Role Plays for Today is a photocopiable resource book for use with adult and teenage EFL and ESOL students from elementary to advanced levels. It provides teachers with an instant resource of up-to-the-minute role play activities which can be used to support or extend any English teaching course. The activities can be adapted for use with classes of any size.
Role Plays for Today
Role play activities have been a part of language teaching for many years. They are popular with teachers and students alike for several important reasons:
- They provide the spoken language practice that is vital for all language learning
- They provide us with the opportunity to take our students out of the classroom for a ‘test run’ of real-world language use.
- They allow students to become someone else for part of the lesson, and thereby to leave behind their inhibitions and worries.
- They involve an element of play that provides an enjoyable contrast to the coursebook exercises and helps to develop rapport between students.
Role Plays for Today includes both role-play activities (in which the students pretend to be somebody else) and simulation activities (in which the students are themselves but in an imaginary situation).
Organisation of the book
Organisation of the book The 39 units of the book are divided into five categories:
1) Services; Practical, leisure and travel.
2) Shopping; Supermarkets, clothes and restaurants.
3) Social life; Going out, friends and relationships.
4) Lifestyle; Work, accommodation and education.
5) Creative role plays.
These categories have been chosen to enable teachers to browse for role plays that may be suitable for their classes as well as to allow fast access for teachers who know which role play they are looking for.
The Contents also include an indication of what grammar, functional language and vocabulary is likely to be activated by the students in each role play. There is also an index of grammar, vocabulary and functions at the back of the book.
Levels
Both in the Teacher’s Notes and in the Contents I have indicated the range of levels at which each role play could be used. As role play activities involve the students choosing their own language and interacting with other members of the class, they are more flexible than other activities in the range of levels each one can cover.
Most of the role plays are suitable for three or more levels, and nearly all are suitable for intermediate level students. However, always check the Target language and the complexity of a role play before taking it into class. Labels such as ‘elementary’, ‘intermediate’, and ‘advanced’ mean different things in different language schools around the world.
