Role Play in Business English Training?

[english-test.net]

Hi, maybe this post would better fit into the ESL Material Writing section but there hasn't been activity there for over a month so I decided to publish my idea here. What do you think of swapping experiences on role play activities? Together we could come with a template, robust format that allows to create role play scripts fast and in a customized manner. Below is a draft of mine, could you please let me know what you think of this idea in general? Thanks in advance, Torsten

1) situation outline
2) character profiles
3) situation and task
4) stages of the talk and phrases to use
5) sample dialogue
6) assessment instructions


1)
IT specialist GlobalSoft has been growing rapidly over the past 5 years and they are constantly increasing their customer base. Now also want to move into international markets and have formed a team that that specializes in dealing with international business accounts. One of the team members is speaking to a prospective client, a Belgium based logistics provider that is closely working with DHL.

2)
a) Mike Fairland
You are a 35 years marketing specialist with a BA in Business Communication. You have been working for GlobalSoft for 3 years. You joined the international market team 1 year ago. Your strenghts are negotiating with difficult clients and generating new key accounts.

b) Fabrice Badeau
You are 55 and the Executive Vice President and General Manager International of LogiTech, a large logistics company. You are married and have 2 adult children. You have a Master of Business Adminsitration from Harvard and a BA in Accounting. You pay great attention to detail and you are always looking for ways of reducing opertating costs and increasing efficiency.

3)
a)
You met Fabrice Badeau 3 months ago at the International Logistics Convention when you gave a presentation on software licencing management. After the workshop Fabrice Badeau had approached you to ask for more details about GlobalSoft's services. You exchanged business cards and the back office team sent Mr Badeau a product porfolio via snail mail. You then followed up by contacting Mr Badeau on the phone and you arranged a face-to-face meeting with him. Your goal is to sell a 3 year contract that includes all software licencing services.

b)
You met Mike Fairland 3 months ago at the International Logistics Convention when he gave a talk on how to reduce costs for software licences. As you are constantly interested in reducing costs for your company you wanted to get more information on the services GlobalSoft can offer. After exchanging business cards with Mike Fairland his team sent you a product portolio and you compared their prices and conditions with your current solution. Then Mike Fairland contacted you via phone and you arranged to meet with in person to discuss details of a possible partnership. You are interested in their services but you want to get a discount on their prices. Your goal is be adament when it comes to the price negotiations.

4)
a) small talk and warm-up
- how are you
- good to have you here
- how is your family
- how was your journey
- how is business
- shall we get down to brass tags

b) product description
- what are your benefits
- how do the features of your product translate into benefits for you/your company/your clients
- what is special about our products and services
- what are your advantages if you choose over other providers
- what is the potential for our partnership

c) price negotiation
- your investment will be X Euro/Dollars
- your possible ROI (return on investment) over this period will be
- the following could additional benefits if you work with us

d) closing
- many thanks for investing your time and giving me the opportunity to work with you
- hope we'll establish a strong and profitable business relationship

[emile]

Hi,

You've put a lot of context into this extended role-play, which is good. However, it looks too dry to me. There doesn't seem to be anything that students could relate to, especially if they're not into IT or logistics.

It reminds me of one of the experiments in The Tipping Point. Testees were mainly unable to solve a particular algebra problem involving X's and Y's, but when it was reworded so that it was a problem about buying beers in a bar, they got it right!

So the challenge as I see it is to make RPs interesting and realistic, which is not easy.






my site: www.roadtogrammar.com

[www.english-test.net]

Hi emile, many thanks for your comments. You are referring to students. What about business professionals, for example, IT sales people? Would you call them students too? They are negotiating every day and they encounter new situations every day. Those situations are real and English to them is a means to achieve their goals rather than the purpose. What do you think, would those people know what to do with this type of role play activity? My plan is to come up with a template, a system that allows us to generate role play activities according to the input from the companies that will be using them. Anyway, what is your experience in working with companies?

[emile]

Hi again Torsten,

You're right, these roleplays would be effective if targeted towards the group that you mentioned. I always say that there are two ways to get a group to give their full attention: either by making the class fun and active, or by giving them something that clearly benefits them in their work.

Anyway, what is your experience in working with companies?

At the moment I'm doing work with call centres, and the useful thing is that they record all the calls and allow us access to some of them. From the original recordings, we rerecord the problem situations using voice talents, and then use these as class materials, including roleplays modelled on the listening. Not extended roleplays though, because their calls are about five minute long

It's a bit different from your roleplays, but has the same basic idea of customising the materials to fit real situations.

[www.english-test.net]

Hi emile,

Many thanks for sharing your experiences and thoughts with me. I'm sure your approach is very effective and much more useful to that call centre than the usual English classes. By the way, what are voice talents?

[emile]

By the way, what are voice talents?

Someone who does voiceovers on the radio or tv is called a 'voice talent', and a model is referred to as a 'talent' when doing an ad!

[www.english-test.net]

Emile, thanks for your prompt response again. So, what you are doing is the following. You are running English language courses for call centre agents. The company gives you access to some of their original calls. You take these recordings to voice talents who rerecord some key phrases or parts of the dialogues. You then take those new recordings into the classroom for your students to listen to and practise their dialogues again. If this is what you do I could imagine that you would be able to market this program to a large number of companies. After all, any company has employees and executives who communicate over the phone.
What about Skype. Have you ever used it in your teaching/training activities too?

[emile]

That's right! Except, we have our own studio, so the voice talents come to us, and we don't always use professionals as that's pretty expensive. The business is going well so far, we only have a few clients, but all big names.

Skype looks very suitable for these kinds of courses. I haven't tried it yet, but I want to if the opportunity arises. I'd be happy to hear from anyone who has used it successfully for ESL or ESP.

[clever2gether]

When I do role plays I always provide the learners with a clear marking scheme so that they know how they will be evaluated, that way it is a transparent and fair system. Then I produce feedback/evaluation forms for peers and myself to complete, mine has additional space for vocabulary/grammar feedback and clarification.

I think your idea of getting together a structure for teachers to fill in the gaps makes a lot of sense in terms of effectiveness, good idea.