Hey everyone and welcome back to the Easy English Podcast.
My name is Oliver and I'm so glad you're here in the best place to learn English, with slow and clear English listening practice.
And today, if you're watching the video, you can see me moving my hands, because today we are talking about body language and non-verbal communication.
What that means?
Non-verbal, that's communication that we make without our voice, so without our words, using our body and our actions.
So very interesting topic, because it is a huge part of communication not the words we say.
It is our body language.
The movements, the expressions, and the gestures that we use without even thinking about them.
So sometimes, in my opinion, our bodies speak much louder than our words.
And as always, as in every episode, I'm going to explain some vocabulary before we begin.
Five keywords which I think might be new for you or that I would like you to focus on.
And we will learn more vocabulary as we go through the episode.
And as always, the vocabulary list is in the description of every episode.
So you can get that for free with questions and some study materials for the episode too.
So, before we dive into the conversation, let's look at those five key words and phrases that you should listen out for in this episode.
Can you do that for me?
Perfect.
Let's go.
So the first one today is gesture.
Gesture.
You might have a similar word in your language, a similar sounding word.
I've heard this word in other languages and in some it sounds similar, gesture.
It means a movement of part of the body.
Especially a hand or the head.
Usually to express an idea or a meaning.
For example, she made a kind of gesture offering him a seat.
Or another example is giving someone a thumbs up with your hand.
That is a gesture too.
It's a positive gesture.
The second word is posture.
Posture is a great word.
This means the way that someone holds their body when they're sitting and they're standing.
So how straight your back is, where your shoulders are.
Some people have very bad postures if they're bent over.
When I record this podcast, often I have a bad posture because I'm trying to get closer to the microphone.
Our third expression today is facial expression.
Facial expression.
And this is the way that your face looks and it shows how you feel.
So, for example, you can have a facial expression that is surprised. or happy or sad.
So there's lots of different facial expressions.
Our fourth phrase is non-verbal communication.
I've explained this one at the start.
It's our communication without words, with no verbal element.
And finally, eye contact, eye contact.
And this is when two people look at each other in the eyes directly, in the eyes.
Without talking necessarily or while talking.
Sorry, not without talking.
I'm tired today.
So while they're talking, they're looking in the eyes and that is eye contact.
So you want to listen for these words during this episode today.
And if you would like to recap them, the vocab list is in the description.
It's on my website with some additional exercises if you want to take your learning journey a little bit further with this episode.
It's completely free, just the link in the description.
Okay, so let's get started into our main episode.
First, I want to look at why body language matters.
Why is it important?
Why should you care about body language?
Body language is in fact a huge part of how we communicate.
We as humans communicate.
And in some studies, they estimate that about 50% of communication is non-verbal.
It's without words.
I've even seen studies that estimate that up to 90 of communication information that we receive is non-verbal.
So it's just from our bodies how people are standing, how they are moving and how they are acting with their bodies.
Think about a time that you have said, or someone has said I'm fine, but you've known watching them.
Or someone has known watching you that you or they are not fine at all.
Maybe their shoulders were low or they had a sad expression or a stressed expression on their face, and their body has told you much more than their words ever could.
You can see it from their body language, how they are feeling.
So understanding body language in communication can help you to express yourself better.
It can help you to understand others more clearly and it can help to build stronger relationships.
But I also think that it can help to avoid confusion with communication.
Help us to understand what the other people that we're communicating with actually mean, how they are really communicating to us.
And it's very important when you're speaking English too.
Even if you don't know every word, how you speak and how you communicate with your body can help you to communicate your message and what you want to say, the impression that you want to give other people.
So in different cultures, body language can be quite different.
Some of the things that we will talk about today, for example.
Smiling can show friendliness or happiness, but in some cultures, smiling in public can be quite strange.
For example, it can be considered unusual.
Like you don't smile without a reason.
But, for example, in Western countries like the US and the UK, it is considered to be standard, like standard behavior, normal behavior to smile in public.
So it's just one key example of how some of the things we talk about might be different in different countries.
In most countries, nodding your head, so moving your head up and down, nodding means yes.
And shaking your head mostly means no.
But again, in Bulgaria, for example, nodding can mean no and shaking your head can mean yes.
And if we look at some cultures, making direct eye contact or too much eye contact can be considered rude and uncomfortable.
But in most countries, it's considered respectful to look someone in the eyes.
So body language is a powerful tool and it's powerful in different ways in different countries.
And it's often deeply connected to our cultures.
And if you travel a lot or you speak to people from other countries, you probably noticed that some of their body language habits are quite different.
Some of these are personal differences linked to that person and their personality, and others are cultural differences too.
So it's important to be aware of these differences and to pay attention to them as well.
So first a very easy topic today, and that is looking at how you can use body language to look and also feel more confident.
Now, the reason I want to talk about this today as well is when we're speaking English, often we can feel insecure, not so confident, right?
