For ESL teachers, shy students can often lead to a lull during class. Learning English is a huge challenge, and students are often timid in their early attempts to speak.
Because being able to communicate in English is a major goal for ESL students, teachers should consider implementing role play activities into their daily classroom routine. One of the best things about conversation activities is that they rarely require a lot of prep for the teacher, as few materials are needed and the conversation can often take an unexpected turn!
Here are a few ideas to help teachers customize the perfect role play activity for their ESL class.
ESL Conversation: Prepare Before Role Playing
Before the first few role play activities, it is important to make the students feel relaxed and comfortable with both the topic and their ability to talk about it. Rather than having one group perform in front of the class, divide the students into small groups to practice the role play without the stress of their peers watching.
The first few topics should be easy – something the students are familiar with and interested in discussing.
An example could be food. Before the activity, the teacher should brainstorm words and phrases with the students that they will be likely to use during the conversation:
- Types of food
- Names of food
- Restaurants
- What do you like?
- Why don't you like it?
- It tastes great!
- It doesn't taste good
Because students usually have a large food vocabulary, the teacher will be able to fill the board with their ideas and give them confidence in the topic. The class can also practice saying the phrases aloud for pronunciation, and discuss meaning before role play begins.
If the students are still feeling shy, the teacher can supply (or have them create) flashcards with these words/phrases that they can use during the role play for extra confidence.
ESL Role Play: Acting, Moving, and Talking
Once students have participated in a few guided role play activities, the teacher can have them suggest more topics they'd like to talk about. If they are stuck for ideas, another option is to act out a movie scene.
This requires a little bit of prep on the teacher's part, but students will love it. Choose a short clip from a movie (in English) between two or three characters. The teacher should provide a transcript of the lines of each character to the students. After watching the scene, have the students act it out in small groups.
Encourage them to include expression – hand movements, facial expressions, whispers, shouts – as it's not only important for understanding the language, it's fun!
Another option is to choose another setting for the role play outside of the classroom. This could work especially well for trying to incorporate new vocabulary into conversation. For example, take the students out into the hall when learning how to ask directions, and have them tell one another how to find the restroom, the library, the office, etc.
Get ESL Students Talking!
The more comfortable ESL students become with role play, the more the conversation might go off-topic. This is great, as it shows that the students are comfortable with their new language and following the conversation!
For more tips on ways to get ESL students talking and listening, try these ESL Conversation Activities and ESL Listening Activities. Need more ideas for ESL activities? Check out these ESL Classroom Activity Resources.
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