ESL Role-play Activity for Practicing Phrasal Verbs or Idioms
Basic Idea: Have students create a role-play using recently taught idioms or phrasal verbs.
Total Time: 15 minutes (depends on the number of groups)
Strengths: entertaining + allows students to use their creativity + reinforces language
Levels: Intermediate, Upper-Intermediate, Advanced
The bulk of idioms and phrasal verbs are generally used in spoken English. Therefore, role-playing is perfect for practice.
Basic Speaking Activity
- After teaching your students 8-12 idioms or phrasal verbs (for a print-out of useful idioms, see here), put your students into pairs.
- Tell them you're going to give them 5 minutes to create a conversation dialogue with their partner using as many of the idioms/phrasal verbs as possible. (You can say "the group who uses the most/all the expressions wins" if you want to motivate them, but this probably won't be necessary).
- Tell them to try to make their role-play about 2 minutes or longer, if they can.
- Let them do it. Listen while they plan it and offer help where possible.
- Have each group present their role-play.
This activity is simple but effective. Students enjoy using their creativity. The role-plays my students create are usually pretty entertaining. Give it a shot and be sure to commend your students on their role-plays and review major mistakes after they have finished.
- Matthew Barton / English Current
Thanks alot for your creation.If you have another creation Please share us!!!!!!!We love you all!
Thanks so much for saving me so much time and research!
Typo: In “Execution…1) “…studentes…”?
Thanks!
Thanks a lot for the hard work!
Matthew,
What a fun lesson! You certainly are a talented instructor. I am just beginning to teach conversational English after teaching English Composition for sixteen years in the college classroom. I wasn’t sure where to begin. You have given me great ideas and invaluable information.
Thank you so much!
Yours is a good way of teaching and helping students to memorise the idioms.I am also a trainer for Soft skills at one of the Engineering college in India.I used another way of teaching Idioms and it really worked well.I assigned 1 idiom to a group of 4 to 5 students and asked them to create a Mime act using it and the other students had to guess which idiom was used in that Role play.It was quite a fun and learn session.Try it out with your students.It works!!
Very useful, thank you!!