Effective communication is essential to foster relationship-centered nursing care. Students should learn to adapt communication techniques within context and address sensitive topics. This includes competency with therapeutic communication techniques such as empathy, paraphrasing, and asking clarifying questions. In addition, students should learn to avoid nontherapeutic communication techniques such as giving personal opinions, providing false reassurance, and minimizing feelings. We engage novice nursing students in a role-play activity that promotes the application of therapeutic communication techniques. Small groups are assigned vignettes to act out during a seminar in the first nursing course. The vignettes involve challenging scenarios such as communicating with a confused agitated client, comforting an emotional client, teaching a client who does not speak English, and conversing with a client who is hard of hearing. Faculty assign students the roles of nurse, patient, or family member. The groups are instructed to perform their assigned vignette twice. The first time they use nontherapeutic communication techniques. Then, on "take 2," they redo the role-play using therapeutic communication techniques. After each performance, their peers label the techniques that were employed and discuss the effectiveness of the communication. Learning outcomes from this activity are 2-fold. First, this activity allows practice and skill development with therapeutic communication techniques. Second, the opportunity to see the nontherapeutic techniques highlights how ineffective and inappropriate they are in the health care environment. This activity could also be used to practice crucial conversations and civility.