Written Role Play

Purpose: To improve writing fluency and to practice language specific to the chosen role play situation. An interesting problem can get students writing without being too concerned about making mistakes.

Preparation Time: The time it takes to choose a scenario for the role play.

Materials: Paper and pens

Preparation: Choose a role play situation in which there is a problem to discuss. For example: Two roommates have different preferences for cleanliness with one that is quite messy and the other who likes things to be neat, or an employee is stuck in traffic and late for a meeting and a manager that has been waiting for twenty minutes.

Procedure:

1. Describe the role play situation from the point of view of one person in the role play. For example: You have a very messy roommate. You prefer to keep your house clean, but your roommate hasn’t cleaned up for weeks. You notice a strange smell when you walk into the house and decide that it is time to talk to your roommate about the problem.
2. Students get out pens and paper and write their names on their papers. Then they start writing what the person in the role play would say. Instruct students to write legibly so that someone else can read their writing.

3. After a few minutes ask students to finish writing their last sentence and then pass their papers to the right. Give students a minute or two to read.

4. Now all the students write the other role in the role play. They write whatever they want to in response to the original complaint. After a few minutes, students pass their papers back to the original writers who then get to write another response.

5. Continue trading papers and writing as long as there is interest.

Possible Follow up Activities: Students can read their dialogs out loud for other students to hear, they can edit their dialogs and then share them, or they can do the role play again as a conversation activity.

Variation: In a one-to-one tutoring situation, the teacher can write and then trade papers with the student.

Texting to Teach Reading and Writing

Purpose: To incorporate text messaging into reading and writing instruction for ESL or general literacy/ABE learners.

Tips for using texting with students:

· Ask students to read a text and then summarize it for you in one to three text messages. Compile the summaries, if working with a group, and ask the students to choose the best summary.

· Send out a word of the day. If you are studying workplace skills, send out words related to those lessons. Ask student s to respond by sending you a definition of the word. For more information on how to do this, visit http://www.ehow.com/how_4995209_use-text-messaging-teach-esl.html

· Share grammar tips. The article above will tell you how to do this. Ask students to write back incorporating the grammar in context.

· Ask students to text you their opinions related to a discussion or an article covered in a lesson recently, or ask them to text you and tell you something that they learned in a recent lesson.

· Create a glossary to help “translate” text message abbreviations and acronyms. Sites such as Sharpened Glossary (www.sharpened.net/glossary/acronyms.php) allow users to type in an acronym and find out what it means. Try sending out a message with various abbreviations or acronyms and encourage students to use a site like Sharpened Glossary to decode the meaning.

· Share announcements. If class is canceled due to a blizzard, students may be more likely to respond to a text message than an e-mail or phone call.

Note: Be aware that keyboards can be very different and someone with a normal keypad (non-blackberry or qwerty) will be much slower than someone with a specialized keyboard.