Being Tactful – Speaking Activities / Role Plays (ESL/EFL)

Being Tactful – Speaking Activities / Role Plays (ESL/EFL)

ESL Level: Upper-Intermediate+
Class time: 25 minutes
Language Focus: expressions for tact, modals, noun clauses

Activity Description

Before doing a role-play, it’s a good idea to teach your student some new expressions or grammar that they can practice. For tact, LinguaHouse has a great lesson on Being Tactful available free online. First, do that lesson with your students (I copied the text onto a worksheet so each student had it on paper, and then we did the listening and exercises together). The lesson will take about 50 minutes.

Off the top of my head, some common strategies for being tactful are as follows:

· Adding a modal to the BE verb to make it weaker (“He is wrong. ” -> “He might/may/could be wrong. ”)

· Adding adverbs (slightly/completely/100%) and quantifiers (a little/a bit) (“He might be slightly wrong. / He could be a little wrong. ”)

· Changing negative language to positive (“He might not be completely correct. ”)

· Adding phrases like “In my opinion” or “I’m not sure”

· Contrasting the negative statement with a positive one. (“Jim has some great ideas, but, in this case, he may not be completely correct. ”)

· Changing the statement into a question (“Do you think this is correct? ”)

· Using the passive voice (“A mistake may have been made. ”)

Next, (back to the activity), introduce the idea of a yearly performance review to your class. Tell them that managers/bosses review the performance of their employees regularly and offer them positive and negative feedback. Brainstorm a list of negative feedback a manager might give an employee. Write the ideas on the board. Afterwards, invite a student in the class to come sit in a chair at the front. Thank him for coming to the yearly performance review, and start with a little small talk (So, Jim, you’ve been with us for one year now… time flies, doesn’t it? ) Then, proceed to give him the negative feedback (ideas written on the board) tactfully. When finished, thank him for his time and close the meeting.

With the class, discuss how being tactful helped soften the criticism and promote goodwill.

Afterwards, tell your students they are going to role-play the same situation. Now, there are two ways to approach this. The more creative way would be to have the students in pairs brainstorm a list of employee feedback (negative and positive). Then they could use these ideas in a role-play with each other.

The less creative approach is to use the below tact role-play cards. This way, students won’t have to think (which is sometimes a good thing) and it might take them further outside their comfort zone.

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