Teacher Discussion Forums

There are 25 students of mixed ability in my English conversation classes (they are French speakers). They are basically mature adults ranging in age from 35 to 65 with the average closer to 50. The classes are approximately 50% conversation/discussion and 50% written and oral activities including games to increase their vocabulary. Since they all travel to some extent, some of the vocabulary is geared to anything related to that subject.

My problem: I have a fair amount of very interesting restaurant dialogue material (lots of real-life menus) but what I see out there in the forums is role-playing with some ss taking the part of the waiter and some the part of the customer(s). I don’t see my students playing the waiter because there is little chance of them ever being employed as such and I don’t think the vocabulary used by the waiter would be very practical for them.

I thought of playing the waiter myself but am afraid with a class this size, a good number of the class will disengage as I play to a small number of the students.

I also have a smaller separate group of 12 where I think this won't be a problem.

Any suggestions??? If this helps, my group of 25 is subdivided into 1 beginners group, 2 intermediate and 1 advance. Most of our activities in done in sub-groups and on occasion with the entire class.

I would really appreciate the help. Thanks.

I would give your best students a chance to be the wait person. Other than the line "I will be your waiter tonight." the words are the same as the patron will use "specials, names of food, cost" and so on. Role playing is fun. I'm sure they will enjoy it.