I am Zebenay from HUL 100. Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen! Today we are going to present some parts about communication. Please sit back, relax and enjoy our presentation. People communicate with each other in many ways. Different cultures use different styles to communicate among themselves; however, the two most common ways of communication in any culture are verbal and non-verbal communication. Verbal communication consists of using words to express ourselves to others. Verbal communication can be understood by people who speak the same language. Some

People, especially close friends, have the ability to communicate with each other using non-verbal expressions only. This allows them to communicate secretly without anyone understanding them. For example, when my friend and I, when we go, some place, we have an understanding of what we want to do through our eye contact.

Next, my partners, Oradee and Enrique will give you more explanation about verbal and non-verbal communication. Thank you. Please come in Oradee.

Thank you ZEBENAY. Hello everyone. How are you? My name is ORADEE. After ZEBENAY talked about it, I would like to share my experienced about verbal communication. Communication is important for everyone that it can cause us to understand or misunderstand. The cultures influence our verbal and non-verbal conversation.

In Thailand, we have different ways of speaking that are depended on to whom we are talking. If we talk to elderly people, we always talk to them in a lower voice. While we have a conversation with them, we have many polite ways to call them. People in Bangkok, which is the capital of Thailand, call grandmother "KUNG YAI." People in TRANG, which is my hometown, call "TUEN" that is the politest way.

One day, when I was a child, a visitor who came form Bangkok, visited my house. She heard that I said TUEN to my grandmother, so she judged that I was rude. That was a misunderstood even though we were the same country because we differed from region. My neighbors explained to her, so she could understand me. We are not supposed to judge anyone before we have known his or her cultures.   

In Thailand, when someone sneezes, we do not say anything. When I first came to the US, someone sneezed, so I ignored it. A friend of mine told me to say "God bless you" whenever people sneezed. Now I say it if I do not forget.

We are supposed to respect to the speaker and the listener by pay attention to them. We are not supposed to judge anyone before we learn her or his cultures. We can adjust ourselves with other cultures by adapting to them, but when we stay home, we do as people in our own culture do. We are not supposed to forget who we are.  After I finished talking about verbal communication, I knew that ENRIQUE experienced a lot about non-verbal communication, and he would like to share with us, please ENRIQUE.

Hello listeners, this is Enrique speaking. Now if we paid attention to what Oradee said we might notice that verbal communication differs from culture to culture. Non-verbal communication is not the exception. Certain ways of non-verbal communication such as body language and gestures in various cultures express different meanings and ideas.

There are different gestures around the world and if you don't know let me tell you that they are useful shorthand ways to communicate without using words, but gestures can also lead to misunderstandings or embarrassment. Trust me, you'll never know until it happens to you. Once in Mexico for example, I was looking for a friend of mine. When I had a chance, I asked someone if he had seen him. This person asked me how tall my friend is. When I raised my hand to a certain height to indicate how tall my friend is, the person I asked started to laugh. It turns out that the people in Mexico use three hand gestures to indicate height: one for people, one for animals, and one for plants. This was something I wasn't aware of. To be honest, I thought that the gestures used in my country (Ecuador) had the same meaning in all of the countries whose native language is Spanish. What had amused this person was that I had ignorantly used the plant gesture to indicate my friend's height but that's not all.

Even in the United States, gestures that are frequently used in my country (Ecuador), have different meanings. One perfect example is when I was studying in High School. A group of five students including myself were from Ecuador, except for one who was born here in the United States. In one occasion, the student who was born here asked us if we could borrow him some money. One of us instantly, put his index finger in one side of his throat followed by a quick slicing motion to the other side of his throat. People from various cities in Ecuador use this gesture to indicate that they are out of cash in other words broke. All we noticed was a blank look on the face of the student. Then he reacted by asking what was wrong with us. This time I responded in a verbal way by telling him that we didn't have any money. Subsequently, the student told us that was not a reason for been sending threats. He thought we were trying to cut his throat, yeah, it felt so awkward. After the whole misunderstanding was clarify, we agreed not to use that gesture anymore because its meaning obviously differs around the world. To conclude I would like to live you with this thought; I think it is important for visitors or tourists to be aware of the difference in gestures' meanings; otherwise, it is more likely to run the risk of looking foolish or involuntarily offend people.

