Incorporating role play and simulation games to teach the present perfect tense effectively

Abstract

This research aims at investigating the effectiveness of implementing Role Play to teach the Present Perfect. It also inquires the attitudes and experience of the teachers of grammar, at the Department of Letters and English, University „Des Frères Mentouri‟, Constantine, as to the use of Role Play to teach the Present Perfect. We hypothesize that, first, if teachers of Grammar are made aware of the importance of practising role play to teach the Present Perfect, they will have positive attitudes towards its implementation in their own classes. Second, if teachers practise role play in their teaching of the Present Perfect, it will help the students understand and use this tense adequately. To test our hypotheses, a Teachers‟ Questionnaire and a Students‟ Test have been used. The Teachers‟ Questionnaire is meant to investigate the teachers‟ opinions as to the use of the new treatment in teaching the Present Perfect which has totally confirmed our first hypothesis: the analysis of the teachers‟ questionnaire shows that teachers of Grammar hold positive attitudes towards practising role play to teach the Present Perfect tense. The test has been developed to check the second hypothesis about the students‟ use of the Present Perfect tense. It is made up of three parts: „Identification of the correct answer‟, a „Fill in the gaps‟ activity and a „Multiple Choice‟ activity and aims to assess the learners‟ knowledge of the Present Perfect before and after instruction. The sample (70 learners) is taken from second year students of English, at the Department of Letters and English, University „Des Frères Mentouri‟, Constantine, during the academic year 2014/2015. The results obtained partially confirm the second hypothesis. When we calculate the average of correct answers for the Experimental Group in the pre-test and post-test, we find that there is a difference of 11.70% between the learners‟ performances in the pre-test and post-test.