Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to combine scripted scenes with improv to improve students’ conversational abilities.
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Scripted role-plays, scenes and dialogues are all very popular resources in the language teaching classroom, especially in textbooks. However, as the blog “ELT Rants…” observes, dialogues are “Often inane. Typically stilted. Generally boring. Occasionally confusing. Rarely inspiring.”
To me, improv has always made the most sense because that’s what all conversation is… improvised. However, there are good arguments to be made for scripted conversation tools, which the blog also notes: they provide context for language use, provide language input for important grammar and vocabulary, boost student confidence, and are comfortably familiar for students. Moreover, many conversations that we are preparing students for do tend to follow prescribed social norms that are culturally unique, and are worth exploring with students (though beware reinforcing the problematic norms of the dominant culture!). Therefore, rather than throw the baby out with the bathwater (what a charming English idiom that says a lot about our past hygiene habits), I think there’s value in combining scripted scenes with improv to improve students’ conversational abilities.
This is a great place to start if you’re unsure about improv, and want to start gradually introducing concepts into your classroom before letting students take full control of their scenes. Maybe you’ve spent hundreds of hours developing scripts with perfect vocabulary targets, and don’t want to put them aside, yet know there’s value in improv. Or, like me, you accept that there are some benefits to using scripted dialogues, but don’t want to get rid of the improv part that makes language class fun for you!
Below I discuss two ways to adapt dialogues using improv principles. The first way keeps the scripts intact, whereas the second has scripts provide a comfortable jumping-off point for improvised additions.
A. Keep the scripts the same, add improv elements:
Scenario is unchanged, but characters are assigned: Students pull characters from a hat and complete the scene as those characters. They can be well-known figures (what if Kim Kardashian was buying coffee from King Charles III?), brief descriptions of archetypes (a hurried parent with five kids or a CEO of a tech company, etc.), or even just descriptions of moods (happy, sad, angry, etc.). This is a great way to introduce characterization and to discuss communicating through mannerisms and voice. You can even turn it into a guessing game, where students have to guess the celebrity or the mood!
Scenario is unchanged, but add new locations via a green screen*: This one is really fun, and with the advent of new technology, super easy to do. Basically, students perform their dialogue in front of a green screen (where this used to necessitate an actual blank wall painted green or a green bedsheet, with the most recent technology, you can film in front of practically anything). This adds some novelty, but there are many ways to play with this to discuss the role of context and non-verbal communication. For example:
Standard locations: Everyone in the class is given the same dialogue but different groups are assigned a different green-screen background and must tailor the dialogue to suit the location. After watching them all, discuss the ways that location (i.e., context) changes how communication is perceived.
Non-standard locations: Crazy green screens locations are given (Outer space! Under the sea! Buckingham Palace!) and students must make it work. This can also be used as a starting off point, but students can change the dialogue to suit the context (i.e., instead of “welcome to my home” they can say “welcome to my royal palace” or “welcome to my space pod”), fitting into the second category below.
Guess the location: Students record the scene with a certain location/context in mind, but don’t do anything to overtly call it out. Another group must watch the scene and choose what they think is the best green screen background, add it in, and explain why. After the class watches, the original group shares their thinking, as does the group that chose the background, and the class can discuss their thoughts.
*the above can all be done without green screen technology, either through the use of imagination or through simply projecting an image on a white board/smart board and having students perform live in front of it
Gibberish: I’ve discussed this game before in my post about great improv games for novice learners. In this case, you would start with the completed script, but only the performers will look at this particular script. Their job is to perform the scene in gibberish (i.e., made up nonsense sounds) and still get the entire encounter across. This is a great way to emphasize the importance of body language, tone, and context. You can turn this into a guessing game where the audience needs to guess where or what the scene is about based on the gibberish they’ve seen.
B. Keep the scenes as bases, but put the focus on improv:
Oh no! A problem! One of my pet peeves about scripted dialogues is that they leave students in a panic if any of the expected pattern of conversation is changed. Unfortunately, life isn’t as predictable as we’d like it be most of the time, and I think it’s important to teach our students how to be adaptable. For example, a common dialogue for beginners will have students practicing ordering something at a café or restaurant:
Person A: I would like to buy a cup of coffee
Person B: Okay. What size of coffee would you like?
Person A: I would like a small cup of coffee.
Person B: That will be four dollars.
Person A: Here is four dollars.
Person B: Thank you. Have a nice day.
