Teaching English as a Foreign Language - Setting Up Role Plays (1)

There are two main reasons why a role play fails

o Poor choice of topic
o Lack of preparation

The first problem is often caused by teachers failing to distinguish between topics that are good for a discussion and those that are good for a role play. For example, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus is great for sparking a debate but how can you make it into a role play?

Generally speaking, role plays are not based around a topic but a situation - reserving a hotel room, complaining, asking for directions. These are all good starting points because there is a clear goal to be achieved by the participants.

If we look at the first idea, the 'guest' has to book a room and the 'receptionist' has to provide the necessary information. This means there is a clear information gap, which gives purpose to the role play.

The second issue, lack of preparation, often stems from teachers thinking that drilling the target language a few times is sufficient to ensure a successful outcome. The constitutes a very narrow view of what a role play is actually about.

Ask yourself "What is the purpose of a role play?" Yes, we want the students to practise the target language. Yes, we want to monitor them to check for any gaps or errors that we can deal with later. But, ultimately, a role play is designed to prepare students to interact in the real world

Drilling is vital and is an important foundation, but what we really need to do is to teach the students to react spontaneously, use strategies and be flexible. Let's put it this way. We don't want Shakespearian actors who can only follow a script - we want Method actors who can improvise based upon their knowledge of the character they have created.

Too often students learn a drill by heart and if anybody strays from the script they flounder. In the real world, the people they are going to interact with haven't even read the script so the student is guaranteed to encounter variations which she or he is ill-equipped to deal with.

In the second part of this series we will discuss how to prepare the students the Method acting way.

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