Taxi court role cards - a roleplay for ESL or EFL students
Judge:
You are a judge in taxi court. A customer will complain about a driver, and the driver will be there to defend himself. You must decide if the taxi driver should be punished. If punishment is necessary, decide what is appropriate.
Passenger:
You are complaining about a taxi driver because he took you to the wrong destination. You live on Mace Street in The Bronx, but he took you to Cadman plaza in Brooklyn. The driver wasted your time so you don't want to pay.
Cabbie:
You do not think you should be in taxi court. Saturday night, you picked up a drunk man and his girlfriend. He was so drunk that you couldn't understand his directions. You repeated "Cadman Plaza?". The customer was already kissing his girlfriend and didn't answer.
Teacher's notes
1. I always use this one after at least 8 weeks of class due to the "naughty" subject matter. I've done this with Korean college students (4 times), government employees (1 time), and with mixed classes of Korean college students and businesspeople (2 times). It has always been a big hit.
2. Set the scene. I use the Culture Watch video (chapter 3). Go over some New York City geography (The Bronx and Brooklyn are boroughs in NYC) and model the pronunciation of Cadman Plaza and all the other names. You can also adapt this activity so that it is based on another city.
3. I break the class into groups of three or four. If there is a group of 4, tell two students they are both passengers. There will be some snickering when the taxi driver accuses them of kissing, but I have never had a problem. In fact, the groups of 4 often seem to be having more fun. The passengers could be two men, two women, a man and a woman, whatever. It has always been a lot of fun.
4. This is an opportunity for meaningful use of the past continuous. Watch out for "She was busy to kiss her boyfriend" and similar mistakes. Since you can have groups of three and four, there is no need for you to take on one of the roles. In fact students might get uncomfortbale arguing with the teacher. Instead, monitor the language that emerges. After 5-8 minutes get the judge to make a decision. At the end of the activity I always provide some error correction on the board.
5. If the activity is going well, let the students have more than one go at it. Have all the taxi drivers stand up and rotate clockwise, have each student pass his role card clockwise, or use a combination of the two.