This can also be used for non-conflict negotiations such as premarital contracts or price negotiations. Possible situations to roleplay include students who have problems with the other students’ behaviour in class (speaking too much, not speaking enough, holding up the lesson because they haven’t done their homework, distracting the teacher from the lesson plan by asking questions, etc- maybe leading onto discussion of good classroom behaviour), neighbours, neighbouring countries, married couples, or suppliers and customers who are near breaking point in their relationship.

Making both sides have complaints about the other and giving out roleplay cards can also help set up this activity well, as can having different groups of students working on different situations so that they can’t listen into the neighbouring teams. by sitting in different rooms or one half of the students sitting in the corridor. The two students need to be sitting so far apart that they can’t hear the other people speak and so really need to listen to the peacemaker, e.g. Two students have such a problem with each other that they are refusing to speak, and another student shuttles between them trying to find a compromise. This is also a game from a classic TEFL supplementary book that can easily be done without access to the book (in this case Intermediate Communication Games). There are many games you can play with these cards, including the TEFL version of Reversi/ Othello that was first described by Mario Rinvolucri in Grammar Games and that is the subject of an upcoming article of mine. Students have to correctly say what is on the other side to turn it over and score one point. Prepare cards with reported speech on one side and direct speech of the same sentence on the other.

Reported speech esl exercises