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Wondering how are you going to make friends abroad?
Are you hesitant to talk? Or is it looking like a task talking to new people in a completely new place? Or are you not confident about the language?
Don’t worry, you are not alone in this. A lot of study-abroad students face the same difficulty in breaking the ice with foreign people but, the good news is that we have you and have your back!
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In this blog, you will learn the art of breaking the Ice through the art of small talk with strangers and your new classmates.
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Tips To Be An Expert At Making Small Talks
The following tips will help you become a better conversationalist and ease your discomfort of talking to strangers:
Be an initiator
Till when are you planning to wait for the people to come and start a conversation with you to get to know them? Don’t you feel like it will all be much easier if it’s you who simply walks up and starts a conversation and does not wait for anybody to do that for you? This way you will not only become a great conversationalist, and make good friends but also become confident.
So next time you enter a class full of new students, try to take the first step and become the initiator of the conversation and stand out from the crowd.
Converse through open-ended questions
Double-sidedness is what makes the conversation interesting. There will be no fun if it is just you who is asking and answering all the questions. The single-sided conversation makes it meaningless. So if you are making the conversation, try to make it open-ended, and ask questions that can be cross-questioned. See if the question you are asking doesn’t just end in monosyllables. For example, do not ask “Have you also opted for this subject?” instead ask, “What all other subjects do you have?”, the answer to this will not end the conversation but will make it open-ended for the counter person to answer and ask further.
Be a listener
There is no way you can make a conversation interesting by speaking all by yourself. If the person you are talking to is not getting a chance to be heard, they will lose interest in what you are speaking. It is good to share your experiences and points of view but at the same time, it is equally important to listen to the person in front. Even if you are sharing some story, take pauses, see if they are actively listening, if they are interested or if they have anything to say. Ask them if they have anything to share relevant to the topic and listen to it actively. Make sure you give space to the person you are talking to, to speak and listen equally.
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Remember names
How would it feel if someone who calls you a friend or shares a class with you does not even remember your name? It does not give a very good impression, right? Does it not make you feel like they are hardly any interested? The same goes in the vice versa too.
If you want people to have a good impression and get a friendly feeling from you, you need to keep in mind certain factors like the importance of remembering names.
It is one character of a good conversationalist and a professional person who remembers the names of anybody they talk to. It gives the people a sense of belongingness and importance and gains their attention towards you too.
It shows the people that you are very interested in talking which in turn gives them a sense of obligation by you to make a conversation. So remember, the next time you make a conversation with anyone, make sure you ask their name first and more importantly make sure you remember the name to use it in the conversation or to remember it for later interactions
Fill in the awkward silence
It is very common to have awkward pauses in conversation with new people, but does that silence not feel very irky? To get rid of it, what you can do is stop waiting for someone to fill that silence and instead take the step to fill it. Change the topic, ask some random questions, start sharing any relevant information or rather bid goodbye, but reduce the number of pauses and the time of pauses. These silent gaps make the conversation uninteresting leading to the opposite person ending up avoiding any further conversations with you to avoid such awkward states.
Know how to end a conversation
Ending a conversation at the right time with the right closure is very important to make the conversation an icebreaker. Even if the whole conversation was good but the end was abrupt the essence of the conversation will be lost. Keep track of when is the conversation losing its spark. As soon as you find out if the conversation is getting boring, look for a way out and end the conversation rather than continuing with the boring part to keep the interest of the involved people alive. Make sure the people involved know that you have concluded the conversation. Do not just go out, or move away from the conversation. Make a proper close like “ Talk to you later, got to go”, “see you later”, “Nice to talk to you”, etc. your end must be clear and indicate that you are interested in talking gain to the person later sometime.
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Following the tips that you read above will help you in becoming a smooth conversationalist. However, you will learn more and more and become an expert conversationalist with experience. So take the initiative for now and make the change.
Hope the blog helped you learn to become the best at breaking the ice with strangers in a foreign land by the art of small talk. To read more such interesting blogs, kindly follow Infotainment and to read about studying abroad follow Leverage Edu.
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