Becoming a Good Conversationalist

To be a good conversationalist, able to interest people or rivet their attention in order to draw them to you naturally, by the very superiority of your conversational ability, it to be the professor of a great accomplishment, one which is superior to all others. It not only helps you to make a good impression upon strangers, it also helps you to make and keep friends. It opens doors and softens hearts. It makes you interesting in all sorts of company. It can also help you get on in the world today in society and your daily work and ethics.

A person who can speak well, who has the art of pulling things in an attractive way, who can interest others quickly by his power of speech, has a great advantage over someone who may know more than him, but who cannot express themselves with ease and eloquence. No matter how expert you may be in any other accomplishment, you cannot use your expertness everywhere as you can the power to converse well.

Wherever you may go in the world or what society your in you must be able to speak well. It's not what you say, but how you pronounce it. A helpful suggestion in this would be to learn how to speak or talk is to talk. The temptation people who are unaccustomed to society, and who feel different, is to say nothing themselves and listen to what others are saying. A good speaker always sought after in society. Everybody wants to invite you to dinners or receptions because you are a better speaker and talker.

Conversation is used as an educator, it is also a power developer, but talking without thinking, without an effort to express yourself with clearness, conciseness, or efficiency, chattering or gossiping the average society small talk, will never get hold of the best thing in a person. It lies to deep for such superficial effort.

Things which do not rise to the humor but the foolish, silly talk which demoralizes our ambitions, lowers our idea's and all the standards of life, because it begets habits of superficial and senseless, thinking. On the streets, on the cars, and in public places, loud, coarse speech, in coarse voices are heard in light, flippant, slipshod speech, in slang expressions.

There is no accomplishment, no attainment which you can use so constantly and effectively, which will give so much pleasure to your friends, as fine conversation. There is no doubt that the gift of language was intended to be a much greater accomplishment than the majority of us have ever made of it. Most of us are bunglers in our conversation, because we do not make an art of it, we don't take the trouble or pains to learn to talk well. We do not read enough or think enough. Most of us express ourselves in sloppy, slipshod English, because it is to much easier to do so than it is to think before we speak, to make an effort to express ourselves with elegance, ease, and power.