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If you take time to talk together each day, you'll never become strangers by Dr. BUSCAGLIA. My name is ORADEE DACHA. I come from Thailand. I am 5 feet 1tall. I talked very fast in the past because sometimes I heard people spoke in my language very slow that made me curious to know what they wanted to say. After that I talked very fast because I judged  that everyone had the same felling that I had, but none could understand what I said. Prof HEPPNER and oral communication' class mate indicated me that point. When people spoke in English very quickly, I could not understand, so I considered speaking slowly.  Now if I am not in excited felling, I try to speak slowly as I can. I do not like to talk if I do not have any information or any fact. I like to read biography, short story, novel, and technology of therapy. I like to listen to soft, and country music. I like to watch cartoons such as SHREEK, SIMSON, and watch the news. We cannot choose to be born, but we can choose to be whatever we want to be.

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Hello listeners, today I will talk a little bit about myself and what I used to do before I came to LGCC. My name is Enrique. I was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador. Guayaquil is one of the main cities in my country. It is also the main port of entry for ships. Both of my parents were born there too. Alberto Guzman is my father's name. He worked part-time for the city as an administrative assistant and part-time in our house as a farmer until he got divorced from my mother around 1984 when I was five years old. Currently he owns a restaurant and he's self-employed.

After the divorce my mother, whose name is Bella Acosta, decided to immigrate to the United States where she has been living and working decently for almost twenty years. I stayed in Ecuador living under my grandmother's care until I turned 17 in 1995. That's the year I came to the United States to live with my mother and my sister. It had been almost twelve years without seeing my mother. Once I got to New York, I went to High School, Forest Hills High School to be more specific and graduated there in June, 1999. A month after graduation, I joined the United States Navy and after near four years of service, I got out and came back to New York to stay with my mother who missed me a lot since I left from home. Once I got back, I took a long one year break and early this year I decided to enroll myself into college. That means this is my first year attending LGCC. My major is Computer Science and I'm a full time student. Also, I'm doing great in all my courses.

In short, I think LGCC is a great institution. The faculty and the staff are very professional and I'm positive I will learn a lot of useful stuff while attending this college

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My name is Zebenay Aklilu. Today I will tell you a short story about my first life experience in New York. I came to New York City in October 1997. On my first day I was sad, nervous and I missed my family. The language was also difficult to understand.

I left my family in my country, Ethiopia. This made me feel sad and lonely. I wanted to learn English as fast as I could so I started going to Queens College to study English. Not speaking the language made me nervous when people talked to me. For example, at the school nobody understood me when I tried to say something in class. Although everybody was from different countries, Chinese students spoke with each other and so did the Spanish students. But no one spoke my language. For that reason for most of the time I felt so lonely that I wanted to leave the class and not go back any more. Also, at that time, I was thinking about finding a job and I did prefer to work and not go to school. But then I thought I would have the same problem. My English was still not good and if I got a job I could not understand the customers.

Shopping was another discouraging experience that I had with regard to my English. Well, I like to shop a lot so one day I decided to go shopping and while I was in the store a saleslady came and asked me if I needed any help. I didn’t answer; all I did was ignore her. I think she realized that I did not understand her and then she followed me and tried to explain in sign language. She showed me the clothes. She also moved her head as saying “yes” or “no,” or if I liked the colors. After that, I decided to leave the store without saying any word to her because her presence made me feel uncomfortable and frustrated because I couldn’t communicate with her. On the other hand, all those experiences made me strong and made me want to continue my education to be fluent in English. Also, I realized how important it is to go to school to be proficient in English language and build up confidence.

Education is the most important gift that any human being gives to himself or herself.

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