When I speak a foreign language, when I tried to speak Russian, for example, I feel quite nervous.
I don't feel so confident because it isn't my native language.
I don't know a lot of the grammar very well.
Perhaps I forget some words as well.
So it helps when I act more confident.
My body language is more confident. it can help me to actually be more confident with the language.
And I know that sounds a bit strange at first, but it really is true.
Acting more confident and having more confident body language can really help us to appear more confident too, with the language.
So what can you do?
What are the steps that you can take?
They're very simple.
The first is to stand tall and make sure that you keep your shoulders back and your chin up.
So keep your head up.
I find that sometimes, when I talk in a foreign language and I'm thinking, I look down a little bit more.
But it's better to keep your head up high when you're speaking.
It will make you feel more confident.
You're better to use open gestures as well.
So not crossing your arms or hiding your hands.
And you're also better to keep a calm and open face.
So maybe to smile, to have that open, friendly face.
It will show that you are feeling confident and happy with the situation.
And finally um very, very important is keeping good eye contact in a conversation.
I think it's very important in any conversation to have good eye contact, to not stare too much into people's eyes directly, but to maintain that good balance of eye contact.
It shows that you're in the conversation, that you're really listening and you're engaged Very important step.
So when you use this positive body language, people are more likely to trust you, listen to you and feel good around you, spending time around you too.
And the best part, like I mentioned, is it will make you feel more confident inside too, while you're speaking.
It's very important and a very powerful tool, I think, to make yourself more confident, even speaking English.
As an example,
So let's look at a few specific types of body language and how they can affect what we think and how we feel about people, for example.
The first is facial expressions that we talked about.
Those facial expressions like smiles or how we move our mouth, that type of thing.
And even our eyebrows, those are very important pieces of facial expression too.
And the expression that's on your face can really often tell a very different story from what you're saying.
It can sometimes not match what we're saying.
So it is one of the most powerful methods of nonverbal communication that we have.
And that makes it a very good example of body language and communication.
So with the right facial expression, you can really deliver a message that you want to say.
You can deliver that emotion around the message almost better than the words.
It is a visual reinforcement.
It gives that person the emotion that you want to show them, that you want to convey.
That's a great verb, to convey, to show them.
So you want to think very carefully about how you are facially expressing your messages.
And, you know, I'm not talking about when you're speaking English here.
This is more about if you want to really convince something, someone of something, you want to give a powerful presentation or create a feeling or an emotion.
And this can be really done through your body language and importantly, your facial expression.
You want to show your excitement or your shock or whatever emotion you want them to know and feel through your face as well as your words.
If we were to deliver every every, let's say, sentence or phrase or emotion with the same face.
I'll do it for you now in a few seconds, but it almost affects even how we speak.
The tone of our voice and our accent, everything around it is affected and the levels of excitement in our voice.
So it's particularly important that we express in the correct way.
You know i'm going to say a sentence which is not going to match my facial expressions.
Now i feel very excited.
I'm so excited, i am very happy and i cannot wait to see you again.
So you can see, maybe from my face if you're watching the video podcast on spotify or another platform.
If you're listening, you can hear as well the difference that that facial expression can make.
It can make the sentence that I said almost not match the words.
Now let's try a similar sentence again, but with excitement in my voice, where I'm really excited and happy with my face.
I'm really excited to see you again.
I cannot wait.
I'm so happy and I can't wait to see you again.
So if you're watching, you can really see that difference in my facial movements and especially my mouth, because I'm smiling and I'm happy, it changes how my voice sounds.
It makes it sound more engaging and like I believe what I'm saying.
So I hope this is a good example of how facial expressions can even affect how we talk and how we sound.
Okay, so the next place I wanted to talk about was a little bit about space.
This is not something that most people think about when it comes to body language, but I think it's important, so I wanted to include it today.
And space is about how comfortable we feel with being close to people.
So when we stand too close to people or we move too close to them, it can make them feel uncomfortable if we're in their personal space.
So in some situations it can lead to a negative reaction if you're too close to people.
It can make them feel like it's a little bit too intense.
It's too much.
So do be mindful of the space between yourself and others when you're talking to them, ensuring that you're leaving a good amount of space in the case that they maybe don't feel so comfortable with someone being very close to them.
So always do keep your distance.
As well, likewise, it can go the other way.
Do not try to be too far away.
You want to be able to hear each other okay and see each other okay, so be sensible with it.
I just know that we all have met people.
You can probably think in your head of people that you have met over your life that stand way too close to you.
They're very, very close up in your personal space and it's quite uncomfortable.
So don't be that person, of course.
You want to give people their personal boundaries and their personal space so that they are comfortable speaking with you.
Now, eye contact.
We talked about eye contact a little bit earlier.
And you should never underestimate this concept of eye contact, the power of eye contact.
We can really communicate so much through our eyes.
And making eye contact with someone is a really important sign of acknowledgement.
