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Social Skills - Being a Good Conversationalist

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Being a Good Conversationalist

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Being a Good Conversationalist

So many of my students strive to be successful at conversing. This handout goes over many of the attributes that make someone a good conversationalist, including the turn-taking percentage rule, spatial inclusion, conversation components, and what to avoid.

Social Skills Worksheet Being a Good Conversationalist by Speech Language Pathologist Lisa Flowers

Being a Good Conversationalist

This activity teaches students unwritten rules of conversation, such as balancing comments and questions, selecting interesting conversational topics, and spatial inclusion. This resource can be employed as a checklist assessing organic conversation practice. (Includes therapeutic notes so educators, speech-language pathologists, and therapists can lead discussions prior to practice.)

We all know neurotypical coworkers, friends, neighbors, and relatives that frequently interrupt, monopolize conversations, or tell loquacious stories with an unnecessary level of detail. There's rarely a comfortable manner by which we can address these behaviors with the people in our lives. This activity helps our students work on conversation skills and social niceties by identifying relevant aspects and practicing in a variety of ways.

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Time Sensitivity

Time Sensitivity

A fun social skills exercise that helps students understand what their audience needs and improve their ability to adjust their message to meet those needs.

Improve Social Skills for Teenagers Worksheets

Editing Verbal Narratives Worksheets

A perfect activity for individuals who tend to share too much information, this social skills exercise focuses on considering your listener's needs when deciding what to include in your stories.

How to Teach Empathy in the Classroom in PDF

Entering Conversations

A guide to joining an ongoing conversation, including tips on physical positioning, how to use words, and figuring out if you are welcome to join.

Perspective Taking Worksheets in PDF: Polite Wording

Polite Wording

With this social skills worksheet, students can practice taking others' emotions into account by adding "softening" words and phrases to their opinions and requests.

Perspective Taking High School Worksheet

Tact

With this social skills worksheet, students will go over examples of thoughtless remarks and learn to recognize characteristics of being hurtful, boastful, oversimplifying, and biased.

Autism Communication Strategies Activities and Worksheets in PDF

Speaking to Different Communicative Partners

The ability to understand and see things from other people's perspectives, known as "theory of mind", is just the first step. The next step is being able to modify your own behavior to match what you understand about their perspective.

Perspective Taking Activities for Autism in PDF

Perspective Taking

With these social skills worksheets, students will practice watching social exchanges and thinking about how those interactions make the people involved feel.

How to Teach Empathy in the Classroom in PDF

Developing Empathy

This complete social skills exercise involves a lot of talking, a hands-on activity, homework, and personal reflection, all aimed at helping you consider and understand other people's emotions.

Writing a Letter of Complaint Exercise in PDF

Writing a Complaint Letter

Another great option! This writing assignment and social skills activity helps you practice thinking about your reader's perspective when choosing what to say and how to say it.

Conversation Turn Taking Activities

Elaboration in Conversation

This conversation skills guide evaluates different responses to the same question based on how detailed they are, helping students learn how to keep a conversation flowing.

Kinesics - Interest vs. Disinterest

Kinesics - Interest vs. Disinterest

This exercise is an excellent tool for learning how to understand nonverbal cues in social interactions (known as "kinesics") and using that understanding in conversations.

The Communication Skills Questionnaire in PDF

Communication Skills Questionnaire

With this questionnaire, students can identify which social skills they want to improve in areas such as talking with others, daily tasks, nonverbal communication, relationships, and resolving disagreements.

Social Skills Activities - Set The Scene

Set The Scene

This straightforward worksheet is a great tool for teachers and speech therapists to help students learn how to give important background information when starting a basic conversation or story.

Being a Good Conversationalist

Being a Good Conversationalist

This teaching resource teaches students what it takes to be an active and interesting participant in a conversation. It also comes with detailed personal reflection materials.

Choosing Conversation Topics

Choosing Conversation Topics

Many students struggle with finding good topics to talk about. This resource offers a simple and straightforward method to help them make their choices.

Interviewing Others

Interviewing Others

The traits that make someone a good interviewer are also what make someone a good conversationalist. This resource provides students with ample opportunities to practice their interviewing skills.

Post-Conversation Questionnaire

Post-Conversation Questionnaire

This straightforward questionnaire helps students develop their perspective-taking skills as well as their self-reflection abilities.

Social Skills worksheet tone of voice by lisa flowers

Tone of Voice

This straightforward questionnaire helps students develop their perspective-taking skills as well as their self-reflection abilities.

Interpreting Non-Verbal Communication Homework

Interpreting Non-Verbal Communication Homework

It's important to apply what's learned in lessons to real-life situations. This assignment provides students with additional practice in reading nonverbal cues.

Impressions from Appearances

Impressions from Appearances

This activity provides students with a powerful realization of how appearances impact people's perceptions, and how those perceptions can sometimes be misleading.

Attaining Targeted Impressions

Attaining Targeted Impressions

Encourages students to consider the impressions they want to convey to others in different situations, and how they can work towards creating those desired impressions.

Impressions and Altruism

Impressions and Altruism

This activity focuses not only on creating positive impressions in social interactions, but also on taking into account and considering the feelings of others.

Understanding Others Reference Sheet

Understanding Others Reference Sheet

This reference sheet is an incredibly useful tool for students as they work on improving their perspective taking skills in various tasks and activities.

Greetings Worksheet

Greetings Worksheet

This resource provides guidance and support for students when practicing greeting skills, and serves as a helpful reference for speech language pathologists and therapists.

Getting Someone's Attention

Getting Someone's Attention

This exercise guides students in enhancing their capability of effectively capturing someone else's attention, a seemingly simple but challenging task.

Restaurant Etiquette

Restaurant Etiquette

This handout provides guidance on the important skill of considering others' perspectives, along with the appropriate etiquette for dining in public.

Answering Job Interview Questions

Answering Job Interview Questions

This job interview preparation resource provides extensive instruction and practice opportunities for older teens in regards to answering the four most frequently asked questions during job interviews.

Passive Aggression

Passive Aggression

This activity helps high school students on the autism spectrum to recognize and handle passive aggression by teaching them how to identify signs of it in social interactions.

Passive Aggression

Social Skills Activities Packet

This comprehensive set of materials includes 28 different exercises and worksheets to help high school students with autism develop their social skills, including conversation techniques, and the ability to understand others' perspectives.

Autism Communication Strategies PDF Helpful Links

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Packet

A collection of 28 social skills worksheets and activities that cover conversation skills, kinesics, perspective taking, development of empathy, and real-world communication.

$19

Get 52 Lessons & Activities

Tact

A collection of 52 language and communication worksheets and activities that cover a plethora of reading comprehension, writing, grammar, and social communication skills.

$29

Get these social skills activities and more to help teach children with autism.