The Effectiveness of Role Play Techniques in Teaching Speaking for EFL College Students Dhea Mizhir Krebt Department of English Language, College of Education Ibn-Rushd, University of Baghdad, Iraq Abstract—The paper investigates the impact of role-playing as a classroom technique on Iraqi EFL students’ speaking skill on Iraqi EFL students at the college level. The students are 40 college language students in University of Baghdad, College of Education Ibn-Rushd randomly chosen. Then, they were divided into two groups, experimental and control groups. Thirty questions were applied to both groups as a pre-test of speaking and the students asked to answer them orally. The experimental group was taught speaking skill of the targeted role-play technique while the control group was taught in traditional method. After 20 lessons of the teaching, the post-test of speaking was conducted in which the students in both groups were asked to answer. The results showed that there is a significant improvement in speaking skill of experimental group. The two groups were significantly different to the sake of using role play technique. Index Terms—role playing, college level, technique I. INTRODUCTION Chaney (1998) states that speaking ability is the process of sharing and building meaning while using verbal and non- verbal symbols, in different situations. Speaking is significant in both language learning and teaching. For long time, students recall the activities and memorized the conversations but nowadays, they should study how to express themselves. They should follow social and cultural rules in any context. Many studies have shown that many Iraqi EFL college students hesitating with some activities like listening and speaking ones in the college, they are unable to speak and use language in real life situations. This conclusion was supported by many previous related studies done on a group of Iraqi EFL college students in which their speaking skill was tested and traces of failure were proved to exist. Speaking skill has some problems, they are: a.) students lack of motivation to practice in the class, b.) students are anxious to take part in the conversation, c.) students do not know what to say, and d.) students do not like the prescribed textbook. The nature of the stated problem urges Iraqi English teachers to adapt different techniques with the aim of improving learning the speaking skill in the classroom, but such techniques mostly were unsuccessful. One of the techniques used to teach the speaking skill, perhaps, is the role-play. Recently, oral skills (Listening and speaking) in Iraq gained much attention in general English classes, due to the growing demands from schools, colleges and markets witnessed a dramatic change. Most of students looking for a job in big companies, schools and colleges after graduation, the profession of teaching becomes very competitive. Market seeks for graduates not just who have a certificate only but they ask for a high level of English communicative skills which can be assesses by conducting interviews or interaction in English language. So that, it is very significant to teach students some skills that they can use in the everyday interaction that they will face after graduation. As a result, listening and speaking skills instruction should be in near-to-real situations which is basic for all students. Large number of teachers have employed role play in their classes, but very few have taught it as teaching practice. Whereas the theoretical background on role play assumes there are many merits to conduct role play in English class, only some researches have shade light on the students’ sides concerning role play. To add, some studies on the practicing role play in English language classes. The present study is only one part of an investigation project, which was conducted to study the effectiveness of role play in teaching English for different levels of students (primary, intermediate and college) in Iraq, but in this paper I only tackled one part which is college students. II. AIM OF THE STUDY The present study aims at finding of the effectiveness of using role-play as a classroom technique on Iraqi EFL college students’ speaking skill. III. DEFINITION OF THE TERM ISSN 1798-4769 Journal of Language Teaching and Research, Vol. 8, No. 5, pp. 863-870, September 2017 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/jltr.0805.04 © 2017 ACADEMY PUBLICATION