Expressive body language is important abroad.  If you don't know the right words, you can say a lot without: watch participants on international projects! 

Some participants were not happy about a role play game.  To warm up, we used 'sentence mime', first in their mother tongue: this way they focussed on getting a message across to others. 

Some sentences:

• Where is the toilet?
• I have no money
• Where am I? I am lost.
• I don't understand what you said.  Please say it again.
• Oh no! I've just missed the bus!
• Where can I find a taxi?
• You can't smoke here. Go outside.
• I want 2kg of oranges and 1kg of apples/ potatoes and onions/etc
• How much is the chocolate cake?
• I must give this book back to the library tomorrow.
• Yesterday at 9 o'clock my mother phoned me.
• I have too much homework
• Go away. Leave me alone
• I have got a headache.  Have you got a painkiller?
• Tomorrow I have an exam
• I read that book, but I didn't like it very much
• This food tastes strange.  Has it gone off (it is old/bad)?
• I have no credits/units left.  Can I borrow your mobile phone?
• My plane leaves in 30 minutes, I must hurry!
• My father went to Paris 5 years ago
• Today is my birthday

When feeling more confident (in mother tongue) players relaxed. 

We discussed

• what they could do easily: what others could understand easily?
• what ways they used: hand movements, facial expressions, whole body movements.  When a player is nervous, her/his face does not show the right feeling, so others cannot guess.
• Are the hand movements international (2 fingers-thumb rubbed together = money), or only understood in a few countries?  
• what was difficult to explain: feelings and needs are quite easy; relationships are not.