Role Plays in English

One of the fun and somewhat challenging things about learning to actually speak English while living in a monolingual society like Japan is finding ways to actually use spoken English in a meaningful way. Since it is not likely that students will naturally speak to each other in a language that is NOT their own native one, we, as educators, have to sometimes create an artificial environment for giving them the opportunity to speak. As a teacher of English as a Foreign Language (EFL), I gently use my 'force' as a teacher to get to try to use English for actually communicating by their creating and performing role play skits. Not only does it give them a chance to show what they can do as speaker of English, it is also fun to try to be creative with language. When they are successful -- as the one below illustrates - then it is something that we can all be proud of. I convinced them to let me show the video on this blog. They were the first ones to perform at the end of the first semester.

Here three freshmen students perform their second role play based on studying English conversation and daily communication. They created an original dialogue and perform it. Can you understand what happens after they ask the agent the price?

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Video sent by dbrooks25