Role Play: Effective Role Play for Japanese High School Students.

This paper contributes to the growing debate in Japan about how to teach Japanese students to speak English effectively. It is argued that there must be a shift from learning about the English language to using English to learn and communicate about topics that are interesting and relevant to students' lives in Japan. Role playing is an effective tool for accomplishing this shift. This paper is organized into five sections. In the first section role playing is defined and its various types are introduced. The next section gives the advantages of role playing. The following sections discuss the disadvantages of role playing frankly, and suggests possible ways to minimize and overcome these disadvantages. The next section considers how to adapt role playing to everyday Japanese situations according to proficiency levels, and the final chapter discuses how to evaluate students' performance, including debriefing and peer evaluation. (Contains 13 references.) (KFT)