Pre-requisite(s): This activity targets those TCNs who have solid knowledge and understanding of local history and/or narratives. At least one group of locals has to be invited by the mentor.
Estimated Duration: 2 hours
Related to:
Step: 4
Dimension: Cognitive
Qualitative Indicator: Local history/narratives, National language, Networking with locals
Type of activity: Group
The TCN(s) who join this mentoring activity have already sufficient knowledge and understanding of local history and/or narratives. Through this activity, they can express their views together with locals through discussing on local historical or traditional events, local myths or legends, or historical personalities of the host country, based on the topic that will be distributed to them by the mentor.
The mentor creates a group of TCN(s) and locals who are of the same age or have the same interests. Based on important historical or traditional events, local myths or legends, or historical personalities of the host country, he/she decides the topic that he/she will give to them to elaborate on. The group takes some time to take notes on the key points of the topic and distribute the roles. The locals take also a supportive role as for the language, helping the TCNs to express their views linguistically correctly. At the end of the role playing, the participants comment on their discussion. Consequently, the mentor, who observed the conversation and took notes, gives them feedback and/or makes questions on what they mentioned while discussing.
- One mentor.
- A quiet place for the group to discuss and for the mentor to observe them and take relevant notes.
- Flipchart paper(s).
- Markers.
- Action plan(s).
Implementation Steps
The mentor creates the group of TCNs and locals and distributes to them the topic for the role playing, which will relate to a historical or traditional event, a local myth or legend, or a historical personality of the host country. He/she explains to them that they have to elaborate on it through role playing, giving them the roles to be played. Alternatively, if he/she aims at a more difficult activity, he/she can leave them decide on their own about the roles. He/she then gives to them a flipchart paper and some time to plan their conversation based on the key points of the topic as well as to distribute the roles given/decided.
The role playing is implemented by the group while observed by the mentor, who takes relevant notes on the knowledge and understanding of the group on the local history and or narrative described in the topic. Additionally, to the content of their conversation, the mentor can also check the vocabulary used, the understanding between the interlocutors as well as the interaction (questioning and answering, when needed) of TCNs and locals and their overall interaction.
When the conversation is completed, the participants present their planning based on the flipchart paper that they have worked on and comment on their performance, mentioning the strong and weak points of their conversation taking into primarily its content and secondarily other aspects.
The mentor gives feedback to the group and make some clarifying questions to them regarding the planning of their conversation and its content, i.e. if the main subtopics of the general topic, regarding different aspects of the historical or traditional event, the local myth or legend, or the historical personality of the host country, have been addressed. Also, he/she asks from them to present to him a summary of their conversation. This can be done once or as many times as the mentor thinks it would be useful for the group in order to deeply understand the general topic and its subtopics. Their discussion has to be made in the language of the host country in order for the TCNs to have an additional opportunity to talk in the targeted language.
This activity is used to teach the local history/narratives of the host country to TCN(s) on a quite high level. Once this is achieved, the mentor provides the TCN(s) with different options that will help him/her/them to continue learning more about local history/narratives.
After that, the mentor signs the action plan(s) of the TCN(s) as completed.