When we speak with other people face-to-face, the nonverbal signals we give—our facial expressions, hand gestures, body movements, and tone of voice—often communicate as much as, or more than, the words we utter. When our nonverbal signals, which we often produce unconsciously, agree with our verbal message, the verbal message is enhanced and supported, made more convincing. But when they conflict with the verbal message, we may be communicating an entirely different and more accurate message than what we intend.
Professor Last month my favorite uncle paid me a surprise visit. I hadn’t seen him in many years . . . The doorbell rang, I opened the door, and there was Uncle Pete. Now, I’m sure when I saw him I said something like: “Uncle Pete! What a surprise! How nice to see you!” Anyway, my wife was standing next to me and according to her—I wasn’t really aware of this—my eyes got really wide and I broke into a huge big smile. She said I was actually jumping up and down, like a little boy. Well, anyway, later that evening Uncle Pete told me how very, very good he felt when he saw how happy I was to see him.
But compare that with this: my daughter . . . she’s six . . . We were building a birdhouse together last week. And I was showing her how to use a hammer and nail. And of course, stupid me, I wasn’t being very careful and I smashed my thumb with the hammer. Boy, did it hurt! I almost felt like screaming, but I didn’t want to upset my daughter, so I said, “Don’t worry, honey. It’s nothing.” Meanwhile, I was shaking my hand, as if that would stop my thumb from hurting, and my face was contorted in pain. My voice was trembling too. So even though I told my daughter I was OK, I’m sure she didn’t believe me. Because she kept asking me if I was OK.
Explain how the examples from the professor’s lecture illustrate the relationship between verbal and nonverbal communication.
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 422.0 592.248995984 71% => Need more words or more difficult words.
No of words: 113.0 155.574297189 73% => More words wanted. You may: choose simpler words or speak faster or remove hesitations or remove long pauses, and fully use the time, do NOT save one or two seconds.
Chars per words: 3.73451327434 3.80514564318 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 3.2603904387 3.525876923 92% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.02645205937 1.79077849142 113% => OK
Unique words: 78.0 93.7148594378 83% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.690265486726 0.604071249207 114% => OK
Syllable count: 142.2 185.844578313 77% => The syllable count is low.
Avg_syllables_per_word: 1.3 1.19417670683 109% => OK
Performance on coherence:
Topic speech coherence ratio: 0.0358220656686 0.0650381309087 55% => OK
Acoustic performance on paragraphs:
How many acoustic paragraphs: 5.0 4.35341365462 115% => OK
Average paragraph length: 22.6 68.503853103 33% => The average paragraph length is low.
STD paragraph length: 19.23122461 21.3332995233 90% => OK
Average paragraph duration: 6.652 25.9943957902 26% => The speaking content is not well organized.
STD paragraph duration: 5.69488682943 7.84667146824 73% => OK
Acoustic performance on sentences:
How many acoustic sentences: 14.0 42.0642570281 33% => Need more acoustic sentences. Maybe the speech rate is too fast.
Average acoustic sentence length: 8.07142857143 4.02192344571 201% => The average length of sentences is long.
STD acoustic sentence length: 6.1233077629 3.1217529195 196% => OK
Average acoustic sentences duration: 2.25714285714 1.45093177766 156% => OK
STD acoustic sentences duration: 1.61572375897 0.99851816184 162% => OK
Acoustic performance on acoustic silence:(An acoustic silence means a little pause between two or more words)
How many acoustic silence: 9.0 39.0421686747 23% => Need to have little pauses between words/sentences.
Total acoustic silence duration: 2.25 7.12997991968 32% => OK
Average acoustic silence duration: 0.25 0.185688545393 135% => Maybe the pauses are too long.
STD acoustic silence duration: 0.129614813968 0.155154303396 84% => OK
Acoustic performance on acoustic words:
Total word duration: 27.93 47.1480722892 59% => Need to talk more.
Average word duration: 0.247168141593 0.305395592593 81% => OK
STD word duration: 0.166650867239 0.189427763521 88% => OK
Disfluencies: like hesitations, or 'ehn' or taking a long time to pronounce a word:
How many disfluencies: 4.0 7.94979919679 50% => OK
Total_disfluencies_duration: 2.78 6.2937751004 44% => OK
Total acoustic noise duration: 1.8 3.39508032129 53% => OK
Acoustic rates:
Total speech duration: 33.26 59.7592369478 56% => Talk more. Do not save time. People can talk 4-5 words in one second.
Compare to expected duration: 0.554333333333 0.995987282463 56% => Some seconds left. Need to talk more.
Rate of silence: 0.270595309681 0.656000678711 41% => OK
Rate of speech: 3.39747444378 2.60215298798 131% => OK
Rate of speech by unique words: 2.34515935057 1.56821927147 150% => OK
Rate of word duration by unique words: 2.79269602578 1.99336655568 140% => OK
Average articulation rates: 0.408334955752 0.317803793328 128% => OK
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The speech is either too short or too long. It should be in 60 seconds.
Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by speech e-grader: 15.0 Out of 30
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Note: the speech e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas.