EFL/ESL role play

As many of the people I teach are university students I thought that this might be a fun exercise to do in class. The main aim is to practice speaking skills through role plan. Be warned - the reading and speaking skills needed for this are pretty advanced.

Lesson Plan

1 Ask students to find somebody who has ever shared an appartment. They then ask the person what it was like.

2 Ask students (on their own) to draft a list of characteristics of the perfect flatmate. They then form groups of four and discuss their answers.

3 Tell students to imagine that they are now looking for two/three other people to share an appartment with them. However, everyone is going to pretend to be someone else.

4 Give each person one of the profiles from the article above. The students read their “roles”. Tell them that have to keep in character i.e. pretend to be the kind of person mentioned in the profile and find flatemates that they are most compatible with.

Here students will need a lot of help not just with unfamiliar vocabulary but also cultural differences between Greek and English student life. However, it not necessary that they understand everything, just the gist of the part they have to play.

5 Students then stand up and imagine that they are at a party. Give them 10 to 15 minutes to find their ideal flatmates.

6 The groups then report back to the teacher explaining why they chose each other.