Ejercicios de comunicacion (communication excercises)

Two variations by Lo Manho, with a few adjustments by MN.

“Beat the fears”

1. Joker separates the class into two groups: Demons and People.
2. The Demons have to make a list of twenty five things that the people in this particular learning group (e.g. university students, Sanitation workers) strongly fear, writing each fear on a separate index card. Ideally it should be something specific to that group, but people should feel free to name basic human fears, like death, too.
   

Variation by Hirabayashi Shunichi, with a few adjustments by MN.

Make a list of fears in advance, to save time. From the list, players vote for the top 10 fears that they have. Of course, they can add another words not on the list, but the number of fears should be the same as the number of demons.

Divide the participants into two groups. One group is the people, the other is the Demons. Each Demon will choose one fear to represent, keeping this secret from “the people.” The Demons will draw masks that somehow express – without words or symbols – the fear that they represent.

I got this idea when a member of the Human Rights Study Group of the Tokyo Sanitation Workers Union gave a presentation on Hate Speech and Racism. It is always good to stretch before running, to loosen up our conceptions and assumptions.

The Flow:

The Joker writes the words Hate Speech on the board. Check if everyone understands the concept, maybe ask for a definition.

Then write "Love Speech" on the board and ask for examples, explaining that we are looking at the opposite of Hate Speech.

You can then have people practice making love speeches, slogans, or posters.

Sometimes the most important part of a meeting or event is making contacts, networking. This activity uses the format of a personals ad to have people introduce themselves and quickly identify people they wish to get to know.

The format is simple. On an index card, people write:

• Name:
• Attributes:*
• Turn-ons: **
• Turn-offs: **
• Seeking:***

  *This means relevant information about you for the purposes of this event, e.g., in a meeting of labor activists, your union affiliation or other organization, etc. People should feel free to play with this, though.

A "quick and dirty" evaluation activity.

In groups of three, people prepare a short (2 minute) role play based on this scenario:

It's the day after class. One person meets his/her two friends who attended class. S/he asks them, "How was class last night?", pressing them for details. The role play ends when the friend asks, "will you go to the class next week?" and the person replies.

Like in any role play, it helps to choose a specific place and time of day, so people can imagine a context for their meeting.

In this game, three people have a conversation with one person playing the role of interpreter. In fact all three are speaking the same language, but two pretend they do not understand each other, so they need the interpreter.

The interpreter's role in this game is to misinterpret everything the speakers say, producing the maximum of confusion and misunderstanding.

Example:

Person 1: I am very pleased to meet you.

Interpreter: He says, "what took you so long?"

Person 2: I am not late; I think our meeting was for 4pm and it is 4pm now?