Exploring Nonverbal Communication Skills

Contrary to my expectation, I have been able to benefit a great deal from my communication class, even on a personal level, in addition to satisfy my educational requirements. The entire learning experience at times felt like a therapy session because it allowed me to contemplate on my personal experience. What I especially enjoyed the most and learned a lot from, was listening to other students’ understanding and responses to the various topics that were brought forth during lecture as well as the weekly commfessional journal activity. Through exposure to such a wide variety of outlook to hypothetical and real life scenarios, I believe I became more conscious about my own bias and began to reflect on my communication skill. Furthermore, the textbook used for the class was helpful in presenting tools and vocabularies for systematically studying and analyzing various components of communication. It is fair to say that one cannot entirely be deprived from every components of communication, nor is it an easy task to evaluate one’s own communication skills, unless one is willing to put a conscious effort …show more content…
Nonverbal communication is defined as “message expressed in nonlinguistic means, which includes messages transmitted by vocal means such as sighs, laughs, throat clearing, and other assorted noises, but excludes written and sign language.” (Adler, R. B., & Proctor, R. F. 2014) Although I am convinced that I have the ability to comprehend basic nonlinguistic communication form mentioned in this definition, I have in the past failed to recognize certain nonverbal signals that proved to be essential, and in some case costly. I was once a victim of a fraudulent financial deal that costed me a few thousand dollars. Without going into details, I believe it was avoidable had I been more perceptive or better equipped to detect nonverbal cues the dishonest person was