small talk
DESCRIPTION
Do's and Don't's. What to talk about the first 5 minutes you meet someone.TRANSCRIPT
Or the 1st step to good conversation skills
What Is Small Talk?
What do you
mean?
Find out what the other person’s interests are.
Do you have things in
common?
What should you
do?
Use good listening skills:
Look
Nod
Uh-huh
Really?
And then what?
Take Turns to Talk
Stay away from some subjects
Religion
Politics
Death
Illness
Personal information
What is the problem here?
…then, when I was 4 my grandmother was
sick so we moved to this city and then my 2nd
sister was born and then two years later my
3rd sister was born. It was a difficult for my
mother. I don’t remember, but that is what my
parents say… I was hoping for brothers but…
All I asked was
whether he had
any brothers or
sisters!T. M. I.
Weather
School
Work
Hobbies
Movies
In small talk, we express ourselves in the details of what we talk about, the words we use, the ones we don’t, how far we lean forward, how tentatively or aggressively we probe for shared ground. Because all of this is implicitly presented, it tends to give a more accurate picture of who we are and what we care about than big, explicit conversations.