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Writing Roleplays

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Why the movie Sabrina is a good source of role-play situations.

The film Sabrina with Harrison Ford is a film with a little bit of history. It's a remake of a film made by the famous director Billy Wilder that was based on a stage play. It's a light romantic comedy, the type of film ideally suited for providing language learning material: free of obscenity, violence, explicit sex, a film in which dialogue and human relations play a major role and "action" no role at all.

The fact that it was originally a stage play gives it several useful features. The dialogue stands by itself pretty well. It's still relatively meaningful even without the video. The dialogue in each scene is also well-contained. Each scene has a little conflict that drives the plot forward and can be separated from the whole with only a minor introduction at the beginning to orient the reader. If you compare it with another romantic comedy that I tried using, "Jerry Macguire" starring Tom Cruise, it's the sustained dialogues and communication between people that sets it apart. This is probably due to the fact that it was originally a stage play.

It deals with coming of age in another country, France, which should strike some sympathetic chords with foreigners who are doing home-stays in Britain to study English. There are also scenes where language errors are made, in France and in the well-meaning advice given by a native Spanish speaker. Students are likely to relate these incidents to their own language learning experiences.

One of the main characters is also an over-serious businessman who is in a continuous state of conflict with his playboy brother who he supports economically. This treatment kills two birds with one stone, introducing the language of a businessman while at the same time providing a little comic relief so that it doesn't become monotonous.

In short, the movie is a great device for to generating engaging role-play situations. It can be used as a sort of imagination extender.

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Sabrina Dialogues and Roleplays



1. Fatherly Advice

The father sees his daughter Sabrina walk by his room and stops her to have a talk with her. She is about to go work as an intern in Paris, France for a period of time. The father is concerned about his daughter's obsession with the handsome son of his employer, David. His daughter spends an inordinate amount of time sitting up in a tree spying on him.

[Functions: giving advice]
[Situation: You're a father and your daughter has a crush on a guy who is clearly not interested in her. The crush is affecting her self-esteem, so you say some things to help her regain her self-confidence]

2. Linus says goodbye to a dinner guest

[Function: saying goodbye]
[Situation: You have some important business at the office to take care of, so you have to excuse yourself early from a party. Some of the guests beg you to stay, so you have to give an excuse.]

3. A Mother-Son Talk

Linus talks to his mother before he leaves for the office from the party. His mother is upset that he has fired the son of one of her close friends. She also wants her son to stay until the party finishes.

[Functions: requesting that someone not leave a party yet, upset about something someone has done, stating objections]
[Situation: You hired the son of your mother's best friend and subsequently had to fire him because he was incompetent. Your mother tells you how upset this has made her, but you defend your action.]

4. Sabrina confesses her love

Sabrina enters David's room thinking that he is inside and confesses her love for him. But it is actually Linus who is in the room concealed by the closet door. When she finds out she isn't talking to David but to his older brother Linus she is very embarassed.

[Function: saying what you think of someone]
[Situation: There's a guy or a gal that you have a crush on and you want to tell them, so you wait until they've gone to a place where there are no other people. You go there and, hiding behind the wall so that they cannot see you, you confess your love to them. Finally, they emerge from behind the wall and you're shocked. The person behind the wall wasn't the person you have a crush on and you are very embarassed. You apologize for saying all the things you just said.]

5. Recovering from a language error

[Function: recovering from a language error or misunderstanding]
[Situation: You gave a yes/no answer to a long question. The person you're talking to expected a longer answer and doesn't really understand what your "yes" or "no" means and asks you to explain.]

6. Comforting Advice from the Boss

[Function: giving advice]
[Situation: You have a new job, you've made a lot of mistakes, and your manager has been rather rough on you. Your manager's manager is actually a friend of your mother's (that's how you got the job in the first place) and tries to be a mentor to you. She gives you some encouraging words, telling you that everyone has problems at first, that she was once in the same shoes as you before she became a manager.]

7. Encouraging words from her father over the telephone

[Functions: giving comforting words]
[Situation: Your daughter is away from home for the first time working at her first job which is rather difficult. She calls you up to tell you that she's planning to quit the job and come home. You give her some comforting words, telling her that everyone faces the same difficult situation to begin with. Things will get better soon.]

8. Her father tells the other servants how she is doing

The servants are sitting around a table in the kitchen eating. Sabrina's father tells the others how she's doing in Paris.

