Non-Verbal Communication Skills

Baseline Skills: I have always had difficulties with picking up on non-verbal communication like facial expressions, gestures, body language, and posture. I never could read people’s faces that well or look into their eyes and know what they are feeling. When I became a camp counselor, these skills started to grow. Children are very easy to read; they will either tell you what is wrong or point to the problem. However, the children I worked with were from rough backgrounds that caused them to act differently. They were told their problems did not matter and therefore they hid them in fear of being in trouble. These kids learned how to control their emotions and problems. This camp is their escape from home, and as a counselor, I had to carefully

Aside from camp counseling, being a babysitter enhanced my non-verbal communication skills. Babies around and less than one have not learned how to speak yet, but have their own language of communication. Trying to learn the baby’s language of hand motions and mouth sounds heightens the non-verbal communication skills I will need if I ever encounter a baby or a person with disabled communication skills as a nurse. Nursing: Studies show that non-verbal communication represents over 55 percent of all communication (Holland, 2012). Argyle (1978), claims, "non-verbal communication can have five times as much effort on a person 's understanding of a message compared with the words spoken at the time" (as cited in Essays, 2013). Therefore, outstanding body language is essential in nurse communication. Nonverbal communication skills include touch, body language, facial expressions, gestures, posture, and physical distance (Neese, 2015). Nurses encounter and treat people from many different backgrounds. They treat patients whom do not speak the same language or cannot speak at all. Nurses must be able to understand these patients and be able to transmit information back to them (Kourkouta and Papathanasiou, 2014, p. 65). Everything a nurse

My whole life I have been sent to private preparatory schools. Despite the expenses, the school did its job because my skills are far greater than the public schools in my area. Growing up in my English classes they had us gradually develop our writing skills. They started with phonics, spelling, and basic grammar to how to develop a full essay. As early as third grade I was writing essays, lab reports, and book reports. In all my papers, my teachers complimented me on my skilled writing. By the time I hit high school, I advanced into an upper English class and continued writing more papers as long as five pages, which is a lot for an eight grader. Although my school was top in the state for English, they did not teach us other writing skills, like writing emails and letters. It wasn’t until I got to college that I started developing other skills like writing a professional email. Also, some of my skills have been forgotten or weakened over the years. Other examples of my written communication skills include emailing, instant messaging, and text messaging. Growing up in this generation, technology is rapidly improving and inventing new devices and methods. As a child communicating with friends went from emailing each other on our parents computers, then we advanced to instant messages or IM, and the most recent way is