It seems that more and more people find their way to the course. I dont know exactly how many participants we now have but I had a glance at the attendance list. I was the 42^nd who signed it and there were still maybe 7 students after me. So there must be in total around 50 in the course now. Anyway it is really full. Even the chairs were not enough, we brought some from other rooms and some people were sitting on the table. One remarkable thing I always forgot so far when describing the number of participants. Of those 50 people there are only 5 boys, me one of them. The other 45 are girls!

This time the course was under the motto of judgement-free speaking or unbiased speaking. It means speaking objectively, without transporting attitudes and general things in the language. I will explain later more.

We did not play the introducing game at the beginning of the course instead everybody in the (gigantic) circle should note what he or she (Do I have to write it vice versa now: she or he?) sees or observes in the room. So everybody was silent for maybe ten minutes and wrote something ina notebook. Then we spoke about what everybody had seen. The first thing I noticed was the carpet, probably because it was in the middle of all the students, a green dusty thing with black stains on it. Slantwise right to me I discovered two paper clips on the floor, one in copper and one in blue. Because of the stuffy air my eyes were wandering into direction windows. The only windows which can be opened are in the ceiling because it is a room on the top floor. But they were already opened. Despite no air moved. The small black telly at my right was dusty too. In a dull way I could mirror myself in the screen; surely the picture had been clearer without the dust layer on it.
The people opposite of me where interesting to watch too. In an unmistakable majority they wore blue jeans and had their right leg crossed over the left leg. The pullovers, in contrast, were rather colourful. Somewhere in the left corner of the room there were some students chatting which accompanied a low humming probably of a drill in one of the neighbour houses.
With the time less and less people were writing until the stop-command came from our prof.

The interesting aspectin those observations was that many people saw actually the same (the carpet, the air, the people) but were describing it in a different way. I admit, I tried to be objective and tried to avoid words like the dirty carpet which are too generalising. I could imagine what the exercise was aimed at when the title of the course is judgement-free speaking.
But what I had not thought of was that actually already the choice about what we are going to speak, is a judgement of what we regard as important.

Further we discussed the importance of adjectives and verbs. Unless adjectives are colours, they judge about qualities of the respective noun. Verbs are sometimes very absolute. When for example you want to describe the Spanish people you can say The British soccer fans are a violent or less absolute I have seen a lot of violent British soccer fans. So it is better to avoid general statements and to transform them into personal statements marked by to oneself referring verbs or phrases: In my opinion; To me it seems as; In my experience and so on.

That we could examine those attributive descriptions once again, in the next exercise we gathered to small groups in which one member tells about an intercultural adventure he or she had and the others listen and note when he or she makesa generalizing remark which is not judgement-free.
The girl in my group spoke about her stay in England some weeks ago and the experiences she had with her host family. According to her narration the family has really tried to drive her out: Their house it was not clean; the dishes seemed to be not washed up and for two times she had a fly in her coffee sticking on the ground. In her report she used phrases like It was a typical British welcoming or With every day the served food got less in warmth and quantity- which might have only occurred to her and was not based on facts. Similar things could be heard from others during their evaluation. Single behaviours were projected on a certain group (for example that all people from southern countries talk with their hands and feet).

Now it was time to try judgement-free speaking. We soon found another volunteer in our group. The girl came from Albania and described her friend who once had left her baby at a neighbour (because she wanted to go on a concert) instead of calling a babysitter. The whole situation occurred strange to her because it would be unusual to leave the baby at a neighbour and not to ask somebody professional.
The group agreed that she quite succeeded in avoiding prejudicing or generalizing words.

The last point of the lesson was to collect all the associations on judgement-free speakingand to write them on the blackboard.
So... to summarize, judgement-free speaking has personal feelingsin the foreground. As long as the words Me, Myself and Ioccur (followed by what verb ever) everything is okay. When you use no specific personal pronouns but instead words like always, never, one (=pronoun), typical and so on you generalize things.
The main effects of judgement-free speaking are that it can avoid conflicts and allows others to have their own opinion on something. In contrast, judging speaking can manipulate and impose opinions on others (- and eventually on oneself).

I quite agree with the ideas and have nothing to add. All I doubt is the probability to talk judgement-free at all. In the course I remember a girl who said she absolutely could not speak judgement-free and that her sentences always would include some generalisations. In everyday life I do not spend thoughts on judgement-free speaking because it just needs more concentration. But in risky situations where you can not judge the person opposite and want to avoid improper remarks I would definitely take it into consideration.