(Journal of English Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics)                         

Volume 8, No. 2, August 2022 Page. 96-102 

                            p-ISSN: 2356-2048    e-ISSN: 2356-203x    

96 

 

 
THE CLINICAL SETTING ENGLISH ROLE PLAY METHOD TO IMPROVE THE 

MIDWIFERY STUDENTS SPEAKING ABILITY 

 
Surip Haryani1*, Azwar Abbas2  

Nursing Program, Sekolah Tinggi Ilmu Kesehatan Madani Yogyakarta  

Magister of English Education, University of Ahmad Dahlan  

Email Correspondence: sharyani81@gmail.com 

 

Abstract 

Role-play for health science students can be done by applying clinical setting role play. 

The study aimed to find out the effect of clinical setting role play to improve the speaking 

skills of midwifery students using pre and post-test design. This is a classroom action 

research with one group before-after study. The 3rd-semester midwifery students were 

taken totally as samples. Paired T-Test shows an increase in the value of the pre and 

post-test results with a p-value of 0.003 and <p value of 0.05 which means there is a 

positive influence.  

Keywords: Correlation, Personality, English Proficiency 
 

INTRODUCTION 

English courses are given in almost all university majors in Indonesia, including 

the midwifery department. This is because the need for midwives who are able to 

compete in the global era, especially facing the MEA, has become more real. With the 

MEA, midwife graduates who have the ability to speak English are very important. 

Students will later compete with many graduates from various universities to get jobs or 

work as medical personnel in clinics or hospitals both at home and abroad. If the 

opportunity to work as medical midwives will be limited later, students can get the 

opportunity to work as medical personnel abroad. Many developed countries provide 

opportunities to work as medical personnel in various international hospitals. The need 

for medical personnel abroad is very large, but the absorption is far below the standard 

due not to the aspect of clinical ability but to the aspect of the lack of ability to 

communicate in English.  

English courses are given in the midwifery department with the hope that students 

mailto:fatmaery@ymail.com


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are able to communicate well in English, especially according to their role as prospective 

medical personnel. From the observations made, it is known that the English learning 

application has started the ESP (English for Specific Purposes) learning model or 

English based on the majors taken but speaking practice applications have not applied 

setting-based conversations or clinical backgrounds directly. This phenomenon makes 

the English courses given need to be given with thematic conversations whose setting 

or concept is in the world of health care for patients which is identical to the world of 

hospital or clinic work with the speaking learning method, namely by playing a role or 

role play. (Baybakova & Hasko, 2020) mentions that imitational and role-play strategies 

can also be quite successful in ESP discourse training.  Crookal in (Ferdian & Nirwana, 

2021) states that role-play can be a quite simple and brief technique to organize which 

is also highly flexible, leaving much more scope for the exercise of individual variation, 

initiative, and imagination. Those aspects in role-plays can be set in a clinical situation 

for medical students or other health field majors such as midwifery.  

For midwifery students, role plays need to be done by applying the clinical setting 

of services to patients or clinical setting role play to improve their speaking or 

communication skills. A research finding of (Ferdian & Nirwana, 2021) found that 

nursing students’ reflections on role-play activities are suggested and considered for 

their professional careers. Nursing and midwifery are typically the same fields in relation 

to health care providers. The findings of (Ferdian & Nirwana, 2021) was used as one of 

the backgrounds for the research to be conducted on midwifery students on how clinical 

setting role play can improve their speaking skills.  

 

RESEARCH METHODS 

This is a quantitative experimental research using one group pre-test and post-test 

design.  Role-play activities were conducted as pre and post-tests and the scores were 

presented and measured quantitatively using dependent T-test analysis with SPSS 

application to find whether or not the significant value of Sig (2 Tailed) T-test <0.05 

meaning a significant difference between the pre and post-test-values. The 3rd-semester 

midwifery students of STIKES Madani Yogyakarta were taken totally as the populations 

and samples. They are 13 students in the class. The researchers conducted some steps in 



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the research namely observation, selection of research population and sample, giving 

pre-test, applying the concept of clinical role-play setting giving post-test, assessing and 

analyzing results, and writing the research report.  

Observation and interviews are the data collection techniques to find out the 

students’ experiments in a midwifery clinical setting role play.  The treatment or 

experiment was given by providing material in the setting of English conversation-based 

material in the setting of midwifery health care services. The conversation settings are 

started from the beginning when a midwife is accepting a new client’s admission, 

conducting the client’s personal data, conducting physical assessments from the primary 

data of vital signs and health history to ANC or antenatal care, explaining procedures, 

assisting labor process, dealing with the postpartum woman, explaining health 

reproduction system and providing an immunization service as one of the child health 

cares. All of the settings of the situations are based on the midwifery competencies in 

Myles textbook for Midwives (Bannett, V. Ruth; Brown, 2014). To find out how the 

improvements of the scores, the students were given pre and post-tests. Analysis of the 

listening test results is analyzed using the T-test. 

 

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 

The observation stage found that the previous semesters were conducted online 

caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The speaking activities were conducted virtually and 

had not been given role play activities. For the role play speaking test in the pretest 

session, the students were divided into 4 groups and they had to play roles as a midwife, 

a client and her spouse, and the midwife assistant. The score gained by the students in 

the pre-test stage are below: 

Tabel 1. Pre-Test Result 

Group  Score 

Group 1 67 

Group 2 65 

Group 3 70 

Group 4 70 

  



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The students were given conversation-based materials on the teaching-learning activities. 

The materials were English conversation-based material in the setting of midwifery health 

care services. The conversation settings were started from the beginning when a midwife 

is accepting a new client’s admission, conducting the client’s personal data, conducting 

physical assessments from the primary data of vital signs and health history to ANC or 

antenatal care, explaining procedures, assisting labor process, dealing with the 

postpartum woman, explaining health reproduction system and providing an 

immunization service as one of the child health cares. 

