Just Desserts - (Short Plays for English Learners) by Alice Savage (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

These scripts will give students the opportunity to confidently practise language in a safe and structured setting where they can enjoy playing roles and bringing the story to life. ... they'll be having so much fun that they won't even realise that they are learning!

--David Farmer, NILE training consultant, theatre director, and author

Just Desserts is a short, original play about what happens when a teenager has to stand up to their boss, an overbearing celebrity chef. The engaging, suspenseful play hits on an important theme for students, how to stand up for yourself in a difficult situation. However, this play was written for English students to improve their communication and speaking skills.

As students read, practice, and perform these plays, they will learn:

• cultural contexts
• conversational moves
• intonation and body language
• high frequency lexical phrases and grammar patterns

Short enough for a project in a speaking class, but expandable to fill a whole elective class, drama unit, or theater club production, Just Desserts makes drama in the classroom a good thing!

About the Play

• 6 characters, 8 scenes, about 15 minutes to perform.
• Language of the play is graded to A2+/B1 (intermediate) level, although the demands of performance may be higher
• In addition to the script, this book contains:
  • Preview activities
  • Pragmatics lesson on answering a false accustation
  • Advice on producing a play
  • Pronuncation tips
  • Glossary of theater vocabulary

Review Quotes

Just Desserts has a young immigrant heroine, a villianous boss who is trying to take advantage of her skills and a supporting set of characters who all participate in the battle to save a failing restaurant by entering a bake off. The level of language seems to be about B1, though it doesn't feel "graded." The play is fun to read on it's own, and it would be great as readers theater because of the character development and the emotionally-charged scenes. Students get a chance to tryout being indignant, devious, innocent, defensive, cautious, threatening, and rightous in turns which of course means fun contextualized pronunciation work, and perhaps discussions of culturally diverse ways to handle relationships. -- Jennifer DeLapp