Roleplaying for speaking skill development

English speaking is complicated by anxiety felt by the speaker. Many ESL individuals are perfectly competent at communication but worry about looking bad in the eyes of native English speakers. The purpose of this speech roleplaying exercise is to reduce a learner's anxiety when speaking.

Activity (done in pairs)

Choose an emotionally challenging scenario for learner A:

Examples

• Apologizing to someone for something you did wrong

• Talking to a stranger in public and trying to start a conversation with them

• Doing a cold call and trying to convince someone to purchase a product or service

Learner A will play the role of the apologizer, the conversation initiator, and the cold caller; Learner B's job is to make the conversation more challenging for Learner A, to allow Learner A to complete their speech, and to come up with feedback for them

In the top three scenarios, Learner B should

• Listen intently and without speaking as the apology is happening

• Express little interest in Learner A during the conversation (show polite interest, but not really)

• Express a desire to leave the phone call or practice hanging up rudely on Learner A multiple times

Learner B should provide feedback to Learner A. What did they do well at? What did they not succeed at? Encourage them to try it again if they didn't do well (if they'd like to try again). Then they can switch roles. The goal is to come up with a lot of different challenges speech scenarios and test each other out

Both learners should complete readings about

• How to apologize effectively

• How to capture the interest of a stranger

• How to sell effectively on a cold call and build resilience to rejection

Outside of class both learners should

• Practice apologizing to someone they feel they've wronged

• Talk to strangers (in appropriate contexts)

• Try to cold call a business and sell a service or let them know about a service that you're selling