Teaching with Diplomacy — Week 1

I taught students about Diplomacy last week and we had the first official day today. It got off to a flying start. A SUPER good day for Germany — they got to make three new units at the end of the first year…!

Class structure:

• Students are playing in pairs. Two students to each country.
• The phases of play are sloooowed down¹ to allow them to use lots of different kinds of language.
  • 10 mins discussion with their partner to plan their turn.
  • 20 mins diplomacy phase where students mingle and chat with each other.
  • 5 mins order submission phase.

They have a zine in which they also have to write down the following details for each turn:

• What they plan to do
• What they heard during the diplomacy phase
• What they thought when orders resolved

I don’t have any photos now, but I read the French zine which just said “England LIED!”

In terms of language — the students in this class are here to work hard on their English, but still, they struggled at the start. By this, I mean that they naturally started playing in Japanese. I let them for 5 minutes, then stopped them and told them that the rest of the planning was to be done in English only. They understood that they had been speaking Japanese (easy to forget, seriously) and followed my orders.

During gameplay, I would circulate among conversations and add in some phrases for them to use, or help them fix their mistakes. I also sat down with groups that were alone and talked tactics with them (pointing out things they might have missed for example).

The online tool – Backstabber works really well. The students understood how to use it.

At the end of the first year, I think many of them are in shock, especially in Germany. Next week, I will simplify the zine and work with them on conditionals and negotiation. Exciting stuff!

The end of our first year playing Diplomacy

1. I talk about slow teaching and its connection to vaporware music in this paper. ↩︎