His role plays / his role-playing

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Chicken Sandwich

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[...]
He manages in a striking way: buying her old DDR brand-name products, having children in old uniforms sing ideological songs and even recording his own DDR news programme. His role plays brilliantly reflect life and attitudes in communist times.
[...]

This is a student review of the film Goodbye Lenin which I found in a CPE sample paper here. According to the examiner, this review contains a few minor errors and I'm trying to spot them.

Is the last sentence acceptable? I would rewrite it:

His role-playing brilliantly reflects life and attitudes in communist times.

I'm not sure if using the plural of "role play" (without the hyphen) really works here (stylistically). The problem is that one might intepret "plays" as a verb, especially without the hyphen. What do you think of the original sentence and my rewrite?

Thank you in advance.

P.S. Now that I think about it, the originally sentence is probably fine is as it is. I don't know why it bothered me when I first read it...
 
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bhaisahab

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[...]
He manages in a striking way: buying her old DDR brand-name products, having children in old uniforms sing ideological songs and even recording his own DDR news programme. His role plays brilliantly reflect life and attitudes in communist times.
[...]

This is a student review of the film Goodbye Lenin which I found in a CPE sample paper here. According to the examiner, this review contains a few minor errors and I'm trying to spot them.

Is the last sentence acceptable? I would rewrite it:

His role-playing brilliantly reflect life and attitudes in communist times.

I'm not sure if using the plural of "role play" (without the hyphen) really works here (stylistically). The problem is that one might intepret "plays" as a verb, especially without the hyphen. What do you think of the original sentence and my rewrite?

Thank you in advance.

His role-playing brilliantly reflects life and attitudes in communist times.
 

Chicken Sandwich

Senior Member
Joined
Jun 20, 2010
Member Type
Interested in Language
Native Language
Russian
Home Country
Russian Federation
Current Location
Netherlands
Thank you.

1) His role plays brilliantly reflect life and attitudes in communist times.
2) His role-playing brilliantly reflects life and attitudes in communist times.

Are they in your opinion equally good? At first I thought that the second one was better, but now I don't see any significant difference.

Thank you for your time.
 

bhaisahab

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Joined
Apr 12, 2008
Member Type
Retired English Teacher
Native Language
British English
Home Country
England
Current Location
Ireland
Thank you.

1) His role plays brilliantly reflect life and attitudes in communist times.
2) His role-playing brilliantly reflects life and attitudes in communist times.

Are they in your opinion equally good? At first I thought that the second one was better, but now I don't see any significant difference.

Thank you for your time.

I prefer #2, but there is nothing wrong with #1.
 
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