"VIETNAMESE ENGLISH MAJORS’ PERCEPTIONS OF THE ROLE OF ROLE-PLAY ACTIVITIES IN LEARNING ENGAGEMENT"

Abstract

"English has emerged as the lingua franca, making the acquisition of English increasingly important. Alongside linguistic proficiency, promoting students’ behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement is essential for English learning. While role-play activities are widely perceived as effective in promoting linguistic competence, their impacts on learning engagement have not been sufficiently addressed, especially in the Vietnamese context. This qualitative study, therefore, explores how Vietnamese English majors perceive the role of role-play activities in learning engagement. Ten Vietnamese English majors participated in this study. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed using content based analysis. The findings indicate that Vietnamese English majors generally perceived role-play activities as positively influencing their behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagements. Additionally, various factors, such as task design, assessment, feedback, social dynamics, teacher role, and contextual conditions, are acknowledged as either barriers or enablers that directly affect students’ engagement in role-play activities. The study expects to contribute to the implementation of role-play activities in Vietnamese classrooms to improve students’ learning engagement."