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Hello Everyone,
Firstly I am sorry that I have taken so long to make this posting!
Thanks to everyone who worked in a group with me at the February BFLG to generate ideas for a Writing Course. I was feeling rather bored with the method I had used to explore the differences between assertive, aggressive and non-assertive langauge and the group came up with some great new ideas, some of which I have road tested.
I made a set of laminated cards with assertive, non-assertive and aggressive sentences. I asked the participants what colours they asociated with Assertion, Aggression and Non-asssertion and then made colour coded "ponds" on flipchart paper. We laid these on the floor, dealt out the cards and then through a process of discussion decided which pond each sentence belonged to.
We then took the assertive sentences and sorted them into the categories of Basic, Questions and Empathy assertion, as defined in Ken and Kate Back's book, Assertiveness At Work.
This worked very well and had the advantage of everyone standing and walking about to keep them energised.
The other suggestion, from Brenda, was about different players' perceptions and emotional reactions to a letter. Drawing on her experience in healthcare insurance, Brenda suggested that you could have a letter to a patient from the healthcare insurer explaining that the policy would not cover certain treatment, such as an elective caesarian. The participants would be asked to read the letter from the point of view of the patient, the GP, and the patients husband/partner /next of kin and to discuss how they would react and how the letter could have been modified to be more empathetic to the person recieving it, whislt still giving a clear message.
This idea could be adapted to any setting - I had parking tickets or planning permissions in mind for my client group.
While I din't actually use this, I did apply the idea to getiing participants to review real letters they had written in the past.
Thank you to everyone who contributed these ideas and my apologies for not writing them up sooner. My only excuses have been work and holidays!
Kind regards
Beth Curl
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