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Conversation a lost art in digital age

By Nara Schoenberg
Chicago Tribune

The teenagers Robert Duran spotted at the local pizza parlor were gathered around a table on a Friday night, but they weren't talking or joking, they were staring down at their cell phones.

Duran, a communications professor at the University of Hartford in West Hartford, Conn., says that he often arrives at a class to find 20 students silently texting in the dark — they're so busy with their phones that they haven't even bothered to turn on the lights. And when he holds office hours, fewer students drop by for a little one-on-one conversation, advice or mentoring.

"Students seem to have difficulty just engaging in a face-to-face interaction — and I don't even mean normal eye contact. I mean engaging in an exchange," Duran says. "There are some fundamental skills they just don't have."

At a time when digital technology is increasingly allowing Americans — young and old — to bypass actual conversation, some experts worry that we're losing valuable communication skills, or failing to acquire them in the first place.

The good news is that conversation is a practical skill that can be explained, practiced and acquired, experts say. And those who make the effort can reap a wide range of rewards — richer personal relationships, more interesting interactions, better job performance and less stress at parties and work events.

"It's not rocket science, and it's not something that's outdated," says Margaret Shepherd, author of "The Art of Civilized Conversation: A Guide to Expressing Yourself With Style and Grace" (Broadway Books, $16). "I'm not necessarily against all the new ways to communicate, but I feel I have to speak up and advocate, yes, (communicating) face to face and out loud, and following certain rules of conversation is really still worth the time."

Shepherd breaks the conversation into three basic parts: the greeting, the talk and the finish.

■ The greeting is fairly simple: "Hi, I'm Alison. Nice to meet you," or, if you've met before, "Good to see you," or "Nice to see you again." With a new acquaintance you can follow up with a question about the other person's hobbies ("What do you do when you're not working?"), or with a reference to a current event that he or she is likely to have heard of. ("How about that guy who flew his gyrocopter to the Capitol lawn?")

■ Don't wait for the perfect icebreaker to occur to you, says Debra Fine, author of "Beyond Texting: The Fine Art of Face-to-Face Communication for Teenagers" (Canon Publishers, $12.95). You can just say hello and ask a genuine question: "Great shoes. Where did you get them?" If inspiration fails, Shepherd suggests a bright take on an old favorite, such as, "Can you believe this weather? You wouldn't think it was January."

■ A conversation is a volley, Fine says, so it's good to be prepared with a simple one-sentence answer to questions such as "How are you?" and "How was your trip?" Instead of saying just "OK" or "Fine," you might say, "Good, I finally managed to get a run in this morning," or "OK, I read a good murder mystery on the plane." This gives the other person something to respond to ("Really? I run," or "Do you like John Grisham?")

■Shepherd likes to see an initial conversation proceed from pleasantries ("Haven't I seen you at my kid's soccer games?"), to an exchange of facts ("Yes, I've been coaching for three years."), to an exchange of opinions about the facts ("It's great that everyone gets a chance to play."). If you're so inclined, you can then go on to share your feelings about the facts ("I was upset to hear that they're having competitive tryouts next year.").

■ When you're ready to end a conversation, you can give the person a hint that you will be moving on, Fine says: "It's been great hearing about your trip," or "It's been great talking to you" or maybe "Gosh, you're juggling a lot, but it sounds like fun."

Shepherd says there's nothing wrong with a direct approach: "I've got to let you go" or "I have to talk to a couple more people."

"Probably (the other person) is feeling the same way: 'OK, we've had a nice conversation — now how do I end it?'" Shepherd says. "I think you have to both be grownups."


Some tips for better conversation:

■ Dig deeper. "How are you?" is more of a greeting than a real question, so if you really want to know, ask a second question: "How was your weekend?" "How's the new project going?"

■ Try a compliment. Genuine praise puts people at ease

■ Play the game. Information fuels conversation, so if someone asks a question, disclose something the other person can work with.

■ Ask open-ended questions. Bypass questions that are likely to elicit one-word answers, such as "Did you have a good vacation?" Try open-ended questions, such as "What did you do on vacation?"

■ Look around. A diploma on the wall, a cat bed on the floor or a photo on the desk can be good fodder for conversation.