Verbal communication

Verbal exchanges

The word ‘Verbal’ means relating to or in the form of words. ‘Verbal exchanges’ means the way you are acting when speaking. Verbal exchanges such as; body language, Body Language is a significant aspect of modern communication; it is the way you hold your posture, you can tell if you are listening or bored and if you have eye contact with the person, also the sending and receiving of body language signals happens on conscious and unconscious levels. A positive body language makes a person seem interested and engaged in conversation, whereas a negative body language gives a poor impression of yourself, this includes failing to make eye contact, slouching, crossing your arms or shifting during conversation.

Use of intonation; this means the tone of voice for example a loud tone would be shouting and that could mean the person is angry. Using a tone of voice can tell people your personality and the way you are feeling, also intonation is used differently depending on the audience, for example talking to a baby, people sometimes speak with a baby voice, if you have a class of 11 year olds you certainly would not talk to them as if they were your own age, or you wouldn’t talk to a 20 year old as if you were talking to a 3 year old. When talking to an audience you should pause to let the audience have time to take in what you have said. Nodding tells the other person that you understand what they are saying and tells people you agree, it also shows a positive answer to a question, but if someone shakes their head that shows that they do not agree with what the person is saying. Summarising and paraphrasing shows an understanding when you say what the other person has just said, but saying it in a different way. Summarising is generally used when what you have to say is a long text; it enables you to reduce the ideas to key points in an outline of the discussion or argument. Paraphrasing is generally used when you want to refer to sentences or phrases in the source text; it is useful when you are dealing with facts and definitions, it involves rewriting or speaking a short section from text or what someone else has said into different words whilst keeping the same meaning, to show an understanding. The benefits in using all of these are to show the person who is talking, weather you are actually listening, also if you understand and when you are speaking using a specific tone of voice it shows how you are feeling. The disadvantages to it are: it would show up in your body language and your tone of voice and show your personality, so the people listening would easily tell how confident you are.