I studied Speech and Drama for about twelve years, and then I taught both Drama and English for two years.
I have, on more than one occasion, flirted with the idea of undertaking a thesis on the confluence between performance and language learning by examining whether drama class activities designed to improve performance can be successfully used in a language classroom to improve oral language skills.
It is my considered opinion that role-play activities suck.
They just do.
It's like there's something in the genre that is inherently terrible.
You know what I'm talking about. You have to pretend to be Harold, who has something terribly ordinary or mundane to do. Your partner plays Mildred, who wants to talk to Harold about something equally mundane but clashing with Harold's mundane plans. You must pretend you care about these mundane things and try to negotiate some sort of conversation or compromise.
Blah.
Scripted drama/sketches have the benefit of actual thought. Improvisations (proper improvisations - like those found in theatre sports) are kept aloft by the participants entering into the spirit of the game and have an air of anything-can-happen danger. Role-play activities lack both the game and the thought, and always seem to trudge along like a lame duck caught in an oil slick.
Role plays in classroom situations can have some limited benefit, in that they get the participants to start thinking about ideas from different perspectives, and they prompt the use of conversational skills like listening and turn-taking - but they're almost always boring and horrid.
Turn a role-playing activity into an assessment item, and then they become boring, horrid and terrifying. Not a good combination. Role plays can, possibly, be used as a spot of scaffolding on the way to a less horrible assessment item, but I would really recommend something else.
Anything else, really.
Might I suggest: a proper script, a proper improvisation or a decent vox-pop? These are all good alternative to role plays.
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