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Mosaic 1 Writing, 4/e
Laurie Blass
Meredith Pike-Baky

Human Behavior

Editing Practice

Edit and rewrite the following paragraph. Look for problems in the following:


  • passive voice
  • conclusion
  • nouns and pronouns
  • vocabulary
  • conjunctions and, but, or
  • subject verb agreement
  • sentence connectors
  • articles: a/an, the
  • relative clauses
  • punctuation



1

          When people discuss communication they usually only refer to speaking. However, social scientists have estimated that only about 7% of the content of a message is communicated by words. About 38 percent communicated by paralanguage, which is tone, pitch, speed of the voice about 55 percent come through nonverbal cues, which includes such things as gesture, posture, facial expression, and so on. Conversely, it is behavior other than spoken or written words that contribute most to meaning. Most of that nonverbal communication is about emotions, is a powerful motivator in human behavior. We base our feelings and emotional responses not so much upon what another person says and upon what another person do. For example, there is proverb that says, "Actions speak louder than words." Research confirm this. When verbal and nonverbal signal contradict, we usually believe nonverbal. For one thing, it seen as more difficult to fake. Experiments have shown that virtually everything we use to decide if someone is lying comes from the nonverbal cues. For example, we may compliment someone's new haircut while our faces give away the real feeling of dismay we have.