<![CDATA[Children in island communities often face limited opportunities to develop structured communication skills through interactive learning activities. This community service program aims to improve speaking ability of children in South Nias Islands through the implementation of Role Play by Information Gap training. The participants are 9 children with age of 10 to 12 years old from South Nias Island. The activity was conducted on January 2, 2025 for a day and consisted of needs identification, pre-test, contextual language input, paired role-play practice, feedback, post-test, and reflection. Speaking performance was assessed consistently across four aspects: speaking confidence, communication fluency, interaction ability, and expression, using speaking speaking scale 1 to 5 from 9 participants. The results found that participants’ speaking skills improved after participating in the training. Descriptively, the average score increased from 45% in the pre-test to 73% in the post-test, representing an increase of 28 percentage points. The highest improvement was in interaction ability, which increased from 40% to 80%, followed by speaking confidence from 60% to 80%, communication fluency from 40% to 72%, and expression ability from 40% to 60%. These findings indicate that Role Play is an effective learning strategy for improving children’s speaking skills because it provides opportunities for direct practice, active participation, and contextual communication experiences. In addition to improve speaking ability, the activity also contributed to participants’ confidence in speaking English, social interaction, and willingness to express ideas. Therefore, the activity indicates the potential of contextual Role Play with Information Gap tasks to support children's English-speaking practice in coastal communities.]]>
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