Body Language: How to tell if someone is bored or interested!

Hi.

I'm here to teach you some English, more some life skills, I think.

One thing that's really intimidating or uncomfortable

as someone who's trying to speak another language

is when you're speaking to someone and they're

listening to you, sometimes you're not too

sure what they're feeling inside because they're not talking.

They're like, "Oh my god, are you listening to me?

Do you like this?"

You can't just stop your presentation or stop

what you're doing and ask them, like, "Hey,

are you listening?"

If you have to ask, they're probably not.

But one thing that's really intimidating is let's say that you're speaking English and

the person that is listening to you is not paying attention.

What do you think?

You think, "Oh my god, my English is terrible,

I can't speak English, the person doesn't

like what I'm saying, I can't...

My English is bad."

Hey, it's not you.

You are probably doing a really good job.

English is difficult.

It's hard to get all the verbs in the right

tenses and the right order and pronounce our

crazy words in English correctly, especially, like, pronounce.

It's hard, it can be very intimidating, but I'm here to let you know that it's not you.

It could be your audience or the person that

you are listening to or is listening to you.

How to read your audience.

So, if you read your audience, it means that

you understand what your audience is thinking

without asking them, "Huh?

Can you read minds?"

No.

We're going to get these clues through body language.

So, there are certain things you have to look

at when you're talking to people, and also

this is going to help you be a good listener.

If you follow these tips, you're going to know what to do if you actually enjoy what

the person's saying or if you're really bored.

So, first one, eye contact.

If you're looking directly at the person, this means good things.

It means you're interested, it means you're having a good time, you want them to keep

talking.

If you're looking around the room and not

looking at them, it shows you're not interested.

Head movements.

I used to teach English in Japan, and Japanese

people, as soon as they didn't understand

something would do this, complete 45-degree rotation of the head.

They didn't say they didn't understand, but I know from this movement that they don't

understand.

But be careful.

This can mean two things.

One, it can mean that I'm kind of processing

something if I tilt my head, or depending

on what way I tilt my head.

Oh, sleeping.

It can mean that I'm bored, but don't worry, we'll go through that.

Is the person smiling?

The opposite of smile is frown.

If someone's smiling, that's usually a good thing.

If someone's frowning, it's never cool.

It's never cool.

It might mean that they disagree with you, or that they're absolutely maybe even mad

about what you're talking about.

So be careful of the frowns, or they're bored.

Right?

Eyebrows.

These things, here, these are your eyebrows.

If they're raised, one raised, I can't do that.

Can you do that?

One raised, one not?

I can't.

If the eyebrows are raised like this, it means...

Oh, they're surprised, they're interested in what you're saying.

If one eyebrow's raised and the other isn't,

like this, probably a bad thing, they'll probably

disagree with you.

And their body position, which we'll get into later.

But basically, if they're leaning towards you, this is good.

But if they're back from you, or they're actually...

Not a good thing.

Okay?

So let's go through the different emotions that we can have, or we can see.

We will understand if the person agrees with

us, usually because they smile, and they nod

their head.

"Nod" is a weird word in English, spelled N-O-D, and it basically means you put your

head up and down, like, "Yes, mm-hmm", and they smile.

If people disagree, they move their head from side to side.

And I don't remember what that's called when

people do that, but they're like, "No, uh-uh-uh."

You can also see if people are surprised, they kind of freeze, their eyebrows go up.

Or if they're mad, if their eyebrows go together

like this, that means they're kind of angry

with what you're saying, which is not necessarily

a bad thing, it just means it's their emotion.

If someone disagrees with you or someone's angry at you, again, that's fine.

Everyone can have their own opinion.

Don't get mad or, like, "Oh", or feel you're

not a good person, or your English isn't good

just because someone disagrees with you.

That's fine.

Or they get angry.

Who cares?

It's their anger to deal with, not yours.

You're doing a great job.

Let's go through what humans do when they're interested in something.

You better be doing this right now.

If you're interested, like I said before, your body movement is...

You're leaning forward, which means you're, like, you're getting right in there.

You want to be closer to the person.

Whereas if you're bored, your body movement's

further away, you're like, "Oh, back up, get

me out of here."

So leaning forward, making eye contact 100%.

I'm looking at you, and this means, "Hey, I'm interested in you.

Hello."

I put "fake smile" with a question mark.

Even if they have a fake smile, they're still smiling.

How do you know if the smile is fake or not?

This is a fake smile.

A real smile involves the eyes and your mouth.

So, you can see, when I have a real smile, my eyes crinkle here, I get more wrinkles

here, little crinkle, wrinkle, and my mouth makes a smile.

But it doesn't matter.

As long as they're fake smiling, you're still in there.

Raised eyebrows.

This is showing, like, surprise, like, "Whoa, no way.

What this person's telling me is interesting."

Some people might do this.

They might stroke or touch their face, their

chin, their nose, their cheek, these are your

cheeks, hmm, their head.

This is a good thing.

It means they're thinking about or processing what you're speaking about.

They're still paying attention to you, but they're thinking about it.

It's always great to make people think.

Sometimes people do this, they're not praying,

they're putting their hands together, maybe

touching their chin.

Again, they're considering something, they're like, "Hmm, okay."

Looking up, tilting your head.

This is telling people that, "Oh, hey, I'm

processing, I'm thinking about what you're saying."

And as I said together, you tilt...

As I said before, you tilt your head, like, "Oh, hold on, hold on, getting this.

Oh, understanding.

Yes, understand.

Okay."

So, a head tilt can be pretty positive at some point.

But if it's over here all the time, maybe they're sleeping.

Be careful with the head tilt.

So these things show that you're interested.