Person A: Thank you. You as well.
However, there are an infinite number of deviations from this script that are possible, and it would be difficult to create a dialogue for each permutation. Moreover, rather than memorize each permutation, students should feel confident in adapting to different situations. The class can brainstorm all sorts of problems that could occur in this particular scenario: they are out of small cups, they only have decaf, Person B gives the wrong amount of money, the card reader doesn’t work, etc. You can also go into more unlikely territory: there is a rude customer in a rush behind Person B, Person A is ready to quit and is waiting for the best opportunity, Person A tries to cheat Person B, Person B has a crush on Person A, etc. Feel free to go super wacky for the most fun: the coffee shop is being raided by the FBI, Person B is Person A’s long-lost sibling, the coffee shop is the last open business during a zombie apocalypse, etc. Once you have a class list of possible scenarios (or a teacher-generated list that is ready to surprise students!) you can implement them in two possible ways:
True improvisation (i.e., students must react in the moment): One way to play around with this is an improv game called “ding” where a bell interrupts a scene, the actors must pause, and then adapt to a new suggestion. For example, the scene begins as written, but after Person A wants a small cup of coffee, the teacher could ring their bell (easily found at a dollar store) and throw in the complication “Oh no! They are out of small cups!”. Person B would have to say “I do not have a small cup. Can I give you a small amount in a big cup?” or “I do not have a small cup. Would you like a medium coffee?” Depending on the Person A’s confidence level they could either say “Okay” and return to the original script OR they could take it to the next level by saying “Are you trying to get me to pay more money? How dare you!” Depending on the level of students you can throw in one minor speed bump or a whole bunch of things until it basically dissolves into hilarious chaos. (This makes me think of an episode of the show “Parks and Rec” where they are running an emergency response drill and every few minutes an envelope is opened with a new emergency situation they need to respond to!)
Prepared “improvised” scenes (i.e., students are given time to rehearse): students choose one of the problems from a hat and are then given a specific amount of time to incorporate the problem into the scene using the base dialogue given. However, this new dialogue is not written down, but discussed and then performed orally.
Using a green screen/projected images: As discussed above, you can adapt a scene to fit the specific location given. A way to really make this challenging (yet fun!) would be to have the screen change in real time, and the students need to adapt their scenes (still focusing on the base dialogue) on the fly! This would work well if you were having students perform in front of a projector, as you could cycle through a PowerPoint of various different locations.
The middle is improv: Unlike the above scenarios, where students still have a completed script from which to depart into improv, in this case you would have students using a script with the middle deliberately left empty. I discovered this practice in a 2011 article by Jürgen Kurtz: “Breaking through the communicative cocoon: Improvisation in secondary school foreign language classrooms”. Kurtz created a specific practice for the classroom that combines scripted and unscripted elements: (a) a scripted opening lead-in, (b) an unscripted middle part, (c) a scripted end part, and finally a (d) teacher-guided or teacher-supported whole-class reflection. In his article he discusses how to do this with beginning students using the popular warm-up game called Bus Stop. Students begin with a scripted introduction of two people meeting at a bus stop. Then, one of the students takes a piece of paper from a box that suggests a prompt for the improvised portion of the scene, such as “Hey! Look at that boy over there. What is he doing?” or “I’m on the way to the pet shop. This is my cat Fluffy.” Then, once students have improvised a conversation as far as they can, or need an emergency exit from the scene, there is a scripted ending, which is “oh, here comes my bus. I have to go. Nice talking to you. Bye.” The second example he gives is for intermediate learners and is called Surprise Encounter (a game I think Kurtz invented). This game also has the benefit of practicing situational appropriateness, specifically giving, and receiving, good or bad news in the target language. There is a scripted opening, and then the learners make up the good or bad surprise news without a teacher prompt. Conversational gambits are also provided to encourage more lively exchanges, such as “You don’t say?” or “It may sound strange, but…” The ending is also scripted, though it is more sophisticated, and students have a broader range of choices to choose from, including “Well, I can see you want to be left alone. I think I better go now.” and “Anyway, I thought you’d want to know.”
The script is inspiration. Everyone gets the same basic script, but they are only allowed to keep one line. Then you see all the directions that students’ ideas can go with the same inspiration. Also, hearing that one line feels like a fun inside joke!
What are your thoughts on scripted role-plays? Do you use them, not use them, or change them up? Share below in the comments!