Lauren Esposito
Assignments & Activities Archive
Activity Description
When I started teaching professional writing, I would ask students: “Imagine you’re a nurse and you need to explain the signs of a stroke to a young child. Or, imagine you’re a business student writing a “how-to guide” for investors that will be published on a company website. How does your relationship to these audiences affect the way you communicate? How do differences in power influence this relationship?” I wanted to find a way to help students practice these advanced rhetorical skills. I turned to improvisational theater—or improv. This activity is based on an improv exercise called “Establishing the Who” (Spolin) and it introduces students to the concept of power dynamics. I explain the exercise by identifying core improv skills—listening, observing, and accepting and supporting others’ ideas. Next, students work in pairs. One student (the leader) is assigned a relationship that her partner (the follower) has to figure out. For example, the leader might be playing a parent and the follower is playing a child. Or, the leader is playing a student asking her teacher, the follower, about an assignment. This exercise leads to discussions about communicating with readers with more, less, or the same level of power as a writer, or “writing up, writing down, writing across” (Lindblom, “Power Dynamics”). It also compels us to discuss how the power we and others hold is rooted in character (ethos), including “racial, gender, ethnic, political, class, age, religious, geographical, and historical identifications” (Ryan 143). Finally, we use this exercise to brainstorm ideas for professional texts students are writing in the course. Whether students are writing a scientific report, a press release, or a public service announcement, or firing off an email, they will need to figure out how to relate to their audience. Examples of discussion and reflection questions are included in the Activity Process section. In the Learning Accommodations section, I also share ways of adapting this activity to an online, synchronous session with students.