As a listener, you will do these things subconsciously.

So you're not going to say, "Okay, body lean forward, I like this person."

Or, "Make sure you look at their eyes."

It's amazing what our brain does, so delicious,

is it actually does these things without us

knowing it.

So, if you're like, "Hmm, oh, oops, I guess I'm thinking about this."

It's subconscious things that we do.

Let's go on to the bored part.

Do you get bored at presentations, or in meetings,

or at your job, when someone's, "Yep, yep,

yep."

Or this video...

No, do not get bored in this video.

If you're bored, turn it off, go, bye.

Here's a good word in English, "squirm".

It rhymes with the word "worm".

Squirm, worm.

If you squirm, it means you move around a lot.

Not like this, maybe you're having a dance in your chair, that's fine, that's cool.

But if you're bored, you're not intent on

looking at someone or interested, you're going

to move around, you know, like, switch your legs over, pick your teeth.

So moving around a lot is an indication that the

people are getting, we say "antsy", they're...

They want to leave, they're not interested.

I talked before about body position.

If they completely change their body position

towards you, show them their shoulder or their

back, you know right away, like, "Oh, I'm losing this audience.

Got to do something."

So body position's facing forward and leaned forward is good.

Anytime people are going to the side or the back, no, not a good thing for you.

Hey, if you're bored, do that, just completely, like, yeah, whatever.

Uh-huh, okay.

You turn away.

Here's a weird word in English, too, "slump".

Slump basically means your posture's not upright,

your shoulders are like this, and you're like...

Kind of, like, falling into yourself.

You can slump in a chair, means you're not sitting up straight.

When you're sitting up straight, you're paying

attention, like in school, but if you slump,

you're like, "Oh, I don't care", or "flop down".

This is a fun word, too, even to say it, "flop down".

If you flop down in a seat, it's like you're a jellyfish sitting down.

It's like you're showing the person, like, "I don't even want to be here.

What are you talking about?"

Like...

Okay?

Anyway, yeah, sometimes when you're bored,

you turn your head to one side, you're looking

at something else or you tilt your head.

If you tilt your head for a little bit and

your eyes go up, you're thinking, but if you

tilt your head for a long time, oh, uh-oh, you've lost the person.

They are daydreaming, they are in la-la land

thinking about what they're going to eat at

snack time.

So, the head tilt for a long time, that short time is okay.

Uh-oh, yeah, they're sleeping.

Yeah, they're gone.

Or they kind of...

Oh, if their eyes close, oh, and then open, they're on their way to sleep as well.

And a big one, they're not even making eye contact anymore.

You know you've got to draw them back in.

How do you do that?

How do you draw people back in once you've lost them?

First is voice.

You have to speak loudly, and you also have to do things like change your voice.

You can't just be like this the whole time.

As interesting as this lesson is, if I spoke

like this to you, you're going to get bored,

so you need variation in your voice.

You need to, like, oh, this is exciting, move around a lot.

You know, have fun.

Do a little dance.

People love it when you dance.

Even if you're a bad dancer, it doesn't matter, just go.

Just dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, okay, okay.

If people fidget, "fidget" means they play with stuff, okay?

It's a weird word in English, too.

Fidget means you're playing with stuff, you're

playing with your glasses, taking them off,

checking your...

Playing with your jewelry, you know, picking your teeth, grooming your...

Oh, just let me get my mirror out and do my hair.

If people are doing their hair or their makeup,

first of all, they're rude, and second of

all, they're really bored, okay?

They might have, like, oh, hold on, something in my tooth, that's fine.

But if it's a prolonged grooming session, go to the bathroom.

This is a really interesting one that I found when I was researching this.

If people start to massage themselves, not

down there, they're not having a little wank

in their session, unless that's what you want

them to do, but if people start, like, you

know, rubbing their necks or doing one of

these, rolling their heads, any kind of massage,

people are trying to comfort themselves because they're bored.

So, if you see people, like, you know, cracking

their backs, I do that a lot, this is telling

you, like, oh, it's time to wrap it up, let's go.

People are getting bored, they're losing their interest.

And then the last one can happen a lot, confusion.

Maybe I'm confusing you, maybe.

Maybe you're not making sense with your English sentence.

Maybe what you're saying is good, but because

you're not a native speaker of English, you're

just beginning to learn English.

Maybe what you're saying is not right, that's

okay, you can make mistakes, but you have

to be aware of the audience.

If the person you're talking to, like, kind of tilts their head and raises one eyebrow

and not the other, this is showing the person that they're confused.

Another thing that they do is they scan the room.

Beep, beep.

No, "scan the room" means you look quickly around the room to see if other people are

bored, too, or confused.

So, if you're telling me something and I'm not sure what you're talking about, I will

look to the other human to be, like, does this person get it?

So, if I see that the other person's confused,

I feel justified in my confusion, like, do

you understand this?

I don't...

I don't...

Oh, yes.

I don't get it.

So, the...

When people look around at other people's reactions, you know something funky's going

on, and funky isn't usually good.

So, when you're speaking, doing presentations

at work, look out for these nonverbal body

movement cues.

If you're the listener, try and pay attention to what you're doing.

If you're interested, think about...

Oh, oh, hold on.

I'm touching my mouth.

I'm interested.

See what happens.

I think I have something there.

Okay.

If you need help with English, my name's Ronnie.

I have private English lessons online, englishwithronnie.com.

We can hang out, do some classes.

And I hope whatever you have to do, presentations,

speaking to people, English is not your first

language.

Go easy on yourself.

You're going to make mistakes, that's fine.

Learn from your mistakes, build your confidence, and you can do it.

All right.

I've got to go now.

I'm getting bored of myself.

See ya.