I believe nonverbal communication is very important in expressing yourself and is as important as verbal communication. I thought the class activity was both interesting and funny. No one could tell their story without nonverbal cues. I felt their stories were much more effective with nonverbal communication because these behaviors reinforce their ideas. Therefore, nonverbal communication is important for general communication and getting you ideas and thoughts through to people.
Different societies have different ways of nonverbal communication. Like we discussed in class, cultures have various ways of communicating and expressing themselves. As a result, it is important to understand the ways of a differing culture when you know you're going to interact with them because it could lead to misunderstandings. For example, the kissing when greeting like mentioned in class, or the wave by Judith in the textbook, can cause awkward situations which could have been avoided.
I also think that when you spend a significant amount of time in a certain country or with certain people you will start to adopt their behavior and nonverbal cues. For example, I have been studying in the US for two years and there are certain actions or manners that I was not comfortable with but have become accustom to with time.
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I agree about the class experiment that the stories were much more effective with the non-verbal communication. Not only were they more effective, by allowing us to picture more easily what happened in their stories, ultimately they were more exciting. No matter what they did to try and not use non-verbal communication, they still ended up using it anyway. Some of the participants wouldn't look at the audience, which could be considered disrespectful or even deceitful, while some of the storytellers were rigid and had a specific cadence to their speech. I actually thought that when the majority of our classmates were telling their stories, trying to not use non-verbal communication, made it look like they were lying. They wouldn't look at the audience, their speech sounded rehearsed, and they sat on their hands. Trying to not use non-verbal communication actually conveyed a completely different meaning to their stories.
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