Small Talk

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.