Study on Hong Kong students’ perceptions of the usefulness of using role-play to enhance speaking skills

This study investigated the perceptions of secondary 5 students of the usefulness of using roleplay activities to enhance students' engagement in speaking English over the course of two weeks. The quantitative data obtained were from the pre- and post-tests of 46 secondary 5 students. Interviews were conducted with 10 of the students to have a deeper understanding of their perceptions. The findings indicated that all the differences were significant at the p = 0.05 or p = 0.01 level. This revealed that 58% of the students perceived role-play as an effective tool for enhancing their English-speaking skills. Moreover, all aspects of student engagement showed improvements, with the highest being emotional engagement at 35% followed by cognitive engagement with an improvement of 12%. Behavioural engagement was increased by only 6%. This indicated that students were more engaged in speaking English through role-play activities.