How to Use Plays
Videos of Drama in the ESL Classroom
Activity: Improvised Role-Play
What is it? This activity gives students the chance to improvise their scene a few times before getting the script. This helps them personalize the scene, and use their imaginations.
Purpose: To imagine a scene before acting it out, to personalize a scene, to read to understand main idea and details
Activity: Contentless Scenes
What is it? An interesting kind of role-play to introduce to your ESL classroom is the contentless scene. The defining feature of a contentless scene is that it lacks “content”. Essentially, it is a role-play script in which participants add emotion and action. This informs the audience of who the characters are, why they are there, and what the mood is.
Purpose: One great advantage to using contentless scenes is that students can practice stress, intonation, pace, emotion, and body language. Since there is no “content” or pre-determined meaning, the same scene can be used multiple times.
Activity: Jigsaw Role-play
What is it? Here, students particiapte in a kind of jigsaw activity. They first join their expert groups to understand their character's lines. After they discuss their lines, they join their jigsaw groups and practice the play.
Purpose: to practice prepared speaking, to plan and perform appropriate body movements, to convey appropriate emotions, to read for understanding of main ideas and details
Activity: Corpus informed role-play
What is it? In this activity, students use a corpus of American English to explore various "opinion" phrases. They can use the results of this activity to create a role-play in which they must give their opinions.
Purpose: to find common expressions, to sort phrases into categories, to use authentic language forms in appropriate situations
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