It shows the other person that we see them, that we're listening to them and that we're engaged.
We aren't distracted.
To me, eye contact is even more important in this weird digital world that we are in.
When people are so distracted looking at their phones, getting emails or phone calls, they're looking around.
Just think of an example.
You can absolutely probably think of many examples.
When you've been talking to someone and they are on their phone, they're looking at something and they're kind of looking between their phone and you, giving you half of their attention scrolling and looking, and it's quite uncomfortable.
It makes you feel like the other person doesn't really care about the conversation, that they don't really want to talk to you.
So make sure that you don't do that.
It's not nice and we've all been on the other end of it.
So I think it shows how important eye contact is as an example.
And the final element of eye contact in this section is hands.
So with our hands are not of eye contact of body language.
My brain is so tired.
I'm recording this on a Monday morning.
So you can understand if I'm a little bit sleepy.
So our hands are very important elements of body language. and how we communicate with our hands so there's a lot of studies around this and they show that people like to see our hands subconsciously so without thinking about it we like to see open hands and this perhaps comes from our biology and our sense of survival.
So when we can't see someone's hands, we might be a bit suspicious and we could sense danger.
We like to see that there's no danger, that their hands are empty and clear and visible to us.
We know what they're doing.
And likewise, if we take our hands and we cross our arms or we move our hands behind our back, it looks like closed body language, like the person is not open and friendly.
So having your palms on display and keeping a good, open body language is a great way to connect with other people and show that we are friendly and ready for a good conversation, to continue a good conversation as well.
So let's now take a wee look at some body language in different situations.
So there are a few situations where body language is particularly important.
The first is, of course, job interviews.
So when we have job interviews, we want to sit up straight, smile and make sure that we are keeping good eye contact and actively listening as well with our body.
So nodding and showing that receptive gestures, these receptive gestures, that we are listening to the other person.
The next is, of course, meeting new people.
When we meet new people, that first impression is often formed by body language.
It's what the other person sees in the first few seconds that they meet you.
So that's a good handshake in most cultures, a good firm handshake, and that's showing that you're confident and friendly with an open body language, posture and position of the hands.
Now, the next scenario where I think it's super important is giving presentations.
You want to show confidence, eye contact, and that you're engaged, that you're really interested and passionate about what you're speaking about.
It's very important.
How can you expect people to be interested in what you're talking about if you don't even appear to be interested in what you're talking about?
That's something to think about.
And finally, of course, when we're having conversations in English, If you don't understand something, you can use your face as well.
You can look confused and that helps to show the other person that you also don't understand.
You can show that you're really trying to listen by nodding and attentively trying to understand.
So all of these things help us to communicate and those scenarios are some of the specific quite important scenarios, I would say, in which we should focus on our body language.
So we have another section which is some particularly interesting and fun facts about body language.
But first I want to say that if you love this podcast, if you like these episodes, why don't you click the link in the description below and come over to our Patreon page?
You can see there that every week I post bonus episodes.
I post these episodes as well with ad free on Spotify and other areas where you can watch them, and lots of bonus updates and posts.
So additional series, bonus episodes, so much extra content.
And it really does help to support this podcast.
So if you love this podcast and if you want to support it, of course, it's completely optional.
But each and every one of you that do support the patrons, you keep this podcast going.
And I thank you very, very much.
But thank you all for your support, even by following or subscribing to this podcast and giving it a good rating is a really great free way to help support me.
So I appreciate it very, very much.
Thank you.
Now, fun facts about body language.
A couple of facts that I've picked out, which I think is very interesting.
The first is that babies understand body language before they can talk.
So they learn to read our faces and expressions before they can even talk and before they can understand our words.
So your body language is very important with children and with babies especially.
Animals also use body language.
So when dogs wag their tails or cats arch their back, they use body language as much as us.
And in some cases, they use it in more important ways than us.
They may only use body language to communicate with us, which makes it, I think, particularly important for us to sometimes pay attention to to know how they feel.
And finally, in high stress jobs, for example police officers or pilots, training can often include reading body language to help spot and look for danger or stress.
So we can learn so much from how we move our bodies.
Humans really are amazing at sending and receiving signals or communication without even saying a word.
I think it's so cool.
So today we have explored the secret of body language, the secret language that we all use without even realising.
We learned about gestures posture, eye contact, our hands, our facial expressions and how to use our bodies to show confidence.
The next time you do speak English, remember it's not just your words that matter.
It's the way you move, it's the way you stand and the smile that can make all the difference.
So don't stress so much about the language.
If you have good body language in your native language and everyday life, you can really help up your communication in English too with that body language.
Thank you so much for listening.
If you did enjoy this episode, please make sure that you followed the podcast or subscribed and it helps so much and rate the podcast a five star rating.
It helps so much to get it to new people.
Patreon link and the vocab list as well is in the description below if you're interested.
I will see you next time and thank you so much for listening.
Goodbye.