The posttests were set in the midwifery laboratory where all the utilities are set as 

a mini clinic for the students to practice all the midwifery skills. The students conduced 

the role play by using the medical instruments needed during each scene such as using 

the observation chart, statoscope, thermometer, scale, sphygmomanometer when 

measuring vital signs, using examination bed when conducting ANC or antenatal care 

with other supported equipment such as Doppler, and using baby phantom in assisting 

labor. This medical equipment helped the students to be more expressive and 

comprehensive.  

The post-test results indicate the improvement of the score 

 

Tabel 2. Post-Test Results 
 

Group  score 

Group  1 78 

Group 2 75 

Group 3 80 

Group 4 90 
 

The improvements of the score can be seen below : 

 
Table 3: Students’ Score Improvement  

Group  Pretest 

Score 

Post Test 

Score  

Score 

Improvement   

Group 1 67 78 11 

Group 2 65 75 10 

Group 3 70 80 10 

Group 4 70 90 20 
 

The above improvement scores during pre and post-tests can prove that clinical setting 



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role-play conducted in midwifery clinic by using the medical equipment needed for the 

role play can improve the speaking skill of the students.  This is in line with the findings 

of (Umam, 2011) in his research stating role playing can improve the speaking ability as 

well as (Alzboun et al., 2017) who can prove the good effects of role-playing in improving 

the speaking ability significantly.  

Based on the interview given to the students after the post-test, they mostly stated 

that the clinical setting could help them to know what to communicate since they were at 

the same time conducting the midwifery treatment to the client. The action can support 

them to remember what to say in communication when implementing midwifery actions. 

The students were able to be more expressive and comprehensive. This can be considered 

as the advantage of clinical setting role-play. In conducting the activity, he students found 

a slight problem in remembering the dialogue since they have to do some scenes of 

services from the beginning when they accepted a new client until the childcare services. 

But this was mostly helped by the real act of midwifery services so the communication 

could be done more naturally.  

The significant result of the data analysis can be seen below :  

 

Table 4. The Influence of Clinical Setting Role Play to Improve the Speaking 

Skills of Midwifery Students 

 

No Variable Pre-test Post-test p-value 

1 The Influence of Clinical 

Setting Role Play to Improve 

the Speaking Skills of 

Midwifery Students  

2.44±68.00 6.55±80.75 0.013 

 

Pre and post-test indicate an increase in value of Standard Deviation. T-test results 

of the analysis of the pre and post-test scores using SPSS 16 show a Sig value of 0.003 

which means there is a significant difference in value between the pre and post-test 

results. Midwifery clinical setting role play can improve the speaking skills of midwifery 

students in STIKes Madani Yogyakarta. The data results indicate that the author can 

prove midwifery clinical setting role play can improve the speaking skills of midwifery 



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students.  

This findings can support the goal value of Indonesian ASEAN Free Association 

(AFTA) and North Atlantic Free Treat Association NAFTA memberships as stated in 

(Nurhidayat et al., 2021) that opportunities and challenges for health school students, 

graduates, and lecturers to demand qualified health school students for qualified health 

workers. The medical laboratory becomes good place for not only practicing health care 

skills but also for practicing in English especially for the health science in particularly 

Midwifery.   

 

CONCLUSION 

The results of the study and data analysis show an increase in the value of the pre 

and post-test processes before and after giving treatment. This shows that there is a good 

effect of the clinical setting role-play method on improving the ability of the 3rd-semester 

students of midwifery at STIKes Madani Yogyakarta. The availability of the midwifery 

laboratory and its supporting equipment which are commonly used for midwifery 

students’ practices is beneficial for midwifery English lectures. The implementation of 

English speaking practice in the form of role-playing is suitable for the midwifery major. 

Students' speaking skills, especially when speaking in the context of midwifery, will 

greatly assist them in preparing to compete in the global era where the need for medical 

personnel around the world is very wide, especially after the Covid-19 pandemic, the 

need for medical personnel is increasing almost all over the world.  

Practicing English in the midwifery laboratory or in the context of clinical settings 

is obviously necessary for midwifery students to practice optimally in relation to the use 

of English midwifery technical terms. The author suggests conducting further research 

related to the perspective or review of student learning experiences in using the clinical 

setting role play method in midwifery English learning. 

 

REFERENCES 

Alzboun, B., Smad, O. M., & Baniabdelrahman, A. (2017). The Effect of Role Play 

Strategy on Jordanian EFL Tenth Grade Students’ Speaking Skill. Arab World 

English Journal, 8(4), 121–136. https://doi.org/10.24093/awej/vol8no4.8 

 



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Bannett, V. Ruth; Brown, L. K. (2014). Myles Textbook for Midwives (jaine Marshall 

and Maureen Reynor (ed.); sixteenth, Issue sixteenth edition). Sounders Elsevier. 

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midwifery&lr&hl=id&pg=PR5#v=onepage&q=mile textbook for 

midwifery&f=false 

 

Baybakova, I. M., & Hasko, O. L. (2020). Imitational And Role-Play Strategies In The 

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University, Series Philology. Social Communications, 2(1), 11–15. 

https://doi.org/10.32838/2663-6069/2020.1-2/03 

 

Ferdian, N. R., & Nirwana, B. (2021). Nursing Students ’ Reflections on English Role-

Play Activities in ESP Class. 4(4), 452–457. 

 

Nurhidayat, N., Fatmawati, A., & Kesehatan Muhammadiyah Makassar, P. (2021). 

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https://doi.org/10.30605/25409190.232 

 

Umam, C. (2011). Improving the Students’ Speaking Ability through Role-Playing 

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