This article seeks to highlight what I believe to be a very valuable addition to the armoury of any English teacher, especially the ESL teacher. I am not sugegsting that this type of exercise replace the more traditional type of role play, merely that it can be used to enrich the diet.

I am sure that we all use role play simulations on a regular basis, and have a great deal of success with such exercises. It hardly seems necessary to rehearse the benefits of role playing in creating situations which use language in a fairly naturalistic way, within a classroom, which is a very artificial environment indeed. The traditional role play uses role play cue cards to provide students with background information and key words they can use. These exercises commonly employ information gap routines to encourage students to communicate with each other and drive the situation to encourage students to practice vocabulary and structures they have learned, or to motivate in them a desire to communicate.

The structured environment of a role play provides support that drama exercises often lack, and are consequently less threatening to students, and yet they push students to produce langauge, and to exercise their cognitive faculties. N.S. Prabhu in Second Language Pedagogy, 1987, has suggested that tasks which involve "reasoning gaps" are more effective in second language instruction. These kinds of exercises do not just involve the transfer of information between students, but the transfer of information in a context in which some sort of reasoning activity is required. Role plays are excellent for this, since they are situation driven, and the resolution of a situation can easily be made to involve some kind of thought process.

Let us look at just one example. Three students are customers in a shop, and the shop-keeper has no change. Each student has been provided with "monopoly" money currency in different denominations, organized in such a way that change can be negotiated between everyone. The point of this exercise could be the vocabulary surrounding numbers, currency and shopping, or language of approach - "excuse me", "I wonder", "could you", and so forth.

Prabhu distinguishes between three types of what most language teachers would recognise as information gap activities, the information gap, reasoning gap and opinion gap activities. Of these opinion gap activities are considered too threatening to ESL students because of the pressure to produce opinions in a situation where the language itself is unfamiliar, while information gap activities are considered too unchallenging, although they can be useful build-ups to more meaningful exercises.

However, the type of role-play activity that I want to concentrate on is that which is based on role-play games or RPG's, like Dungeons & Dragons. The basic conceit of such games is that the players interact with a Dungeon Master/Mistress (DM), who administers the rules, and a story is woven. The players tell the DM what they want to do, and the DM tells them the outcome of their endeavours - usually by rolling a dice to determine probability and introduce a measure of fate. In fact DM's often dispense with, or manipulate the rules to achieve desirable outcomes. The DM has prepared a "dungeon" in advance, complete with a map, and traps, monsters and treasures at certain points. Random monsters are also diced for. Some games are called "hack and slash" indicating that the players are most interested in slaying monsters. Others tend to concentrate on solving puzzles, all carefully prepared by the DM.

Different RPG's have different themes, from HP Lovecraft's occult Cthullu (sp?) mythos, to Chicago gangsters and deep space (Traveller). In such a case a DM becomes a Games Master/Mistress. Potentially any setting can be used for an RPG.

The rules of recreational RPG games are fairly complex, witha fairly steep learning curve, and not suitable for lessons, and yet, if one dispenses with the notion of rules, it is easy to see that RPG's could play an important role in encouraging talk in the classroom. The teacher becomes the GM/DM and prepares a situation through which students (in groups) can be taken.

Let me take you through a lesson I conduct with my junior high school SL classes. Firstly I tell the students a simple narrative of a band of adventurers who must rescue the world by, let us say, unlocking the casket of happiness, which is said to reside in a cave in the middle of the forest of Woe. You get the idea? - invent some fantastical narrative, using fantasy novels you have read. Next tell the class to get into their groups - if this involves moving furniture. Hand them out a sheet of paper on which to draw up their character. Also hand out a set of die to each group. The form looks something like this:

Character Sheet
Name:		Class:
Strength		Magic Use
Health		Luck

These categories can be changed depending upon the situation you have created.

Students make up a name, choose one of the classes, and then roll the dice six times. They may take the best four scores and allocate them to the characteristics of strength, magic use, health or luck. Once this is done, you start with whichever group has completed the task. Start spinning a story. eg. You might say the group is on the edge of the wood of Woe. "The path forks in three different paths. The one is sign-posted "danger", the other is sign-posted "adventure" and the third is sign-posted "death". Which path will you take?" While each group debates their options, circulate to the next group and briskly perform the same procedure.

When you return to the first group, perform a short narrative - keep it short so that things move quickly for all the groups. Ask what path they have chosen, and in your mind you have set outcomes. Choosing danger means they must cross a narrow bridge, adventure means they must solve a puzzle, and death means they must battle a giant. Don't worry about rules too much. Make it up as you go along.

When crossing bridges or the like get them to roll a dice under their score for luck to succeed. For example, if a student's character has a luck score of 5, they must roll a 1,2,3,4,or 5 to succeed. A higher score fails. When fighting they must score under their strength, etc. When fighting, if they are wounded, get them to deduct a point from their health. They die when they reach 0. But have magic potions to restore health points (roll a die) dotted about at regular intervals. Make monsters die when you feel it keeps the narrative going better.

Proceed in this way, constructing a short adventure. Different paths result in a different order of things rather than completely different adventures. Always have a sheet of paper with the paths sketched in brief. Avoid detail, it will bog down the action, but rather keep things moving. Resolve only one thing at a time with each group. If a group seems undecided, hit them with a random monster or event, to keep things rolling.

You will need to be inventive to succeed, but I find just a little preparation goes a long way, so any lesson only really needs one or two main ideas, and if you run out, just hit the group with a fight. Most groups respond to a mixture of puzzles and fighting. What sort of puzzle can be used? Here's a brief example - I don't want to give away all my trade secrets. The group is told. "You face two doors. One has a picture of a tiger on it, the other a lady. Beside the doors lounges a doorkeeper, chewing his finger-nails and sighing in a love-struck manner. What do you do?" The door-keeper, when asked will tell the group that behind one door lies a tiger, and behind the other the king's daughter. But no-body knows which. Anyone brave enough to open the correct door will win the princess' hand in marriage. Make it a prince for a girl group!

The solution to the riddle lies in guessing the doorkeeper loves the princess, and will lie so that he can keep alive the hope the princess will be his. Just asking if one of the doors leads to the lady is enough. If he says yes, choose the other, etc. If the group just blunders in, let them fight the tiger, or give them a fifty percent chance, but make the princess really unpleasant to deal with. Drop hints by peppering the doorkeeper's speech with references to his love, overheard sotto voce comments such as "I hope they don't open the right door", and so on.

Simpler puzzles involve using implements in the room to reach an object, doors which open when you say "open sesame", and in no other fashion, and so on.

This lesson is very effective at getting groups to talk to the teacher and to each other. Students need to co-operate and plan their next move, and forget about talking about other things if the adventure is exciting enough.

It is best used in a double period or on an ongoing basis to cover odd moments and reward finishing work. I usually start with a double, and then use odd moments to carry the adventure forward. "Agh, sir, can't we do the adventure now?"