Abstract name : nurbaiti student no. : 0906102050040 study program : english education title : the implementation of role play technique in teaching speaking this study aims at examining whether or not the use of role play technique improves students’ performance in english speaking ability. quantitative approach with experimental study of pretest-postest control group design was undertaken to overcome the problems faced by students in learning speaking skill. the instrument used to collect the data in this study was by means of the test in the form of oral test. the result of the test was analyzed by using the speaking criteria proposed by brown (2004). in addition, some statisctical formulae were also used to analyze the data. the results of the study revealed that there was a significant improvement on students’ performance in speaking ability after the role play technique was implemented. thus, role play can be one of the alternative techniques used by the teacher in