The Efficacy of Role-Play in the Development of Productive Knowledge of Lexis in TESOL: A Study Based on a University in Sri Lanka

This study examines how role-play can help university students in Sri Lanka improve their knowledge of vocabulary. Students often struggle with communication skills and vocabulary despite studying English for many years. This study investigates the impact of engaging in role-play on the development of accurate pronunciation of lexis. It examines whether pronunciation difficulties contribute to communication issues during role-play and explores strategies for addressing these pronunciation issues. Additionally, it explores how participants in role-play resolve misunderstandings in communication. The data were gathered through a purposive sampling method from a group of eight undergraduate students who enrolled in the selected university and chose English as their degree subject during their first year of study. The participants were instructed to participate in a role-play, which was recorded both before and after receiving feedback, along with the semi-structured interviews. The role-play recordings were rated by two academics who are native speakers, and the information was supported by the data collected from the semi-structured interviews. Based on the role-play data rating, it was determined that all participants originally fell into the intermediate and limited groups. The participants faced difficulties in pronunciation related to suprasegmental features, affecting their speech clarity. Despite improvement, some issues persisted. Given the participants' shown growth and favourable outcomes in the role-play, as well as their positive interview feedback, it may be concluded that teachers should allocate more time to teaching word stress and proper pronunciation. The results indicate that role-play may be used to enhance the productive features of vocabulary as a successful method of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) to assist English learners.