facial+expressions+and+gestures

Dear students, Welcome back! I hope you managed to have some time off and didn’t work all the time? I had a lovely holiday and caught up with family and friends overseas. The best part of the holiday was a week on a canal boat in the south of France. It was very relaxing and the boat was slow enough that I could get off and walk or bike ahead. The canals have a series of lochs that are fascinating some dropped only a meter and others nearly 10 meters! Have you heard about lochs?

The countryside was beautiful and green and the lochs had rows of plane trees, that made it pretty and shady. It was very exciting visiting castles and chateaus.

I don’t speak much French so I had to rely on facial expressions and hand gestures. It was lucky that most people could read my expressions and gestures and were very kind and helpful. This made me think how much we use other forms of communication and if you have noticed a difference between your culture and Australian facial expressions and gestures, we call this non verbal communication or body language. I know for example that some Western and Asian cultures have a different signal/ gesture for ‘come here’ What are the gestures in your culture for: stop/ go Good/ bad I don’t know Hello/ goodbye Naughty child A secret Speak up? Do you know the signal / gesture for the above in the Australian culture? Can you draw the facial expression for: Confusion Happy Sad Surprise
 * __ Australian your culture __**

An angry parent in Australian may fold their arms, tap their foot, purse their lips and scowl if you see this you need to do some serious explaining!

Great to see you all again, Please let me know anything in particular you would like to study/ learn With thanks Robin

Activity & reading about universal facial expressions

ps what is the difference between a chateau and castle? []   When originally built, castles are primarily fortifications. Decor is often a secondary consideration, especially on frontiers. Palaces are more often built with decor and comfort in mind, and far less attention to defence. Certainly, over time, in a settled realm, castles can evolve into grand residences. Also a castle was mainly built to defend and a palace was just for a beautiful place to live.