I did not ask anyone to define or explain, even at the end, but the implied threat of someone having to defend his claim in front of the others may encourage honest answers.

 

Try it. It promotes a surprising willingness to speak up and they do not seem to view it as an exercise but rather as a well-I'll-be-damned sort of revelation. They realize that if they listen to CNN instead of reading the newspaper, they still need to know what the words mean. You can follow a movie without understanding all the words but it gets tougher if words are being spoken by a news anchor without visual reinforcement.

 

Et cetera.

 

~~~~~

DD Farms <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

 

Brad Johnston wrote: 

I once wrote ten words on the board and asked students to decide which of
them they could reasonably define or explain.

DD: Don't tease, what were the ten words? Or as many as you remember.