Entrepreneurs!

‘Entrepreneurs’ is an intermediate role-play. Help your students with their critical thinking whilst using their second language!

What You Need

1 x DimmiDeck

Instructions

1. Start by eliciting the meaning of ‘entrepreneur’ and maybe discuss some famous examples.
2. Divide the students into groups of two or three. They are fed up with 9-5 work and will be starting a business. They will be the CEOs.
3. Explain that three very different friends are coming together with them to start a new venture. They all bring a variety of skills.
4. Deal three DimmiDeck characters to each group.
5. Students have ten minutes to list the qualities of each character that would be useful for a job. Get them to focus on positives, but at higher levels they could also focus on negatives too. For example ‘the scientist is really smart, but sometimes a little crazy, and the bus driver is reliable and positive. The secretary is organised and sociable’.
6. The Teacher does some feedback with the groups to check their interpretations of the characters. There aren’t really any wrong or right answers here, it’s all about subjectivity, imagination and creativity.
7. Next, the teacher explains that the groups must brainstorm a suitable business venture which makes use of all the skills of their characters. They must assign job roles and be ready to explain their choices. Give them ten or fifteen minutes for this. Monitor and assist throughout.
8. Students feedback to the class their decisions, choices and reasoning. The most creative or most realistic team wins! The teacher should use this opportunity to feedback on language and correct as necessary.

Notes

There are plenty of ways to do this activity for different levels, different skills, different grammar points (conditionals, making future plans, debating) and with different practical aspects. The final product could be a presentation, a business proposal, a drawing, a mood board or any number of engaging projects.

The most important thing is that the students have fun and can be themselves, ideally using the situation as a way to generate abstract and creative ideas to propose to the class.