Welcome to part 2 of our posts about role play. Last week, we talked about what role play is and its benefits in our students. In this post we will talk about two different things, we will introduce some guidelines for role playing exercises and we will give you some examples!
We can turn to the Northern Illinois University Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning (2012) to see some of the guidelines that Harbour and Connick (2005) suggested to help plan the role playing exercise:
Establish how the role play will be assessed.
Instruct students that the purpose of the role play is to communicate a message about the topic and not focus as much on the actual person acting the role.
Tie role plays to learning objectives so students see their relevance to course content.
Provide guidelines about content to include: general presentation behavior (eye contact, gestures, voice projection); use of props; and specific language to be used (content-related vocabulary) and language not to be used (profanity, slang).
Challenge all students equally when assigning role plays so everyone will be assessed on equal ground.
Some examples of role playing activites can be:
Debates: a great way of encouraging language use. Keep in mind not to choose a topic that may be too controversial.
Job interviews: a fun way to ask and answer a set of questions. Divide your students in interviewers and interviewees and let them start the interview. Also, it doesn't have to be a serious interview, it can be for a fun job!
Telephone conversation: one of the most common situations, that's why it's perfect for role playing! And one thing about this is that you have endless topics to talk about in a "phone conversation".
Here are just a few examples of role playing exercises that you can do with your students, let us know in the comments your ideas about this technique!
References
Northern Illinois University Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning. (2012). Role playing. In Instructional guide for university faculty and teaching assistants. Retrieved from https://www.niu.edu/citl/resources/guides/instructional-guide
Harbour, E., & Connick, J. (2005). Role playing games and activities rules and tips.https://www.businessballs.com/roleplayinggames.htm
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