PRACTICING GOOD COMMUNICATION Summary: The goal of this exercise is to make sure that communication with students from other countries is clear, polite and useful.
CLEAR communication - the meaning is obvious, and easy to translate.
POLITE communication the message shows respect for the person at the other "end" of the message.
USEFUL communication the message is sent in order to accomplish something, such as learning more about the recipient of the message, advancing an investigation,
Think: Take 5-10 minutes to discuss what can go wrong in communication. It might be useful to break up into small groups to brainstorm this question, and then to report back from the small groups. Ask the students to think how clear, polite and useful their own communication had been with one another.
Translators have to do just this hard work of understanding and rephrasing. Sometimes there are not the adequate words or phrases.
Brainstorm a list of jargon phrases, those popular and colorful phrases that are not fully accepted. These phrases tend to carry more meaning than the simple translation would suggest. Explain to students that if these are used in a message they should be placed in quotes and defined.
Brainstorm a list of current events in your country. Are there any expressions that have come into the language from those events? (e.g. "a walk on the moon"; "Monicagate" , or whatever might be recognizable to your students) Will people in another country understand what you mean?
Activity: Explain to students that they are practicing understanding and summarizing, and that these are hard skills, but that practice helps!
Paired Communication 1
Assign half the students as "1"s and the second as "2"s, and then pair them up. For two minutes have student 1 speak about a relevant topic (e.g. what they imagine life would be like in a certain country), and in the third minute have student 2 rephrase what student 1 has said. In minute 3, have student 1 give feedback to student 2 about any misunderstandings. In minute 4, have student 2 try again to rephrase and capture the meaning.
If a pair of students are having trouble, you might split them up and try them with other students who are more successful.
Paired Communication 2
Repeat the exercise with the roles reversed: Student 2 speaks for two minutes, student 1 summarizes and rephrases, student 2 clears up any misunderstandings and student 1 again summarizes and rephrases.