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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Can be used as an introductory task for a class about cinema or before watching a movie. Work in pairs playing out a dialogue between a person who wants to go to the cinema and a cinema clerk. I ...
This is a role play: Student A – You want to ask a friend out. Persuade him that he can put off his studying and relax! Student B - You’re asked out to go on the town with the friends ...
This is a simple role play activity designed to get students to request and enquire basic information over the phone. They must spell and write down some basic information, but also practice polit ...
A speaking activity for upper-intermediate students inspired by the Desperate Housewives tv series which students may be familiar with. Not a role play, but a simulation activity where students p ...
Objectives: 1. Students will learn and appreciate the fact that the war involved friends fighting against friends. 2. Students will be able to identify three different roles that women played in t ...
Group work. Written in present tense to add drama. Good when read with music. (1812 overture) T/F Comprehension questions. Warm up to final role play of two competing teams. Pretty complex theme ...
A short reading and writing activity where the kids will first read some clues and then use their own imagination to write about their own New Year resolutions. It can be then followed by a speaki ...
Students are given a situation - they are on a sinking ship and must choose 11 survivors to go in the lifeboat with them. The best way to do this is to give the students Page 1 & 2 which intro ...
This is to practise 'used to'. I chose basic words so that all of the students could understand the structure. There are role cards for students and a table as an additional material so that you c ...
A warm up useful for preparing "In a restaurant" dialogues. At first, students create their own menus. They think of their own ideas or just use the ideas presented in the box. Then, they work wit ...
There you can find many shopping activities, including "Shopping" vocabulary, texts about British shops and examples of dialogues. These exercises will be useful for beginners. You can watch the v ...
Students practise banking vocabulary in this roleplay between a potential client and an account manager. They have already studied and know words such as bank account, deposit, loan, interest rate ...
Role cards for a group of 8 students. Two cards are given to a pair of students, they have instructions regarding a problem they need to talk out with their neighbor, you can always add similar c ...
This information gap worksheet can be used to practice in pairs (or mingle) asking and giving personal information, as well as revising the alphabet and the numbers. It would be useful to go throu ...
A categorised index of 495 story elements including: settings, characters, situations, objects, and times. Ideal for prompting writing exercises and class discussions. Can easily be used section ...
The aims of the powerpoint: to practise the vocabulary, the prepositions of place, to describe a town and there is there are stucture. Students will need to match the pictures to the words, tick t ...
This worksheet, called 'Natural Disaster Worksheet: Tsunami Curriculum: Grades 7 - 12', was kindly provided by Washington Military Department/Emergency Management Division, with some portions of i ...
This is my new ppt for your students. After my speaking activity (Peter's Family 1) they can play and practise family vocabulary using possesives. I usually use it when they work in groups. One of ...
It is my new powerpoint for our students. They will need to make sentences about the members of the family using possessive 's and possessive adjectives. They will need to complete the sentences w ...
This is a conversation about the first day at school. The audio is embedded into the document and also attached to it. There is a listening exercise with a few multiple choice questions. It is fol ...
It is my new ppt for my beginners. At the end of the school year they need to revise basic questions and answers they have learnt. They will play a game where one of the students is the interviewe ...
It is a speaking and writing activity using PPt. Students can work in pairs completing the questions and answers. (How much is this / How much are these...? It's.../They're...). They can write the ...
This is a series of short role plays about past perfect and simple past. Students role play the situations and the others find out the situations by making up sentences in the past perfect, such a ...
This is a roleplay in pairs to practice object descriptions. One student is a police officer, who will ask most of the questions and gather the information whereas the other student is a tourist ...
How to be tolerant in a multicultural area? The term ‘Multicultural’ describes the culturally diverse nature of human society. Students need to acquire knowledge, skills and values tha ...
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