Edstrom, A. (2013).

Preparing an L2 Role-play: How Students Manage

L2 Deficits. Canadian Modern Language Review, Volume 69(3),
274-297. doi:10.1353/cml.2013.0022.
Annotation
This study suggests that there is a considerable amount of
variation when using role-play activities in second language learning.
This study examines the preparation of role-plays by university
students in an intermediate Spanish class. Students were confronted
with challenges in the use of their second language. In an effort to
overcome these challenges they employed a variety of strategies, such
as asking classmates and their teacher for help, modifying their ideas
to manage the task, and even consulted different reference material.
The purpose of this research is to analyze student strategies that can
further help teachers implement role-play activities that are more
effective in second language classes.
Reflection
This article suggests that both communicative and proficiencybased approaches to second language/foreign language teaching have
focused on developing learners ability to interact with others in the
target language, and role-playing is one means of simulating real-life
communicative scenarios. This reminds me of my lesson on Quoi de
Neuf? Working together to write out what a student has done over a

span of 24 hours and then verbally communicating those events to the

class and then having the class respond with questions that require
detailed responses is fairly similar to a real life conversation. This
study focuses on collaborative writing, highlighting learners
management of their L2 deficits.
Without the help of a native speaker of the language target in
the organization of role plays, researchers found that students were
spending too much time on organizing their ideas and then searching
for the vocabulary and what ended up happening was there was a
disproportionate length of time on preparation and actual role play
time. The other aspect of role-play as an activity is that the process
happens in the L1, English, which is normal. Research shows the best
way to learn a language is to use your dominant language and in
activities such as role-play how would students really get around
speaking their dominant language. Any person learning a new
language will have issues with vocabulary and grammar and thus
certain activities would take longer than others depending on the
involvement necessary for them to translate text. As per the journal
the most effective strategy in terms o linguistic accuracy was to
consult the teacher. Perhaps this should be a lesson for all new core
French teachers to incorporate more activities, which involve verbal
communication through the teacher.