Prepare a drawing of a house on the (paper)board. The facilitator tells the story of family Miller: "Mr. and Mrs. Miller lived with their 20 year old son David in this house. The family lived quite happily together in this house. One day an accident happened and they died. David inherited the house of his family and lived a single and satisfied life, until one day he lost his job. David urgently needed money, therefore he decided to split his house into 6 apartments and rent them." Now, imagine you are David and that you have to choose five tenants from the list of people applying to your ad. Task for the participants: 1. choose 5 tenants from the list - individually (approx. 20 min.) 2. in group of 5 to 6 persons choose 5 tenants that the whole group agrees on (approx. 20 min.) 3. debriefing: - Has the group found 5 common tenants? Yes /No? Why (not)? - How did the group work together to find those common tenants? What was difficult, what was easy? - Discuss the reasons why you decided for the particular people. This exercise is a nice conversation activity I use for various levels of English students as it shows very well the impact of prejudices and different pre-conceptions we have about other people. To have no prejudices is almost impossible, the most important is to understand that these are prejudices and that discussions about differences and getting to know people better can change their point fo view.

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