Book club: Let’s talk about books
We’re all about talking this week, with a savvy guide to communication, and a guide on teaching dogs to talk (yes, really).
Do you listen, but not hear? Interrupt too much? Not say what you mean? If you find messages get lost in translation … and you find yourself fighting with your partner, feeling disconnected from your family, getting frustrated with your colleagues, Leah Sefor’s That’s Not What I Meant could be the best thing you read this month.
A smart, savvy guide to real communication, Leah, who has spent most of her career coaching clients on how to communicate effectively with the people in their lives, helps you to be clear about your message, break through communication barriers, overcome misinterpretations, listen with purpose and create a workable, win-win relationship with the people in your life.
She shows you how to decode our communication patterns, be more conscious of your day-to-day interactions, discusses how to have difficult conversations and to stop taking offence, and how to use language to get what you want.
There’s a systems test, which will give a guide as to whether you’re an observer, a listener, a connector or an analyser, and how each one differs in their communication with another. Really useful, great tips (and one of those cases that if you think you don’t need to read it, you really do!). Tafelberg.
If dogs can understand words we say to them, shouldn’t they be able to say words to us? This was the question which kept speech-language pathologist Christina Hunger up at night.
And when she bough ta new short-haired, big-eared puppy named Stella, she decided to take her question a little further.
She started drawing connections between her job and her new pet. During the day, she worked with toddlers with significant delays in language development and used Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) devices to help them communicate.
With Stella, she wondered ‘can dogs use AAC to communicate with humans?’. How Stella Learned to Talk is the story – and simple guide – about teaching your dog to talk.
Written by Christina, who tells about how she started off with a paw-sized button programmed with her voice to say the word “outside” when clicked, whenever she took Stella out of the house, and leading up to the 45 words Stella now uses. Life with your dog will never be the same again! PanMacmillan.
