Full attention, please!

Manaswini Sridhar

When I attended a funeral recently, I occupied the quieter part of the room so that I could think of the departed in silence and not be part of the inane chatter of the people who had come to offer their respects. As a spectator, you witness people coming in, you don’t hear their words but what you see is how they move, how they use their body…in essence, body language. It then struck me how as teachers we have failed to infuse any sense of body language in ourselves; the facial expressions of 90 percent of the people were neither sympathetic nor solemn. Some had an embarrassed smile plastered on their faces even as they said, “I am sorry….” When they were leaving, there was still that smile lingering on their faces which was in stark contrast to the expressions of the immediate family. Even young people had the same mismatched expressions on their faces. Their bodies were lax or relaxed and not stiff and respectful, as it ought to be. So when we are teaching role-plays in school, what are we teaching? Are we still looking at grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation like the textbooks, or are we looking at other and perhaps more important aspects of language? Is role-playing then only another aspect of the syllabus that has to be dealt with or should it be a more exhaustive analysis of how one is perceived when communicating, especially in real life situations?

There is a plethora of resources on the Internet aimed at different levels, so finding a topic or a situation is simple. http://socialskillscentral.com/free-samples/ is a website that helps develop social skills through role-playing.

http://busyteacher.org/7824-top-10-role-plays-for-your-speaking-class.html is a site that looks at everyday situations to help students master their language skills, and more importantly, their social skills.

As a teacher, can I afford to sit back in a relaxed manner and listen to (not watch!) my students role-play the various situations only focusing on the rubric that helps me award them their marks? Seriously speaking, I need to be more alert during role-plays than I am when correcting papers because the dynamics of the situation here keep changing. My students may be uttering grammatically correct sentences but they may not be paying attention to one another because all the while they are thinking their own thoughts and wondering how to respond to an utterance. This is precisely what some people do in real life conversation too. You can see that they are not listening because there is no eye contact, their eyes are rolling towards the ceiling, which clearly indicates: I am thinking of how to respond to what you are going to say even without having heard it. As a teacher if I ignore this in my eagerness to have merely grammatically correct vocabulary and precise sentences, then I may as well have them write out the dialogues or conversation in their answer scripts. This is also a way of testing their conversational skills; however, when I ask students to role-play, I am extending beyond that in order to create an awareness of their body language and how they may be ‘judged’ by people who don’t know them too well. Hence it is vital that the rubrics of my role-playing evaluation have also nonverbal communication or body language as a tested element so that I can assess my students and tell them bluntly if they are at all doing their job in communicating. For example, the student who utters the syntactically correct sentence, “I am sorry I din’t wish you on your birthday,” certainly doesn’t deserve a five if there is not a look of sorrow or unhappiness on his face, and if there is no eye contact.

Role-plays cannot be done when you are rushed for time because you need the luxury of time to do justice to it and to your students. You may not have that kind of time, so why not do it in a way that most of the students are involved, but not all?

You could begin with your confident speakers and give them a scenario. Analyze them, correct them and offer feedback. Next, focus on the shy students who never speak in class. Get them to do a scenario because they have listened to your analysis and hence may do a better job. In role-playing, what you are looking for are the following: if this were a real life situation, in spite of the grammatical errors, has my student succeeded in getting across his message, whatever the message may be? Has the student convinced the listener that he is sorry, he is happy, he is concerned and has he done this not only by the use of his words but also by his tone and his body? Role-playing would mean that I sit back, almost plug my ears and look at the people involved in the situation, and by merely looking at them understand the situation! In real life, most people are able to arrive at the message by merely looking at you. That is why, even if you don’t understand the language, you are still able to discern the emotion of the situation.

http://pws.npru.ac.th/ronathummachit/system/20161003115356_9b042412c1e05442ed26af6e3bf0cb4.pdf gives quite a few pointers on what features the teacher has to look at before awarding a grade. Amongst the pointers are the ability to maintain eye contact, and most importantly, the ability to show that the participant or the speaker is involved in the process of speaking and listening.

Role-play is best evaluated by two teachers; one who is listening to the vocabulary and articulation, and the other who is focusing only on visual communication to see whether the body is successfully signaling the message and depicting the emotion of the situation. Let’s get our students to role- play with words and the body!

Children learn to trust people not because of the words they use but because there is something about their body language that tells them, “You can trust me. I will see that no harm comes to you.” The child that comes to you in pre-primary school may not understand English, but she or he does understand what your body is communicating. That is how important body language is.

The author is a teacher educator and language trainer based in Hyderabad. She can be reached at manaswinisridhar@gmail.com.