There are a few things to consider when learning or teaching English to people who are not natie English speakers. I will review these considerations below in order to explain why I believe that role-playing is an effective strategy for teaching English to non-native speakers.
THE IMPORTANCE OF HAVING FUN WHILE LEARNING TO SPEAK ENGLISH
There is research that supports the idea that enjoying the learning process, feeling engaged in it, and having emotional connection to the material you're working on, makes for not only a more pleasurable learning experience, but one that is effectively better at retaining certain information.
THE IMPORTANCE OF A WEALTH OF MATERIAL
Part of being able to learn means advancing regularly towards more and more challenging materials. Grammar textbooks are broken up into beginner, intermediate, and expert level grammar to give learners the opportunity to see the finish line and study with that in mind.
LEARNING SHOULD ENGAGE MULTIPLE SKILL SETS
IELTS, TEFL, TOEFL and other English literacy exams will divide the English language, and fluency of it into four categories - reading, writing, listening, and speaking. In my view, if you are able to activate multiple skill sets within an activity, it is more valuable as a learning experience.
LEARNING SHOULD BE PRAGMATIC
I know from experience the absolute boredom of learning abstract information from a textbook that must be memorized in order to pass a test. I don't consider that learning. Recently, I changed a windshield wiper on my car, and I found that to be a learning experience more satisfying than any textbook I've ever had the displeasure to comb through. I am a "learn with your hands" kind of person and a pragmatist by nature. I believe that we should only learn things that we can use.
THE ARGUMENT FOR ROLE-PLAYING IN ESL INSTRUCTION
Role-playing for me, is defined as creating characters to play, identifying a setting, and identifying a set of preliminary goals. Beyond that, the work that each individual role-player or actor takes on is up to them.
TRIAL RUN
Your student is a customer in a Chinese restaurant, you, the teacher are their waiter, the place is packed with people at lunch time; their goal is simply to get a food order. Before the role-playing exercise, the student receives homework in the form of YouTube videos and readings that provide common restaurant vocabulary and grammatical forms. These are their references. Then they get to pretend they're a customer, ask and answer questions. As the teacher, you may transcribe what they say for review after the activity is done. They get to practice being in this context, without any particular set of rules other than just to use their English to achieve their objective and get some food. Maybe the waiter doesn't want to serve them, maybe they're busy. You can have fun with it. If the student is laughing during the class, that's not a bad sign. Then you wrap up after about ten minutes. And you look at what you've written, your notes. What vocabulary did they express incorrectly, where did they do well? What information could be added to make their answers better. Watch the student soak up this new information and these new words and phrases that they wanted to use - language that is directly useful for them. Watch them engage with the language in a meaningful way. Next class, you're no longer in a restaurant, maybe you're no longer yourselves, you can be anyone you want, and be anywhere you want, and set any goal you want for the interaction. Thus, in our imaginations, we have a very good place to experiment learning the language.
