(April 23, 2016 at 12:09 am)Evie Wrote:(April 22, 2016 at 11:37 pm)Losty Wrote: It's a lot easier in person. When the person you are talking with is seeming awkward or uncomfortable, it's time for a topic change.
In text is harder but if you're typing paragraphs and getting 2-3 word responses it might be time.
This is all super helpful
Quote:You don't need to announce you're changing the topic. Just start talking about something else. If you're worried that might be awkward, just say "that reminds me" and then talk about something else.
It's definitely preferable to just start talking about something else the to announce it. But I struggle to do that because my problem is I can never think of a topic and I therefore go quiet unless I keep talking about the same thing.
There's definitely an art to changing the subject. What I do is find where the topic fans out and intersects with something more to my interest, and then start inserting that into it. A thorough working knowledge of the language helps in that regard, in that you can use a word or phrase that has a couple of different shaded meanings and use that as a pivot-point to leverage the conversation elsewhere.
Knowing the language and its permutations is an incredibly important skill, for me.
