Coffee chat with a colleague
You are having an informal coffee with a new colleague. Get to know them and share about your role.
A beginner-level session of about 5 minutes.
The conversation turns about ninety seconds in, at the first silence after the obvious questions have been used up. Your colleague is friendly but shy, which in practice means short answers and no new topic handed back to you, so if you wait for them to carry it the pause only grows. The work is in noticing something small in what they said and asking about that, rather than starting a fresh subject each time. Being the host also means talking about yourself occasionally; someone who only asks questions can feel like an interviewer. Practise the pauses as deliberately as the sentences, deciding each time whether to fill one or leave it sitting for a second longer.
Angles worth taking
- Follow the detail they mention instead of moving to your next question, because shy speakers open up on specifics.
- Offer something about yourself unprompted, so the exchange stops feeling like a round of questions and answers.
- When an answer comes back in three words, react to it before you ask anything else.
- Let one pause sit; people often add the more interesting half after a couple of seconds of quiet.
- Ask about the practical side of the move — the commute, the timings, the part nobody else thinks to ask about.
Who is in the room
You play
An existing team member welcoming a newcomer
You speak with
A new colleague who is a bit shy but friendly
Phrases to reach for
These are shown to you before the session starts. They are what you are asked to use, not a list the scorer is checking off.
Ready to speak?
Free to start. You need a TalkDrill account to speak — reading this page does not.
Browse all roleplay scenariosThe format
Modes
Learn (guided) · Mock (exam-real)
How a roleplay session works
Read your brief
Your role, the situation, and what a good outcome looks like. The counterpart has their own brief, and you do not get to read it.
Open the conversation
You speak first in most scenarios. How you open sets what you can ask for later, which is most of the exercise.
Handle the turn
Somewhere in the middle it stops going your way — a refusal, a counter-offer, a rebuttal you did not prepare for. That moment is the scenario.
Read the report
Outcome, the phrases you used and the ones you missed, fluency and clarity, and the specific line worth rewriting.
What you're scored on
Across every roleplay, the report looks at the same four things — because they are what makes a real conversation work or fail.
Build rapport with a new colleague through casual conversation.
Task outcome
Whether you got what the brief asked for: the refund, the extension, the concession, the point conceded.
Appropriacy
Whether the register fits. A complaint that is too soft gets nothing; the same complaint too hard gets a manager and no refund.
Recovery
What you do with the unexpected turn — repair, rephrase, push back, or stall. This is where most of the marks move.
Delivery
Fluency, pronunciation and pace, judged in conversation rather than in a prepared monologue.
More roleplay scenarios
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