Abstract:
This study was aimed at investigating the effect of role-playon students' self-confidence to use English for communication as wellas the students' attitudes towards the use of role-play in class.The subjects were 44 students from Mathayom Suksa 5/l at SatriPhuket School. It was a 6-week experiment conducted for 3 periods aweek. Since students' confidence to use the target language was ahighly subjective concept which was difficult to determine and measureobjectively, the technique of triangulations was employed to getreliable data. This technique required information from thestudents, the teacher and the observers through questionnaires,interviews and diaries.The results of the study indicated that role-play couldincrease the majority of the students' confidence to use English forcommunication, though it had no or even a negative effect on somestudents. The study also showed that most students had positiveattitudes towards the use of role-play. They viewed it as a veryuseful and interesting activity.Besides, the experiment implied that the use of role-playwould be more successful, if it was appropriately combined with extraactivities which provided students with an opportunity to use thetarget language in a real-life situation. This kind of opportunitycould give the students a taste of success in learning a language andit encouraged them to go on developing their language efficiency.