Конференция «Перспективные научные исследования»

17 - 25 февраля 2012г. Болгария

Филологические науки/Методика  преподавания языка и литературы

V. Ishchenko (PhD, Associate Professor), V. Artyukh (PhD, Associate Professor)

Poltava University of Economics and Trade, Ukraine

Role Play as a Successful ESP Activity

Once you start teaching ESL Business English classes, you soon realize that grammar explanations and simple activities aren't enough to satisfy the needs of your students. We have experienced this when meeting face to face with advanced students. To create an interactive atmosphere that is student-centered, you need to create scenarios where students are required to speak much more than you. Role plays are one of the best ways to accomplish this goal.

Role play can be a particularly effective way of providing practice for the participants on a business English course, and it is invariably popular. The participants may well be familiar with this approach from the business training courses they have completed. It involves the participants in taking on a role in the same way that an actor might take on a role on the stage.

The participants in role play will have a situation to work with and their role card will state who they are, what they want to do, and what their attitude is. If the card has been well prepared, the participants will be clear about how they should respond, although there may be some degree of choice.

There are at least four reasons why you should include role play in all of your business English courses.

1. The change of activity is always welcomed by participants and will help to keep your sessions lively and interesting, as well as keeping the participants alert and active.

2. Role play gives the participants the opportunity to practice the new language that they have been working on in the course.

3. It helps to make them aware of gaps in their knowledge and the language that they need to practice and learn.

4. Role play can help you to assess the progress of your participants; as they are fully involved in their activity you can observe their actions and also keep a check on their language. You can address some of the points arising from your observations in the feedback session after the role play.

What sort of role play activities would be appropriate in a business English class? Here are just a few possible examples.

1. Person A is the designer of a new style of cordless iron for the home and he is looking for a manufacturer; B is the managing director of a manufacturing company but is sceptical about this product.

2. A is the managing director of a small company; B is the advertising director and wants to advertise the products on television. The MD is keen on advertising in newspapers and is unconvinced about the value of television advertising (in terms of costs and returns) so B has to try to persuade the MD.

A simulation game is similar to role play except that in a simulation the participants are free to take their own decisions and are not directed in any way by constraints laid down on a role card.

For example, in a role play activity, a participant may be asked to take on the role of someone in the purchasing department who wants to buy a particular product while their partner may be asked to take on the role of someone in the marketing department who is very anxious to buy a different product. Their role play task will be to discuss their products and use persuasive language. There will be no need for them to agree on one particular product by the end of the activity as the process of talking and using persuasive language is the core purpose of the activity.

In contrast, in a simulation game there are likely to be more than two participants and each will be given a role. For example, one may be the accountant and another may be the marketing manager while another may be the purchasing manager and so on. They will start off with a basic scenario; for example, they may be told that their company sells bicycles and that a new type of folding bicycle has come on the market and they need to consider how best to take advantage of this product and make a profit.

So, for example, they would have to think about what they could afford to pay for each bicycle, what the selling price would be, who would be interested, how they could market it and so on. They could take whatever decisions they wanted. They would start with a cash sum and they would have to think about how best to use that money. They will be using language they have learnt, but another aim of the simulation will also be to, for example, make as much profit as possible in the course of the game.

From time to time, the simulation 'umpire' could add additional pieces of information (higher interest rates, higher transport costs, new competitors, a successful web site and so on) which the members would have to take into account and adapt to.

Educational innovations certainly do not come about automatically. They have to be invented, planned, initiated and implemented in a way that will make educational practices more adequately geared to the changing objectives of instruction and make them more consistent with changing standards of instruction.

References

1. Chesler, Mark and Robert Fox. Role-playing Methods in the Classroom. Chicago: Science Research Associates, 1966.

2. Fuhrmann, B. S., and A. F. Grasha. A Practical Handbook for College and University Teaching. Boston: Little, Brown, 1983.

3. Shannon, T. M. “Introducing Simulation and Role-Play.” In Strategies for Active Teaching and Learning in University Classrooms, ed. S. F. Schomberg. Minneapolis: Office of Educational Development Programs, University of Minnesota, 1986.