Choose one of the topics below and try to talk about it 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 phrases for each time that you want to interrupt or deal with interrupting. After you finish, discuss how well you dealt with turn taking.
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
Ask about any vocabulary above which you don’t understand or topics above which you’d like to discuss as a class.
Play the same game of speaking as long as you can, but this time roll a dice first, doing the thing that comes up for each number below:
Make sure 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 like taking turns to give speeches)
Make sure there is absolutely no silence
Use as many different interrupting and dealing with interrupting phrases as you can, not repeating the same phrases (small variations are also fine)
Brainstorm as many interrupting and dealing with interrupting phrases as you can.
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