role plays in english classes with knowledge involved in business communication

Role Plays in English Classes with Knowledge involved in Business Communication

Enhancing students’ communication skills;

Boosting students’ confidence;

Familiarizing students with international business environment.

Craig Cameron Lu Lin(Aaron)

Cao Fang (Candy) Guo Jinyu(Jin)

Role Plays in English Classes with Knowledge involved in Business Communication

About the project: Experiment classes:

Four sophomore classes in Henan University

Two freshman classes in Shandong Jianzhu University

All students in these experiment classes participate and form their own groups with their free will.

Henan University

Shandong Jianzhu University

Each group chooses a business situation to play, with or without teachers’ help.

Teachers give guidance and help to their rehearsal performances.

The plays lasted for six weeks, and almost all the

groups’ performances were shot as short videos except that some videos were unfortunately destroyed by wrong technical operations.

POPULAR CONTENTS OF THE PLAYS

Advertisement of mobile phones (Three Groups)Other advertisements (Four Groups)Business job interview (Two Groups)Business Frauds (Three Groups)TV Shopping (One Group)Formal and informal Bargaining ( One Group)Business negotiation (One Group)New Product Launch (One Group)Unsuccessful Purchase Experience and the Solution (One Group)Other Situations (Four Groups)

Findings Questionnaire Focus group In-depth interviews

Questionnaire The post-performance questionnaire consists o

f 12 questions. The results are listed as follows:

Findings

Focus GroupThematic analysis was conducted in analyzing the focus

group data.There are 7 questions grouped into three

themes. Theme1 — Students’ positive feedback to role play

performances in class. Theme2— Challenges students have met. Theme3 — Limitations and suggestions proposed by

students.

Theme1–Students’ positive feedback to role play performances in class

English improved 90% Better understanding of Business classes 85%

Theme 3 — Limitations and suggestions proposed by students

Limitations:

1. Guidance from teachers is insufficient. If there

were a language teacher, a business teacher, and a professional actor for eachgroup, it would be much better.

2. Classroom platform is not good enough for a stage.

3. The performance is not included in the final score of the English Reading course, but they have spent a considerable amount of time and energy on it.

Students ’suggestions are:

1. Arrange a foreign teacher whose mother language is English, a business teacher, and a professional actor or a university student whose major is performance for each group to give professional guidance.

2. Find a classroom, lecture room or meeting room which is large enough for complicated plots and with better multi-media facilities.

3. The performance of class roleplay should account for 20% or at least 10% of the final score of English Reading course.

In-deapth interviews

For teachersLanguage teachers benefit the most, familiarizing themselves

with what the students have learned in their business classes,

therefore could better serve the students’ needs in the

future.

Teachers in Shandong Jianzhu Uni and Henu Uni are more

familiar with each other and know more about each other’s

university and students. What is more, we have also learned

about students’ role plays in Victoria University.

PROJECT LIMITATIONS It is no easy task to motivate the students who have

busy schedules to take a lot of time to prepare for their plays.

Some students are too shy to fully perform their roles.

More students tend to choose funny business situations rather than serious business affairs.