THE USE OF ASYNCHRONOUS FLIPPED CLASSROOM ROLE PLAY TO IMPROVE THE SPEAKING SKILL OF HOSPITALITY MANAGEMENT STUDENTS

Abstract

Ever since the pandemic of novel Coronavirus hit the world, on March 11, 2020 the World Health Organization communicated that it became a global pandemic (WHO 2020) causing school disruptions all over the world. Instantly social distancing was announced publicly in Indonesia on March 15, 2020, and, on the same day, the governor of Banten Province dismissed all schools to prevent widespread of Covid-19. Creating activities to improve students’ English skills during the pandemics of Covid-19 is quite a challenge where teaching and learning activities cannot be implemented face-to-face. For an English Specific Purpose course like this English Profession in which the length of course is four credits, not all learning activities should be online. This course was expected to practice students’ English fluency related to their prospective responsibilities in Hotel Management. Relying on once a week face-to-face meetings is insufficient without getting supported with assignments for students to practice by themselves. Flipped classrooms were chosen to prepare students’ activities outside online classrooms. As an alternative pedagogical approach, flipped classrooms use pre-class learning for students to apply and build basic concepts outside the classroom setting (Bergmann in Persky & McLauglin, 2017). This research attempts to improve students’ speaking skill by forming several small group role plays throughout the semester (Lazaraton, 2001) and extensive assignment asynchronously. The subjects were two classes of Hospitality Management students of a total eighty one students attending the English Profession class in the even semester of 2020/2021 academic year. The writer used role plays consisting of four students per group for extensive speaking assignments which were videotaped and uploaded on YouTube and evaluated on the synchronous meeting afterwards. The role plays were shown and discussed in classes related to the content and the group’s performance in early class meetings. The rest of the session covered the same and related topic so that students had an overview of the topic to discuss. It was found out that the students enjoyed the role play assignments, improved their speaking skill including pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar, as well as built their teamwork. It showed that role plays were one of activities to enhance students’ speaking skill and other competencies related to students’ English proficiency.