Speaking role play: register under pressure at a hotel reception
You are in the MATSEC Intermediate Spanish oral exam (10–12 minutes). Part 2 is a role play: you are a guest at a small hotel in Salamanca and you must complain that your room is next to the lift and that the shower has not worked since yesterday. You have two minutes to prepare with a prompt card containing four bullet points. The examiner, playing the receptionist, opens with: «Buenos días, ¿en qué puedo ayudarle?». You have rehearsed «Quiero cambiar mi habitación», but you freeze because you expected «¿Qué deseas?». A moment later the receptionist says «Entiendo, señora. Si la ducha se ha estropeado, podemos...» and you are not sure whether estropeado means 'expensive' or 'broken down'. You have about 90 seconds of the role play left and have not yet mentioned the lift.
1. The receptionist uses `le` and `señora`. What register should you maintain, and how does that change the phrasing of your complaint?
Read the worked answer
Register judgement: stay with usted.
¿En qué puedo ayudarle?contains the third-person indirect object pronounle; this is formal address.Señoraconfirms it.- Switching to
túmid-role-play would be inconsistent and would cost marks for sociolinguistic appropriateness, even if the grammar of the sentence is correct.
Reformulating the complaint formally
- Instead of
Quiero cambiar mi habitación→Quería pedirle un cambio de habitaciónorMe gustaría cambiar de habitación. - Use conditional politeness:
¿Podría cambiarme a otra habitación?,¿Sería posible...? - Keep the same structure for the second problem:
Además, la habitación está al lado del ascensor y hay mucho ruido por la noche.
Reasoning: the examiner is testing whether you can hold a consistent formal frame under pressure, not whether you can produce a memorised sentence. A memorised Quiero... is not wrong grammar, but it is register-neutral and less appropriate than a conditional request in a complaint to a hotel employee.
2. You are unsure what `se ha estropeado` means. How should you resolve the meaning without breaking the role play?
Read the worked answer
Use context first, dictionary second - and you have no dictionary in the oral.
- Collocation: the word is attached to
la ducha. A shower cannot be 'expensive' in this syntactic frame;estropeadowith a machine or device means 'broken down'. - Situation: you have just complained that the shower has not worked since yesterday. The receptionist's
Entiendosignals agreement with your complaint, so the word must support it. - Morphology:
se ha estropeadois a pronominal perfect, typical of a recent change of state - something 'has gone wrong'.
Repair strategy if still unsure Use a clarification question that keeps the role play alive rather than freezing:
Perdone, ¿quiere decir que la ducha no funciona?¿Puede repetirlo más despacio, por favor?
This earns marks for interaction and for managing uncertainty, and the examiner's answer will confirm the meaning. Silence or a guessed response that ignores the word earns nothing.
3. You have 90 seconds left and still need to mention the lift. What is the best sequencing decision?
Read the worked answer
Prioritise task completion over elaboration.
- The prompt card has four bullet points; unexplained points are the clearest source of lost marks. The lift is a required point, so it must be said.
- Compress rather than abandon: one short sentence is enough -
También hay un problema: la habitación está justo al lado del ascensor y no puedo dormir. - Link it to the request already made:
Por eso le pido el cambio de habitación.
What to drop if necessary
- Drop adjectives and narrative detail, not functions. Keep the complaint, the request and the closing (
Muchas gracias por su ayuda).
Judgement principle: in a role play, an incomplete function costs more than a plain sentence. A short, accurate sentence covering the missing bullet point is worth more than a complex sentence that repeats what you have already said.