Appealing to your ESL students' sense of creativity with dramatic exercises is an excellent way not only to teach English, but also to draw out their personalities and make a stronger connection with them. Whether you have your students follow a script, create their own play or imitate existing movies, incorporating drama into the ESL classroom is sure to result in lots of fun and learning.

Improv
Introduce improv to your students with a discussion and an online video clip. When everyone understands the concept, tell them you're going to have an improv tournament. Put students in groups of three and give each group a strip of paper with a particular scenario, such as "waiting for someone at the airport," and a list of words they must use during the skit. Use words from past lessons so students will know them and words that are unrelated to the scenario to really stretch their imaginations. Give groups two minutes to prepare -- or less time for advanced levels -- and choose a group to go first. Time each group and require that each person in the group speak at least twice. The group to carry on the longest -- and make sense -- are the winners.

Guessing Activities
Compile a list of 15 or 20 popular movies or books with clear plot lines that most of your students have seen or read. Put students in groups and have them secretly pick a movie and prepare a short skit re-enacting a scene from the movie. Encourage groups to stick to the plot but feel free to add embellishments that will help them practice vocabulary and grammar. Other groups have 30 seconds after the group finishes to guess which movie they re-enacted.

Have each student write down the name of a celebrity. Encourage students to choose celebrities with strong personalities or well-known public activity. Take up the papers and have students turn around. Tape a random paper on each student's back. Have students mingle and try to figure out who they are based on other students' reactions. Students can remove their paper as they finish but must continue interacting with others in character.

Charades
Modify the classic game of Charades to use it in your ESL class. Instead of relying on gestures, have students practice tone, emotion and appropriate vocabulary for different situations. Give each student a strip of paper with a situation on it; for example, "your boyfriend just proposed" or "someone at a football game just spilled soda on you." Tell students to react appropriately, using words and gestures, and have other students try to guess what has happened. Students must guess the entire scenario to be correct; for example, they must guess that a spill has occurred specifically at a football game, not just in general.

Start From Scratch
Use common literary themes to help students augment their vocabulary and acting ability. For example, teach students about the fairy tale. Describe its components and structure and discuss well-known fairy tales. Put students in small groups and have them write their own fairy tale, then act it out for the class. Encourage students to put whatever creative spin they like on their fairy tale; the point is to use vocabulary and practice using emotion appropriately when speaking English. You could also teach mysteries, historical fiction or tall tales.