with an optional dice game
Choose one of the topics below and try to talk as long as you can on that topic. Your partner will interrupt whenever they can, at which point you can let them speak (and then interrupt back later) or politely stop them interrupting. Please try to use different turn taking phrases each time that you want to interrupt or to deal with interrupting. Stop when neither of you has more to say about that topic. Discuss how well you dealt with turn taking, then take turns doing the same with different topics below.
Business meetings topics to talk about
- Action minutes/ Action plans
- Active listening
- Bargaining/ Haggling
- Being diplomatic/ tactful
- Being friendly
- Being persuasive
- Brainstorming/ Mind maps
- Breaking the ice and making people feel comfortable
- Chairing a meeting
- Clothing/ Appearance
- Coming to agreement
- Coming up with ideas
- Cultural differences in business meetings
- Dealing with conflict
- Dealing with deadlock/ impasses
- Dealing with difficult/ controversial topics
- Dealing with things not on the agenda
- Decision making (voting, consensus, compromise, etc)
- Directness
- Drawing up an agenda
- Ending meetings
- Following up meetings
- Food and drink
- Formality/ Politeness
- Good minutes
- Greetings
- Hierarchy/ Status/ Seniority
- How involved everyone should be
- Humour/ Jokes
- Meetings in English with other non-native English speakers
- Meetings in another country you both/ all know about
- Meetings in cafés
- Meetings in this company
- Meetings in this country
- Meetings with native English speakers
- Number of participants/ Size of the meeting
- Pausing for thought/ Silence
- Pointless meetings
- Regular meetings
- Rejecting ideas and proposals
- Roles (chair, secretary, etc)
- Showing your real feelings and opinions
- Small talk in meetings
- Starting meetings
- Taking breaks
- Technology (PowerPoint, laptops, projector, laser pointer, videoconferences, VoIP, etc)
- Teleconferences
- The agenda
- Timing
- Venues for meetings
- Videoconferences
- Voting
- When you should and shouldn’t contribute
- Who should attend
When your teacher stops you, ask about any vocabulary above which you don’t understand or topics above which you’d like to discuss as a class, discussing them together each time.
Play the same game of speaking as long as you can, but this time roll a dice first and doing the thing next to these numbers:
- Make sure that you both speak 50% of the time
- Try to speak more than your partner
- Try to make your partner speak more than you
- Exchange who is speaking as many times as possible (like a game of ping pong – not giving long speeches)
- Make sure that there is absolutely no silence
- Use as many different interrupting and dealing with interrupting phrases as you can, not repeating the same phrases ( but with small variations on the phrases also fine)
When your teacher stops you, brainstorm as many interrupting and dealing with interrupting phrases as you can.
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