Zdravo (hello) my fellow TE readers,
Some time ago I read an interesting piece of information that 55% of the communication between people belongs to the body language, while 38% goes to the tone of the voice, and only 7% (imagine this!) goes to the words that the people use! So next time when you discuss some issue with a friend, or even if you're talking about what happened the previous night at the club you were at, just stop for a moment to think about whether you are really listening to what that person is saying or whether you're concluding that the party was awesome based on the other person's body language and gestures! I must say that after I critically viewed my everyday conversations I truly believe that this number is not as far-fetched as it might seem!
Try to avoid these postures in the English classroom: (I was truly amazed to read that each and every posture has its own easy-to-remember name and corresponds to postures that we subconsciously imitate in real life when we don't know what to do with our hands!)
- the stern father position
- the fig leaf
- the military "at ease"
- the rocking horse
- the pacing professor
- the bathing beauty
- the gunfighter/gorilla
- the tightrope walker
- the casual
- the death grip
"Non-verbal messages can be door openers or closers." You choose which one.
"Good non-verbal communication enhances a presentation [read: an English class], poor non-verbal communication detracts from a presentation [read: an English class]." Are you a teacher who reflects on their own teaching process and tries to prefect themself when realizing there is room for improvement? I know I do.
Best until next time,
Aneta
- anaumoska's blog
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Comments
I've seen this as well and always had a feeling there was something a bit dodgy about it - maybe just because of the lies, damn lies and statistics idea! Then I came across a website written by Ian Brodie, where he asks, "If you watch a foreign-language film, and watch the body language and listen to the vocal tones – can you really understand 93% of it?"
He goes on to say that this comes from an experiment done by Albert Mehrabian and is not applicable to all communication (mostly just turn-taking). However, he stresses that he (Ian Brodie) believes that non-verbal language is extremely important, but tagging it as 93 per cent is overstating the case. Have a look at www.ianbrodie.com to see his full comments on the subject.
For students listening to a lecture, the tone and body language cannot contain 93 per cent and, having stood in different government departments in various countries where I was trying to fulfil bureaucratic requirements with only a rudimentary grasp of the language, I think I only got 10 per cent of what was going on, unless the only message was, "Go away and stop bothering us!"
We all have conversations where we mean one thing and the other person takes a completely different meaning but it would need a lot of research to put a definite figure on the importance of emotion, tone etc in different contexts.
Hi - thanks swif for giving the link to my site.
I certainly don't claim to be a communications expert - but in my work (Marketing & Sales Training) you hear these figures used a lot so I decided to check them out and was surprised by what I found.
The specific article is at Debunking the Myths of Non-Verbal Communication. As you say, I certainly don't deny the importance of non-verbal communication - but the 93% or 55% & 38% figures are way out of line for normal communication.
Since I wrote the post, Creativity Works have created a fun little video covering similar ground.
And when you think about it - what does 93% of communication, or any % actually mean?
% of meaning? % of impact? % of the actuall full content of the message?
Of course, Mehrabian meant "the % of times the emotional content is taken from the non-verbal component vs a single word verbal component".
But in real life we bandy round "% of communication" figures like they actually meant something - but they don't - they need far more explanation.
Best regards
Ian
Not numbers, focus on usages
There is huge amount of data about the non-verbal communication which claims that it takes more than half of the whole communication process. In fact,while teaching a foreign language the teachers make use of non-verbal communication to convey their messages without even realizing how much they put effort to communicate with non-verbal techniques.
In my opinion, the numbers, the percentages are only symbols to represent its importance our life and eventually in our educational systems.
I live in Turkey and recently we carry out a reseach with one of my scholars which includes the attitudes of English teachers towards the application of non-verbal communication while teaching English. The research gathered very interesting details about the real life preferences of language teachers.
The percentage of application of non-verbal communication in private schools is higher than the State Schools because of various reasons. This shows that in the educational area you can not just say "ok, the non-verbal communication 93% of whole communication and it remains the same for all areas and all purposes".
The non-verbal communication can be used very effectively in the teaching area if it is applied by the teachers that are aware of it's importance and huge impact. But as teachers we should really master the issue without worrying about the percentages or numbers. I think the primary course of action is to focus on "How can we get the benefits of non-verbal communication while teaching?"
I haven't seen any data. I would be very interested if you (or any other readers) could direct me to some research, apart from ianbrodie.com (thanks for posting), which both state it's not true and reference the Mehrabian research.
It's almost an urban myth, despite the fact that it seems to run against common sense, as Ian Brodie points out. My wife was on a course today and heard the same statistic yet again, but repeating it doesn't make it true.
One of my favourite websites is snopes.com which looks at stories like this and tries to establish if there is any truth in them, and why they spread so easily.
Stuart Wiffin