The Impact of Role Play Activities on Intermediate EFL Learners' Confidence

Learners' confidence plays a vital role in successful second language acquisition, especially in EFL contexts where opportunities for authentic communication are limited and learners often experience anxiety and hesitation. Enhancing learners' confidence can increase participation, improve performance, and support overall language development; therefore, identifying effective instructional strategies to strengthen this affective factor is essential. The present study aimed to investigate the impact of role-play activities on EFL learners' confidence. The participants were ۴۶ intermediate learners selected through convenience sampling from a private language institute and randomly assigned to an experimental group and a control group. The instrument used to measure learners' confidence was the EFL Learner Confidence Questionnaire (ELCQ), a ۲۰-item Likert-scale questionnaire assessing confidence in speaking, listening, reading, writing, and overall language ability. The study followed a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest control group design in which the experimental group received role-play instruction over eight weeks, while the control group received traditional instruction. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and analysis of covariance to control for initial differences between groups. The results indicated that role-play activities had a statistically significant positive effect on learners' confidence, and learners who participated in role-play instruction demonstrated higher levels of confidence compared to those who received traditional teaching. These findings suggest that incorporating interactive and communicative activities such as role-play into EFL classrooms can effectively promote learners' confidence and contribute to their affective and academic development.

کلیدواژه ها:

commucative language teaching ، EFL learners ، learner's confidence ، role-play activities