Role-play as an independent learning technique in developing semantic & pragmatic competence

As students enter the Fifth year of an English Department, an increased responsibility for a lot of linguistic information is highly desirable. Students need to do many efforts to differentiate and understand of both semantics and pragmatics. Adopting lecture technique only is not enough to realize semantic and pragmatic competences. The sample of the study was 32 students in Qassim Private Colleges. The instruction took place after conducting pretest. The students did role-play followed by free discussion techniques. Results of the t. test analysis revealed that adopting role-play yielded significant effects on students' semantics and pragmatics competences.

Keywords: semantic competence, pragmatic competence, role-plays.