Yeah, I agree with everyone else talking about active listening. Apart from asking questions to get the other person to continue, there's this thing called "backchanelling", which is basically just saying "uh-huh", nodding, "huh, really?" etc. So not full responses, but just encouragements to get the other person to keep going. You can get pretty far with just that lol. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backchannel_(linguistics)
One other thing I find useful is having basic knowledge about whatever is the big new thing atm. At the moment, most everyone has an opinion on corona, and the hot new show is probably Queen's Gambit. You don't have to start getting into the nitty gritty - you don't even have to watch the hot new show - but if you think of a few things to say on each topic, you can reuse it with basically every person. Say, if there's a lull in the conversation you can go "Oh have you seen that new Netflix show The Queen's Gambit? Yeah the chess one. I haven't checked it out yet. I guess it must be good though - I heard that stores are running out of chess sets because so many people are buying them as Christmas presents!" And with that you can transition into chess (do you play?) or Christmas (what's your plans for Christmas?) or Netflix shows (watched anything good lately?), depending on their response.
Yeah, I think some people consider it really polite to never ever interrupt the speaker, while others consider it impolite not to add backchanneling responses. The frequency (and probably type) of backchanneling is culture-dependent and affected by gender [norms] as well (e.g. http://www.lingref.com/cpp/wss/1/paper1012.pdf), idk if you might have a mismatch with your friend. Personally I greatly prefer overly enthusiastic backchanneling over none haha, I get nervous when I'm speaking for a bit and there's no response from the listener except polite silence and an inquisitive stare.
Yeah, I agree with everyone else talking about active listening. Apart from asking questions to get the other person to continue, there's this thing called "backchanelling", which is basically just saying "uh-huh", nodding, "huh, really?" etc. So not full responses, but just encouragements to get the other person to keep going. You can get pretty far with just that lol. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backchannel_(linguistics)
One other thing I find useful is having basic knowledge about whatever is the big new thing atm. At the moment, most everyone has an opinion on corona, and the hot new show is probably Queen's Gambit. You don't have to start getting into the nitty gritty - you don't even have to watch the hot new show - but if you think of a few things to say on each topic, you can reuse it with basically every person. Say, if there's a lull in the conversation you can go "Oh have you seen that new Netflix show The Queen's Gambit? Yeah the chess one. I haven't checked it out yet. I guess it must be good though - I heard that stores are running out of chess sets because so many people are buying them as Christmas presents!" And with that you can transition into chess (do you play?) or Christmas (what's your plans for Christmas?) or Netflix shows (watched anything good lately?), depending on their response.
Thanks for the explanation of backchanneling. I know someone who NEVER does this, and perhaps now I can explain to him why it's so frustrating
Yeah, I think some people consider it really polite to never ever interrupt the speaker, while others consider it impolite not to add backchanneling responses. The frequency (and probably type) of backchanneling is culture-dependent and affected by gender [norms] as well (e.g. http://www.lingref.com/cpp/wss/1/paper1012.pdf), idk if you might have a mismatch with your friend. Personally I greatly prefer overly enthusiastic backchanneling over none haha, I get nervous when I'm speaking for a bit and there's no response from the listener except polite silence and an inquisitive stare.