Fast Facts
About Communication
Communicating: We
communicate during about 80% of our waking hours.
Writing:
Writing accounts for 9% of our communicating activity.
Reading:
Of our communicating time, 16% is used to read.
Speaking: We use
30% of our communicating time speaking.
Listening:
Listening accounts for 45% of our communicating behavior.
Remembering: We
can recall effectively only 25% of what we listen to.
Immediate memory: An
individual's immediate recall of the average brief message is only 50%.
Memory after 48 hours: Within
48 hours, of that 50% remembered, we forget more than half of that,
leaving only 10% to 25% of what we tried to remember.
Remembering after a phone call:
If we only use our hearing, as in a telephone call, we retain even less
than 25% of what we heard, because of lack of visual input.
Emotional Impact Through
Words: What you say is far less important than how you say
it. Only 7% of the feelings expressed in a spoken message are conveyed
by the words themselves.
Meaning Through Sound Of
Voice: 38% of the meaning of our message comes from the
sounds we make as we speak: tone, volume, inflection, pitch, pace,
pauses, and many others.
Meaning Conveyed By Body
Language: 55% of the meaning of what we say is conveyed by
body language, nonverbally: facial expressions, posture, gestures,
animation, tenseness, eye contact, breathing, and etc.
Chunks of Information:
The average person in the audience remembers only 7 chunks of
information at best, and usually more like 3 or 4, depending on
concentration levels.
Speaking Time/Typed Pages:
The average 30 minute speech is equal to about 13 double-spaced typed
pages.
Number of Words/Speaking
Time: It takes about 140 words to equal 1 minute of speaking
time.
Voice Production Is
Complicated: Changing the voice into speech sounds depends on
the relative shape, position and tension of many parts of the vocal
tract. Over 100 muscles are involved in speaking.
How Sound Is Produced:
Inside our throats is the larynx (or voice box), where folds of mucous
membrane (vocal chords) are attached from front to back. In the front
they are joined and in the back they can be either open (when breathing)
or closed (when talking or making sounds). Voice is produced when air
from the lungs is forced between the closed vocal chords, causing them
to vibrate.
What Pitch Is: The
pitch of a voice is determined by the number of vibrations per second.
The higher the pitch, the more vibrations. There are about 400% more
vibrations at high C than at middle C on the musical scale.
Turning Sounds Into Speech:
The flexibility and control of the tongue, lips, teeth, hard palate,
soft palate, nasal cavity, the shape and size of the mouth and throat,
and breath power are all important in speaking, and identify one voice
from another.
BREATHING Is The Most
Important Tool: Control of a person's breathing is the
singular most important aspect of speech improvement. Using the
abdominal muscles to control the diaphragm, which controls the flow of
air from the lungs, which gives the voice its power and projection, is
the first lesson in speaking well. At the same time, correct breathing
enhances stress reduction, relaxation and many non-verbal aspects of
communication.
