Role play seems to be an exercise that students either love or hate, with older learners tending to be more resistant to it as a learning and assessment technique than younger ones. Extroverts are likely to take quite easily to it (though even here there are exceptions - see below), but not all students are extrovert or anything like it. It is sometimes said that to be good at role playing you need to be a good actor, moreover one who can act without relying on a script. This is a lot to expect of anyone; but to act out a role with an examiner who (a) has far more experience of language role-playing exercises, and (b) is much more proficient in the target language, is an extremely challenging thing to ask a student to do.

We need to bear all this in mind when considering the use of role plays. We must also carefully consider the role we create for students: is it something they can relate to from their own experience and sphere of existence? (eg don't ask them to pretend to be an astronaut). And is it something that they will find reasonable or plausible? (eg don't ask them to play the role of a world-famous actor or footballer, however much they enjoy the theatre or football themselves).

Activity 13

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The usual approach to role play is to give the student just before the test a set of instructions explaining what he/she has to do. For example:

Providing such instructions in L1 will avoid any ambiguity about what is required, and with near beginners this approach may be the only practical one. Otherwise, it is probably more common for instructions to be given in the FL. However, it should be noted that this can often provide linguistic support (eg, in the above scenario, 'Palace', 'costs', 'advice'), which may or may not be welcome: with weaker students it might be desirable, while in other circumstances it could make the task too easy. One way round this is to phrase the instructions in more general terms:

Role plays are an effective means of involving students in particular types of language use, ranging from basic social situations to complex negotiating ones, such as convincing a company representative in an interview that you are the right person for the job. They are also the best way to test students' ability to ask questions, to use certain social address formulae, to vary linguistic register and to employ functions such as persuading, objecting, explaining, etc.

Apart from the type of low-level situation above, role play can be made more complex by including unexpected elements or 'twists'. Here the examiner throws in something the candidate is not expecting, to see how he/she copes with the situation linguistically. For example, consider the following scenario:

The examiner in such a situation might have the following instructions:

• be reluctant to help;
• suggest the student breaks in;
• say that you can only come the next day;
• say it might be possible to come that evening but that the price would be double the normal rate, etc.

In this way candidates are forced to employ a variety of strategies and compromises, and to 'think on their feet'.

A variation on role play is to give students several short situations in which they have to supply an appropriate short response (usually just one sentence). These are essentially tests of functional language such as inviting, complaining or enquiring. For example:

These have the advantage of providing strictly controlled situations, thus enabling good coverage of a syllabus and ensuring validity, while allowing a fairly tight marking scheme with a limited range of acceptable answers, thus increasing the test's objectivity and reliability (see Module 13, section 13.1.4.2).