Webinar Summary: Creating Role-play Materials from Free Online Resources

In her webinar, Alexia Sporidis, a Nursing English expert at SLC, described the process of how she creates role play materials aimed at developing communication skills for students of nursing and nurses. She also presented examples of role-play cards and handovers based on the information available at various nursing-related websites, TV series found on YouTube, and the scenarios used in the OET speaking sub-test.

Alexia led her webinar in a very interactive way. From the very beginning, she was interested in what materials the participants generally used for speaking activities, how the information videos could be used, and the ideas on developing materials for handovers.

Using a sample lesson, websites and templates, Alexia gave tips on activities which focused on:

– Giving clear explanations of a diagnosis and treatment presented in Murtagh´s patient information

– Discussing knowledge of a topic, practicing pronunciation and using lay terms covered in the information videos available at nursing websites

– Using (I)SBAR for handovers.

The take-away message from this webinar was that using handovers doesn´t have to be about you being a super-busy teacher, creating all the materials yourself. Instead, Alexia encouraged participants to take the role of a facilitator and engage students in their learning process. Once they are shown a sample and given a template, give them autonomy to choose the topics and resources they like. This will allow you as the teacher to focus on helping them with pronunciation, vocabulary or language structures they struggle with.

Watch the webinar and get inspired by Alexia and the participants on how to use the information videos and develop your own speaking materials for handovers.