Focus group interviews
The overall mean score of the focus group interviews was very high with the mean scores of 4.14. It was found that the learners can improve English speaking in class respectively, and they had more confidence when on speaking.
Discussion
First of all, the role play activities encouraged students to speak English. All activities also had a clear purpose motivate students to speak English more confidently in each situation. Similarly, Morrow (1981:59-66) and all wright (1978) indicated that the clear goal of activities can motivate students in order to obtain correct information on the purpose of each activity and also let the students to know what are they doing so that they can achieve the aim desired. Secondly, there was the variety of situations which helped students enjoy learning. Students were excited to learn how to speak with the new situations. Every situation encouraged students to speak with self-confidence and to understand the role, so students had to be enthusiastic all the time. The role play activities were chosen by the students based on their respective interests. Role play is a real situation that happens in their daily life. The emphasis is to practice the student’ s English communication. This was consistent with Brown (2001:258) indicated that the teacher should select appropriate activities that the students are interested by considering the basic experience, the interest and the ability of the learners so they can have the opportunity to develop the language by practicing and participating. Conseguently, the students gradually learned and improved their speaking ability. Sinlapasart (2001) mentioned that teaching the students from an easy topic to a difficult one helps students to learn language effectively. The students could also transfer the knowledge from the previous topic to use in the next topic.
In addition, the role play activities encouraged students’ self-confidence. The students responded that their self-confidence was increased after learning through the role play activities because the role play activities encouraged students to practice speaking English as much as possible. If some students made some mistakes, the researcher and their friends would help them to correct those mistakes. This created a friendly atmosphere.