Sometimes the same old exercises and games get a little too boring for your class - and that’s normal. The learning process requires some switching up from time to time. Too much repetition and structure make it much harder for students to absorb and work with a new language - but a relaxed and playful environment lets them know it’s safe to play around with what they’re learning, and use their grammar and vocabulary in new and creative ways.
Some teachers aim to address this problem with games like “hot seat” and “telephone” - and there’s nothing wrong with those games, in and of themselves. But repeating the same games every few days will bore students quickly, and make them feel like even the “fun” aspects of your classroom are still too rigid to really engage them. This is why new ESL teachers often find themselves looking for games and activities that break through those worn-out routines and breathe some fresh air into the class atmosphere.
If that’s where you’re stuck, why not help your students switch up their identities a little? BusyTeacher.org’s 286 free role playing game worksheets will help bring your students out of the everyday, and put them in all kinds of situations that’ll challenge them to use their language skills in unusual ways. Our community of ESL teaching experts has done all the hard work for you - each worksheet provides clear and complete directions on how to set up and manage a role playing activity, so you’ll be ready to go as soon as you print it off.
These 286 worksheets offer role playing activities of every shape and size. Some put the students in various roles to act our common real-life situations - while others invite them to imagine voyages to foreign cities, challenge them to take on different jobs, or even cast them as characters in movies and fictional stories. From everyday dialogues to far-flung adventures, you’ll find a role playing activity for any occasion among the 286 worksheets we have to offer.
What’s more, BusyTeacher.org’s worksheets cover an abundance of ESL levels and topics. Whether you’re practicing basic sentence structure with students around levels two and three, or pushing for fluency with advanced students at level five, we’ve got a worksheet for you. In fact, many of the 286 worksheets you’ll find here can easily be adapted for a variety of levels. And the topics they focus on range from pronunciation to grammar to vocabulary - and beyond.
How can you be sure that these worksheets will work in your classroom? Because every single one of them was created by an ESL teacher like you, and used successfully in a classroom somewhere in the world. All the worksheets on BusyTeacher.org are contributed by our community of hard-working ESL teachers all over the globe - and they’ve made their resources available to you for free. That’s right - you don’t have to pay, or even register, to download, print, use, or duplicate any of the worksheets on this site.
Have a worksheet you’d like to share with our community? Just click the “Submit a worksheet” button below. Or browse the list in thumbnail view until you’ve found a role playing worksheet you can’t wait to use. It’s all easy with BusyTeacher.org!
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ESL Articles
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It's a simplified version of "Cluedo" board game to practise past simple and past continuous. The teacher sets the scene of the murder case and divides the students in groups. One group takes the ...
Ideal for kids that want to express themselves about family likes and dislikes and wishes.Use of "going to".You may use it as a project at the end of the unit or semester because a student talks a ...
I used an idea of a warm-up and created a list of random nouns that should give you and your students a lot of help in creative speaking activities. The list is random enough to be used in m ...
Activity type: a role play based on a very old idea in which students have to act as criminals and police people. Level: Pre-intermediate and above.This is a very good review of the past simp ...
We played this role-play in our class with Russian students, so I asked the students to imagine that you can spend a gap-year not only before your studies, but also after the first or second year ...
In classroom students can be divided into two groups: group A men ,and group B women ,and the teacher starts asking them questions. It is basically a role-play ,or a debate between two different p ...
It's a role play activity, a telephone conversation and a follow up activity. The learners can be paired at random or they can choose their partners. The follow up activity allows the learners som ...
This role-play is made up for students of the elementary level. Divide your class into groups of three and distribute the cards among them. The task is to make up a dialog introducing a newcomer t ...
Students imagine that they are at a party. By means of cards they have a new identity. Questions help them to be confident while having conversations. Their new images are funny and I'm sure stude ...
This is a business telephone role-play with eight situations where one of the students will have to act as a business client and another one a secretary. For this task students need to know the vo ...
The pair role-plays introduced in this handout will provide students with five problematic situations that they will have to sort out by talking to each other. All the role-plays present an awkwar ...
The pair role-plays presented in this handout will provide students with six problematic situations that they will have to sort out by giving advice and recommendations. All of the role-play ...
The objective here is all round language acquisition, incorporating the 3 linguistic skills of listening, speaking, and reading. It lasts for 1 hour and 20 minutes and is meant for young learners ...
This role play represents an interview between a celebrity and a journalist. Apart from students’ worksheets it is also supplied with 6 short biographies of famous people from Wikipedia that ...
ESL reading comprehension activity about kinds of advertising. Provides vocabulary related to mass media. Students can use the texts for a variety of activities such as writing questions, paraphra ...
This is an exercise which accompanies the restaurant menu from the worksheet "What Would You Like to Order?" While role playing,one student places the order,the other one is writing it down.& ...
Variety of items to choose from the menu created for improvement of students' speaking skills. Excellent to practice modals and food while role playing the restaurant scene. One student ...
Role Play Charades is a game for teacher professional development designed to review with teachers the most important reasons to employ role plays in their class. Teachers read one card, then att ...
This is a two-page reading and video worksheet targeted at Upper-Intermediate and Advanced students. Before reading the article the teacher encourages the students to talk about dairy products, t ...
These 8 ESL role plays are designed to challenge learners at ILR (International Language Roundtable) Level 1 or 2. The difference between these levels is the degree of resistance created by the t ...
There are 12 personalities here, each stating their name, age, a like/ dislike, and a possession. It can be used for introducing yourself/ another person; talking about likes/ dislikes, age etc.; ...
A simple play for Primary school children between nine and eleven years old. The play is for seven to nine characters and is mainly in the present simple, though there are some uses of the future. ...
This is a nice role play invloving speaking. Try to find the information from the phone talk and sayl it clearly, change the pronoun based on who the person you talk to is. Concentrate on changing ...
It´s an oral activity for students to practice vocabulary on movies and make arrangements to meet.They can use expressions to invite, accept and refuse invitations. They have to improvise co ...
The students are in pairs. One student is the custom officer and the other student is a passenger at the customs office. Here are some different situations. Students must create different dialogue ...
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