If you read my last article, you may have realized that I am a big fan of Whose Line. I grew up watching Wayne, Colin, Ryan, and Drew play games and show off their amazing creativity. It looked like they were having an awesome time on that show. So, I decided I wanted to bring more of that into my classroom.
The problem is, many improv games are quite difficult. The people of Whose Line are uniquely talented for these games, so non-actors may have find it hard to adapt so quickly to a scene. Add the fact that your students will be playing these games in a language they’re still not 100% fluent at, and you can imagine how difficult it may be. You do not want your students becoming frustrated over a limited vocabulary – or they may not get to enjoy the fun and hijinks of the game. So here are some improv games I’ve taken as well as how I’ve changed them to suit an ESL classroom.
Scenes From A Hat
This is probably the most well-known game from Whose Line. In the original game, Drew would ask the audience to write some suggestions and put them in a hat. Then, he’d take the hat and read a random prompt. The actors would make funny scenes according to the prompt, and after a while, Drew would pick out another one. This would continue until time is up. You can find and example here.
How you play this game in the classroom depends on your student’s English level… but also on how much you trust your students. If you have a more advanced class of fun-loving kids you can have them write the prompts, pick them from a hat/box/cup, and act them out without any guidance. If you don’t trust them not to write something inappropriate, write all the prompts yourself.
For weaker classes, I’d recommend putting them into teams/pairs. Then give everyone a minute or so to jot some ideas down after reading the prompt. When time is up, they will say/act out what they wrote. This is also great for students who are not confident in their speaking ability as it slows down the game and gives them time to think.
Sentences
This isn’t actually from Whose Line, but from Improv-a-ganza (which uses the same cast as Whose Line so it’s basically the same). I think this is my favorite game on the show. The actors ask the audience to write random sentences and then they put the paper into their pockets. Drew sets a scene for them to act out, and randomly in the scene the actor pull the sentences out and somehow fit the sentence into the scene. It’s hilarious.
In my class, there is a Ziploc bag full of sentences that I’ve written. Some of them are lines straight from the book, others are common idioms I’ve taught them, and then there are some funny ones just to spice things up. The students divide into small groups or pairs (depending on the size of the class) and then I give each student two sentences. After that I tell them the scenario they will act out. Instead of having them improvise, they have a set amount of time to write out a small dialogue using the sentences given. Once time is up, they perform one by one.
This version of the game may still be too hard for some classes, so I’d recommend giving those classes five sentences each and letting them pick the two they want to use in their script. You can also just give them examples dialogues for them to read and take from.
Party Quirks
This game is really fun but really difficult – especially the way the cast of Whose Line plays it. They whole cast improvs a party scene, one person is just themselves and everyone else is given a role/quirk to act out. The normal person has to guess what the other people are portraying. In Whose Line, the quirks are often really obscure or specific – things like “talent night at an old folks home”. So the first thing you want to do when doing this activity is make sure the prompts are easy for the students to understand and act out. A lot of times I’d write things as simple as emotion + person, e.g., “an angry grandma”. When I do write more complicated quirks I often read them out as I put them into the cup so students have an idea of what may come.
We don’t always do a party scene. You can take any kind of dialogue and fit quirks into it. For example, maybe they are at a restaurant and the person playing the waiter has to guess what each of their patrons are. Maybe one student is interviewing people for a job and the others are quirky job applicants.
If your students are timid speakers, it helps to go over some phrases before doing the activity. You may even want to print out an example dialogue or write some key words/sentences on the board for them to refer to when improvising is too difficult.
The bottom line is this, you can make almost any improv game ESL class friendly by giving students time to write/think, providing examples, and tying the scenes to what they’ve been learning recently. So try it out and let me know what you think.