[Function: giving an opinion, accepting useless advice or someone's confused ramblings in a polite manner]
[Situation: You receive a letter from your son who is having a difficult time adjusting to the new city he's been transferred to by his company. Since he dislikes the new city he lives in so much, you don't know what advice to give him, to tell him to come home or to be more patient. A rather muddle-headed but well-meaning friend gives you some confused advice. You listen politely and thank your friend for the suggestions.]

9. Plans for the evening...wanna get married?

David's girlfriend is a pediatrician. They were going to go to a party, but she's been delayed with a patient. She apologizes and he suggests an alternative plan for the weekend. She has other ideas on her mind.

[Function: proposing marriage, apologizing after being tied up with work, offering to cook something]
[Situation: The woman you've been going out with for months drops a strong hint that she'd like to get married. This catches you by surprise. You have serious misgivings, but you keep these to yourself. You accept her offer in a determined manner, but later when you get home you have a serious conversation with your brother about it.]

10. Two Brothers Argue

David comes barging into his older brother Linus's office extremely angry that his brother is trying to make financial gain from his wedding plans. David accuses Linus of setting the whole thing up, but Linus counters that David himself asked him to make David look good in front of his fiancee. David expresses doubts about whether he is ready for marriage. Linus tells him he should grow up and be an adult.

[Function: saying hello when you haven't seen someone for a long time, accusing someone of lieing to or deceiving you, giving reasons for an action, expressing doubts about a future action, telling someone they should change their life]
[Situation: You're father has set up a marriage for you with a wealthy local businessman. Your father stands to benefit financially from the arrangement. You criticize him for making money from his own daughter's marriage. He retorts that what he's done is in the best interests of his daughter and the family as well as himself.]
[Situation: You're going to get married in a week, but you're starting to regret your decision to get married. You express your regrets to your older brother and give numerous reasons why you should not get married. Your brother tells you that such doubts are normal and that getting married will be good for you in the long run.]
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An Example Lesson Plan

How would the role-play actually be executed? In the role-play specifications provided by Ladousse (1987) the category "story role plays" most closely resembles the type of role play being advocated here. A formal specification using Ladousse's format might run as follows:

Movie derived role plays

Students role-play the characters in a movie scene they watch.
Level
Intermediate upwards
Time
50 minutes
Aim
Use an interesting scene from a movie as the basis for a listening comprehension activity and role-play in which students are encouraged to experiment with the language used in the movie.
Language
The language functions used in the scene should be noted and categorized by the teacher as well as any salient vocabulary and grammar.
Organization
Pairs or small groups.
Preparation
  1. Choose a scene from an inventory of scenes from different films that match the language function being covered in a lesson.
  2. Write down the language functions found in the scene.
  3. Use the idea in the scene to create a similar role-play situation.
  4. Write down 3 to 5 comprehension questions for the scene. The following categories from Rost (1991) might be helpful: "(1) Setting: what is the setting? where does this conversation probably take place? (2) Characters: who are the speakers? what is the relationship between the speakers? (3) Purpose: what is the purpose of the conversation? what does A want B to do? (4) Attitude: what is A's attitude towards B? what is A's reaction to B?" (111)
  5. Prepare a handout with:
    1. The comprehension questions.
    2. The words and semantic categories used in the warm-up below.
    3. Put the dialogue from the movie scene with the language functions that you identified and the role play situation that you wrote on the back of the handout (Note: Tell the students not to look at the back.)
Warm-up
To activate relevant background knowledge (or schemas) a three step method outlined by Little (1997) can be used: "First, the learners are given (say) two dozen words and phrases that are central to the meaning of the text they are preparing to encounter: their task is to establish the meaning of each individual word and phrase. Secondly, they sort the words and phrases into broad semantic categories such as PERSON, PLACE, and EVENT. Thirdly, they use this categorization to build a schema, or story outline." (229) The number of words extracted from the movie scene will depend on the length of the scene. (Note: schema activation like this is necessary because the language in the film is likely to be quite advanced and "learners can often compensate for deficiencies in their linguistic knowledge by drawing on their knowledge of text types and, more importantly, world knowledge." (Little, 1997, 228; Devitt, 1986))
Procedure
Follow-up
Choose one or two of the groups and have them acted out their creations in front of the rest of the class. The students in the audience write reviews of the role-plays they consider the best (or the worst!). (Ladousse, 1987, 70)
Variation
"You can use the basic story of the text for all sorts of other improvised role plays. For example, what did the characters say next time they met? What did they say to other characters about the original scene? What had they been doing and saying before the story began? " (Ladousse, 1987, 70)
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Bibliography

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