About Role Plays: Patience

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--- In HwakangJournal@yahoogroups.com, Greg Matheson <lang@m...>
wrote:

> I just wanted to say about the scenario about the married life of
> Prince Charming and Snow White mentioned in the link in
> this message
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HwakangJournal/message/157
> , actually Prince Charming's mother was a cannibalistic ogre who
> ate Snow White's children. At least this is what I read in a
> Chinese translation of the original Grimm story.

In the draft scenario on that page and in the longer revision that
is not archived online, "Queen Lucretia" may not be presented as an
ogre but she certainly wants Snow White and her child dead. In this
scenario, she prepares poison and also orders a huntsman to kill the
baby (and mother). Student groups have played the revised scenario
four times over the years and in three of the runs the Queen is
thwarted but once the player taking on the role was able to outwit
her opponents and trick Prince Charming into renouncing his wife and
killing his own child (the Queen had him convinced that the child
was really a dwarf's love child - something that is not in the
actual plot but the player felt she needed something to give her
some leverage and so she made it up . . . half the Royal Court of
Fairyland ended up dead and the other half were entranced or
imprisoned by the time the run ended with the Queen holding ultimate
power . . . quite the twist, unexpected to the utmost).
Usually, the good guys manage to win somehow someway . . . but in
this one particular instance evil had all the cards and made some up
just to be sure.

Brian David Phillips, PhD, CH
National Chengchi University




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[Guest]

--- In HwakangJournal@yahoogroups.com, Greg Matheson <lang@m...>
wrote:

> On Fri, 31 Oct 2003, tim fox wrote:

> I'm not patient enough to wait an hour, but I see what
> you're talking about.

Ditto. For the roleplays that my students write, they are not
performed in front of the class, per se they are performed by the
rest of the class.

The writers perform the function of director or game master in an
interactive drama freeform roleplay which is really more akin to a
LARP (live action role playing game) than what usually appears in
language learning simulation and roleplaying texts. These pieces
become more along the lines of whodunit mysteries or puzzles or
interactive experiential stories.

Many folks think of role plays as simple and quick dialog practices
of a couple minutes - thus the ability to "practice" the role play -
but what I use in my own classes are interactive drama freeform
roleplays which are far more developed and intended for much longer
experiences (today, Michael Cheng and I combined our classes for a
role play activity that lasted a good two hours with another hour of
prep/debriefing). For student-written pieces, I would guide them
into shorter experiences but typically they would not be less than
thirty minutes, often longer. Obviously, one would need to manage
classtime for this sort of thing and you probably wouldn't do it
with extremely large or unruly classes (albeit, it is possible to
have multiple groups going through different role plays along the
lines of group discussion activities typical of many classes).

> At our school, the graduating English
> classes each put on a show in the school auditorium. They spend
> a major part of their final year preparing this performance.
> I think it is a complete waste of time, in terms of
> English learning. The students say it is one of the high points
> of their terms here.

I believe these performances really aren't about language learning
so much as they are about community building. Ostensibly
performances like that are intended to allow the students to
showcase but their chief function is to allow the students to work
together on a long term project in which they can demonstrate skills
AND create affective memories that will last them a lifetime. It is
a very positive experience as a university life experience,
regardless of the actual pedagogical value. However, some programs
do manage to use the graduation play (or the playlet competitions
many schools also have) as a means for improving English - albeit,
in my experience it's more about community than anything else. Not
everything we do in an educational setting is about the subject at
hand, many times we're providing students with opportunities for
growth beyond language.

- Brian David Phillips, PhD, CH
National Chengchi University




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[Tim Fox]

Hi All,

In response to Greg and Brian's interest in Role Plays, I want to throw in a couple of ideas. Maybe they'll be helpful to you.

I use student-generated role plays as a portion of the midterm grade to demonstrate student work ethic and ability to work in a group. They write the role play stories based on a theme I give them, such as this year's "Show me a good friend and a bad friend." They are "forewarned" that I will not be criticizing their grammar or pronunciation, so they can feel more relaxed speaking in front of a room of 60 or more classmates. I may let them revise the midterm role play and do it again for their final exam. They can build upon comments (anonymous, written and screened by me to keep out any hurtful or hateful comments) from classmates. I too use an evaluation form filled out by the class. For the final examination I may throw in a twist, such as asking them to turn the role play into a videotape piece or maybe a puppet show instead.

Many of the students I have dealt with in my language lab classes at my university can be classified as English language lower-skills level kids, with majors in fields such as "Chinese Literature" or "Chinese Opera." (They're bright kids, but obviously English is not high on their agendas.) When working with them, I find it is important to keep stress levels to an absolute minimum. That is why I let them set their own performance schedules.

This means I don't say, "OK, you guys are next. Get up there!" I actually let them work on their role plays until they feel absolutely confident and ready to go, and take the stage without any prompting from me. It may mean sitting there for an hour until the first group gets up to perform, and then another 20 minutes until the second takes the stage. But then the adrenaline will kick in, and the groups are struggling eagerly to get onto the stage. Too often we will run into overtime, or have to finish in the following week.

I think the hardest lesson for me was to let go of my teacher-self, the side that feels the need to be in control every moment.

Hope this helps anybody who is thinking that role plays may be too stressful an activity for their students. (Indeed, many students say they don't like role plays, but they seem to have a great time anyway!)

Tim
Chinese Culture University
Taipei, Taiwan



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