Nonverbal Communication

Non-verbal communication involves the use of body language and voice to convey meaning, attitudes and emotions. It varies depending on personality, culture, gender, age and context and may often lead to communication challenges and sometimes communication breakdowns. It is worthwhile to understand and use non-verbal signals which are common in Canada during conversation.

The following video contains an extensive list of demonstrated gestures and body language used in North America along with their meanings. Please watch the video. You may have to watch it more than once.

What do you think of the rate of speech? Now that you watched the video again, please complete the quiz below to test your knowledge.

Post your thoughts on nonverbal communication in the reply box below. Have you experienced any misunderstandings or communication breakdowns because of it?

 

 

Degree of Formality

I really enjoyed reading your introductions. I am also pleased to see that you are finding the online exchanges useful for your learning.

Our current topic is degree of formality. Using the appropriate degree of formality is not only important in writing, but also in speaking and interaction with coworkers to help build relationships. Open NorQuest College’s Language Study Tables. Select “Table 6: Relating to Others” and watch the video clip. After watching, post your thoughts on the following questions:

  1. Is it “normal” for the boss to talk with his subordinate (follower) in such a casual way at work in your first culture? In what situations is it ok and not ok to be so casual?
  2. What are some other common small talk discussion topics? Listen to people in the grocery store, in the lunch room at work and before or after meetings. What topics do they discuss?

Source: Centre for Excellence in Intercultural Education, NorQuest College

Communication

Photo: Colourbox.com

 

Welcome to our class blog!

Just like a classroom setting, we’ll use this first posting to get to know each other. Please introduce yourself briefly, indicate whether this is your first blog posting, and what you hope to gain through this experience. Feel free to repond to your classmates’ postings.

 hand and pda on table at meetingWirawat Lian-udom via Compfight

Next, please complete the following poll. This needs assessment helps me decide which types of activities to include during our course. Thanks!

William

     

 

Hello world!

Welcome to your brand new blog at Edublogs.

To get started, simply log in, edit or delete this post and check out all the other options available to you.

Also, if not already, please consider becoming an Edublogs Pro User – you can easily create and manage additional blogs (which also get extra themes and mobile blogging – perfect for students!), a massive storage space of 5GB for files, images, and videos, and access great features such as wikis and forums and many additional ‘Plugins’.

And you get premium email support and over 130 extra cool themes too.

Pro users are what keeps Edublogs running and providing free blogs for education, so give it a go today 🙂

For assistance, visit our comprehensive support site, check out our getting started with Edublogs guide or Pro users can email us directly using the link in their dashboard.

You can also subscribe to our brilliant free blog, The Edublogger, which is jammed with helpful tips, ideas and more.

And finally, if you like Edublogs but want to be able to simply create, administer, control and manage hundreds of student and teacher blogs at your school or college, check out Edublogs Campus… it’s like Edublogs in a box, all for you.

Thanks again for signing up with Edublogs!