Role-play, real-play, and surreal-play in the ESOL classroom

Abstract

This article seeks to answer the question of whether role-playing is gradually ‘losing its role’ in the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) programme. The first two sections discuss the hybrid nature of role-playing, how it springs from two distinct impulses in the contemporary language acquisition perspective. One impulse stresses that the activities in the language classroom should imitate the real world: here role-playing becomes ‘real-playing’. A second impulse stresses that the language classroom, in its pursuit of a deeper-than-surface realism, should promote an imaginative self-expression of the inner world of each student's mind: here role-playing becomes ‘surreal-playing’. The final section of the paper examines some possible componential artificialities of role-playing. The conclusion is that there are some valid reasons for the movement from centre stage of role-playing in the CLT programme.

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