Review of Conversationally Speaking by Alan Garner
This is a book review of Alan Garner’s Conversationally Speaking: Tested New Ways to Increase Your Personal and Social Effectiveness.
The book’s title describes the book fairly well. Everything in it has been tested (though I’m not sure about the “new” part.) Conversationally Speaking contains the meat of what communication trainers have advised to people for decades. That is, understanding types of questions, listening, handling compliments, and other basic communication skills.
If you think you have a lot of knowledge about the dynamics of conversations, you will unlikely find anything new in this book. But then again, if you understand conversations well, you wouldn’t need to read many books on how to increase your personal and social effectiveness.
Garner’s book begins with a basic discussion on close-ended and open-ended questions. In later chapters on delivering compliments and listening, however, it seems Garner kicks the book up a gear. I was surprised by the advice to talk about yourself, handle criticism, deal with rejected praise, and reduce social anxiety.
A few criticism’s I’ve seen about the book on Amazon must have been adjusted in later versions of the book because some examples used in the book that people have put-down as “stupid” are non-existent in my version Conversationally Speaking does contain many relevant examples. The examples get to the author’s point as they are used to nicely illustrate a conversation skill.
The book contains very little fluff. Sometimes I felt a discussion was cut short as I turned the page to discover a new chapter. Small amounts of the book explain the skills as you will find yourself flying through it.
Overall, Alan Garner’s Conversationally Speaking is about proven conversational methods that promote conversations in personal and social situations. You won’t see the wheel reinvented in this book because the author has stuck with what has worked for him and hundreds of thousands of his readers. The conversational skills in this book are simple and effective. If you feel your conversational skills need fine-tuning, grab your copy of the book now from Amazon by clicking here.
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Update: What Christmas present did you get for yourself? You can tell me ;-) None for me this year.