This action research study seeks to empirically examine the effectiveness of a role play intervention in the teaching and learning of college ESL counter-argumentation. This 12-week study was conducted in two undergraduate ESL composition classrooms in Fall Semester 2021. Each target classroom had 18 students with a total number of 36 students in both sections. This study included 33 participants divided into two main categories. (1) General participants (n=25) provided pre-intervention questionnaires, three counterargument paragraphs, two peer feedback entries, two learning journals, and post-intervention questionnaires. (2) Focal participants (n=8) provided the same documents as general participants in addition to recorded role plays, midintervention interviews, and post-intervention interviews. There were four focal participants in each target classroom. All role plays were conducted in pairs. General participants also participated in role plays; however, only focal participants’ role plays were recorded. The findings indicated notable improvements in participants’ understanding of what a counterargument is especially that it must be clear and specific.Additionally, since role plays offered a salient and similar organizational structure compared to the counterargument paragraph, participants’ writing showed that they internalized and distinguished between the three main components of a counterargument paragraph—that is, a counterargument, a concession, and a refutation. As this AR study has shown, there were also signs that focal participants' oral argumentative skills improved—specifically, through engaging in reciprocal discussion, using collaborative reasoning, considering different perspectives, and building on others' input to improve the quality and depth of one’s arguments. Participants learned that we do not argue in a vacuum hence their overall appreciation of the dialogic nature of argumentation. While it was more complex to evaluate gains in participants’ improvement when itcomes to their writing, it remains the case that most mid-intervention and post intervention counterargument paragraphs contained evidence-based and clearly crafted refutations. Two of eight mid-intervention and post intervention paragraphs did not necessarily demonstrate significant progress but did not, at the same time, present any lack of improvement. Certain factors, such as the inherent differences between writing and speaking might explain this observation (e.g., role play is collaborative while writing is individual). Finally, role play seemed to help students with their prewriting and outlining and appeared to have raised their awareness that, although invisible during the writing process, their paragraphs were still addressed to areader/audience, hypothetically in this case, to their role play partner. e