Part One: Warm Up
Discuss the following questions with your partner(s).
- What are some ways you can show respect to people?
- Do people in your country ever treat people who are different in a disrespectful way?
- Have you ever felt that your difference wasn't respected?
- Think about the schools, jobs, and organizations you have belonged to in the past or belong to now. Have they always shown respect for:
- people of different genders?
- younger and older people?
- people of different ethnicities?
- people of different religions?
- people of different sexualities?
- people with disabilities?
- Is it important for you to have a job at a company that has the same ideas about politics and people as you? Why or why not?
- How can companies try to make their workplaces safe and respectful for all of their employees?
In this lesson, you will listen to workers at a design company discussing how to make the language that they use in the workplace more inclusive and respectful.
Before you start the lesson, read this definition of the word inclusive from the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary.
- Definition: deliberately including people, things, ideas, etc. from all sections of society, points of view, etc.
- The party must adopt more inclusive strategies and a broader vision.
- OPPOSITE exclusive
Discuss with your partner(s) how you think language or communication could be inclusive or exclusive.
Part Two: Vocabulary
Open the exercise and follow the instructions.
Exercise
Part Three: Listening
Open the exercise and follow the instructions.
Exercise
Part Four: Further Discussion
In the listening, the employees discussed how to reduce gendered and ableist language in their workplace. Another issue with inclusive language is the use of violent or aggressive expressions and idioms. With your partner(s), look at some of the expressions below. First, look up the expressions to find out what they mean. Then, try to think about why people may find them unacceptable. Finally, see if you can find another way to say the same idea, but with more inclusive language.
- on the warpath
- blacklist/whitelist
- to man up
- to bite the bullet
- to wear the pants
- to crush it
- master/slave (computers)
- to kill it