"This extremely powerful simulation helps participants experience speaking a language non-fluently, how it affects one's ability to stay focused and connected with the listener, and how it influences one's feelings of competence and confidence. Participants also experience listening to second language speakers, and notice their own tendencies to help or to become distracted" (Nipporica Associates, LLC, 2018).

This Thiagi jolt challenges participants to consider and "the experience the hesitation and the fear of making mistakes that people feel when speaking in a second language" (Thiagarajan & van den Berg, 2017).

This activity challenges teams to complete an assignment without speaking to one another to encourage participant to understand what it is like to not speak or understand the dominant language and develop communication and teamwork skills.

This course, created by Tatjana Babic Williams in the School of Languages at Purdue University for Italian learners, includes a module on the concept of empathy in an intercultural context.

This activity involves reading the play “Hong Kong, Canada” and discussing key scenes that deal with race, language, and nationality as a group. 

This intercultural learning module enables learners to develop empathy for individuals with different accents and also place responsibility on themselves, as the listener, to understand accents different from their own. 

This module is currently only available to Purdue faculty and staff through Brightspace. To request access, please email Dr. Aletha Stahl at stahl23@purdue.edu. 

A volunteer is invited to make a presentation on any topic. The volunteer is asked to double up on every verb by immediately following it with a synonym. Other participants are invited to pair up and have a conversation, doubling up on all verbs. During the debrief, the facilitator relates the experience with being preoccupied with words and sentence patterns of a second language.

This Thiagi jolt asks participants to role play to better understand the impact of distractions and self-talk. 

Hello in Different Languages, an activity by J. Niell, teaches participants about different languages and exposure to language. 

Redundanica, a simulation, helps  participants to develop empathy for those communicating in a second (non-native) language.

Piglish is a language-learning exercise developed by J. M. Blohm, C. Hartley, & T. Lapinsky. It teaches the process of learning a new language.