What if we were to use role playing to enhance our language?

True. Everybody plays a role in life. Boss, employee, maid, domineering husband, nagging spouse; we become self righteous with some, self effacing with others; that loving father becomes a hard nosed capitalist in his office, a prime and proper lady turns into a sex pot at a swinger's gathering...We rarely act the same way, we are chameleons even though we claim to never change our behavior patterns.

Studying role playing therefore can give us some useful insights into why people act the way they do. It can also be a fascinating, entertaining and effective way to improve language fluency: when we play a role we must alter our language, tone of voice, gestures, energy level and other communicative tools.

Here are some useful guidelines for language teachers who want to go beyond the text book learning process:

--To role play you must be part scientist, part artist. You must carefully collect raw material (descriptions of the role), observe, and discard what is of little use. Does the character smoke, twitch her lips, mumble, and speak gruffly? Is she timid, aggressive…? We need to practice the character’s ticks, gestures, way of walking, tones of voice, accents, etc. until we feel they are our own.

--The questions we must ask and answer while working on our role, or before improvising: Who am I? Where have I come from? How do I feel? What is my immediate objective? What is my long term objective? How am I going to achieve it? What kind of relationship do I have with the other characters?

--What are my strengths and weaknesses and what are those of the character I am going to play? How can I think the way my character does? I must justify my actions on the basis of how my character thinks, NOT how I think. I must put aside my own thinking patterns in order to think and solve problems with the character’s logic.

--How does my character react to emotional situations? Does he/she suppress her feelings, speak under her breath? Shout? Smirk? Gesture wildly?

--Understanding the character’s bio-rhythm is essential, yet we must be careful not to confuse our own tempo with that of the role we are playing.

--If we cannot visualize the character’s thinking and feeling due to lack of experience, we must resort either to “emotional memory” or to physical actions which transmit the character’s feelings. “Emotional memory” means finding in our own life a nearly equivalent experience to that of the character.

3. Routines:

--Organize an encounter, say, between a boss and an employee. What words and phrases are needed to defend their viewpoints? What accent does the boss have? What language ticks? How does the employee ask for a raise? How does the boss turn down his request?

--Work on a scene in a story or play. Who are the characters? What are their conflicts? Ask students in the classroom to play the roles. Let those students not acting provide information or even structure the dialogues.

--Propose a problem to be solved by several characters and choose the role players. Have them pantomime the actions. Divide the class into teams, one for each character. Have students work out the dialogues, physical actions, attitudes, etc. and then organize a brief improvisation.

4. Feedback:

Do NOT interrupt role-play activities with language corrections. At the end of the class do a feedback in which the teacher explains language difficulties, while students share their feelings concerning the experience.