I live 8,260 miles from my parents back home abroad. So I pretty much have to vist them once a year by buying an expensive airline ticket which sometimes cost of a fortune. Beside seeing them once in a while, I have also decided to create a routine to call my mom and dad once or twice to week to speak with them for at least 10 to 15 minutes. I am no "mama's boy", but it is always nice to stay in touch with people closest to me in regular basis. But to be honest with you, speaking in phone for just 10 minutes seems like a chore to me. But I figured out a way to make conversation longer by using a simple technique I learned from an cheesy book I read years ago to improve my social skills, "How to Talk to Anyone - 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationship". The author calls it "Parroting Technique".
Technique: Just Repeat the Last Couple Words As a Question
Tonight when I was speaking with my dad in phone, I simple repeated the fact he stated with questions. Here is an example. I haven't written word for word. Just something to prove my point:
Dad: "Your little niece is planning to study abroad and getting ready with her TOEFL exam"
Me: "TOEFL exam?"
Dad: "Yes, it sounds she needs to meet the minimum TOEFL score to get college admission"
Me: "Oh, that quite soon. College admission?"
Dad: "Her mom and dad are thinking of sending her abroad and have her elder brother take care of her"
Me: "Oh, elder brother?"
Dad: "Yes, how is he doing these days? Any luck getting a job?"
Me: ....
The above method actually helped couple of times to hit the 15-20 minutes conversation mark. Another thing you could do to make this technique effective to change your tonality when asking your questions. It works like a charm! Communication has never been my strongest skill. I like getting things done by saying as less as possible. But I realized my family and friends are more important than my comfort zone, and I do have to use some kind of methods to make myself better at conversation longer (and less awkward silences).
This is really an effective way to let the other person know that you're listening. They teach this skill ("active listening") to therapists. What's funny, is that as trivial as the method seems, if someone practices it on you -- even if you know that they're using the active listening method, it really feels GOOD, and makes you more comfortable expressing yourself. You feel like their mind is locked in with yours.
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