To me, a good conversation is like a good dance. Both parties are active and are albe to keep up with each other. Sometimes it's slow sometimes it's heated. The conversation starts like spark at the beginning and then burst into flames. I have met several execellent conversationalists. When I talk with them, I want to copy their every words and keep them in my notebook to review. They are full of wisdom but they don't show them on purpose. Their intelligence show themselves.
Conversation is the most sociable of all human activities. The charm of conversation is that it does not really start from anywhere, and no one has any idea where it will go. Each words are triggers which remind you of some anecdotes, stories, sentences, books. All of them are pressing on our minds and come to your mind automatically. For example, when I introduced Spring festival to foreign friend I needed to introduce a lot of unique concepts to them such as lunar calendar. We usually turned to other topics naturally during the process. The conversation moved desultorily here and there, from the most commonpalce to thoughts of Confusion.
We can not be selfish in a conversation and just ask others to be listeners. It's very boring. In my opinion, conversation is different from speech. When you listen to a speech, you will think a lot of things but you have no opportunity to talk with the speaker. That's why we feel bored when we have no engagement with people who give a speech. However, it's impossible for us to fall asleep when we talk with other people because we need to think about their words and our brains are very active.
A conversation is not a debate. An argument may often be a part of them since it's natural that different people have different understandings to some issues because of different social backgrounds, family, education, culture, race and gender. However, the purpose of the argument is not to convince. Why do we want to talk with other people? Because we want to enlarge our border of information and knowledge after listening to different life experiences. We need to empty ourselves because a full bottle can't hold other things any more. Even though we may not agree with others' opinions, we need to respect them. There is no winning in conversation. In fact the most skillful conversationalists are those who are prepared to lose. They have open mind so they usually learn a lot.
The enemy of good conversation is the person who has something to say. Conversation is not for making a point. If we want to have a good conversation, we don't need to prepare ahead of time. We just need to follow the pace of the people who are talking to us and respond according to the situations.
One of the big advantage of talking with online friends is that they are not deeply involved in each other's lives. We are companions but not intimates. The fact that our lives are in a mess, or that we have to withdraw from school is not a concern. We just talk based on our interests and don't delve into each others' lives or the recesses of their thoughts and feelings. Due to this reason, we are more willing to express ourselves in front of strangers.
We should be careful of our words because languguage is representative of people's indentity. You can tell people's civilization, personalities and education from their words. However, oral language is different from written language. We may appreciate the vividness of description of the novel but if the author speaks to us in the same descriptive language, it's weired.
What are the qualities of good conversationalists to you?They are active in conversation and don't just answer your question and even bother to ask "And you?" Besides, you can cover a lot of common topics. Also,they can understand you when you change from one topic immediately to a seemingly unrelated one immediately and follow your pace. What's more, sometimes they start a new topic instead of just letting you to come up new topics. We don't need to convince others to show your wisdom or ask about their private business to show your concern for them.
