrally repeating them.
With regard to the interview questions, H.C. Su’s (2007) list of four open-ended
questions and Ramos’ (2002) thirteen questions were modified to meet the need of the current study. There were three categories of questions: students’ perceptions of individual role-play (eight questions), students’ suggestions on the conduction of role-play (seven questions), and students’ perceptions of four types of role-play (six questions) (see Appendix F). Questions in the first two categories were pursued in the wrap up of each type of role-play, whereas questions in the last category were addressed only after phase three: Reflection and Award.
3.4.3 Teaching journals
By means of carefully watching the video of the participants’ performances after each activity, the researcher had one more chance to observe the activity again and jot down her own reflection. For instance, during the pre-role-play, how did students of different language proficiency prepare for the role-play and interact with partners?
Was there any different interaction among pairs of different language proficiency?
What were the difficulties that students of different language proficiency encountered during the preparation? What did students do when they had problems? How did the teacher deal with students’ problems during the preparation? How much time did students discuss about their role-play? How much time did they need to practice? Did students try to memorize their own dialogues?
During the role-play stage, how did students of different language proficiency perform? Was there any difference in creativity among the role-plays put out by pairs of different language proficiency? What were the common and noticeable language errors of students of different language proficiency? What was the audience reaction to role-plays? Were students willing to act out their role-play without reading out the words in their worksheets? Did students use their body language or props in their role-play? Were there many new words in high achievers’ role-play? Was there similarity in their dialogues between pairs of the same language proficiency? Did
students have a serious attitude when filling out their evaluation forms? Were students willing to give comments on others’ performance? Did students understand others’
role-play?
During the post-role-play stage, how did students feel when reviewing the video clips of their performance? Could students find out errors by themselves when reviewing the video clips? Could students come up with correct forms by themselves?
Did students make improvement during the remedial activity, such as recognizing the wrong tenses of verbs or collocations? What was the classroom atmosphere (See Appendix G)?