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by mostlylurks
999 days ago
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The written word may be superior to speech in conveying information efficiently, but only if you assume that the recipient is willing and capable of engaging with the medium. Unfortunately, that does not apply to most people you will encounter. A significant majority of people will struggle with pieces of text longer than a couple of sentences while having no trouble at all receiving the same information verbally. That is just the world we live in, and thus, it would be pragmatic to opt for verbal communication unless you know your audience can handle communicating via text. |
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I am extremely introverted, I struggle to identify facial expressions, I am highly adept at reading, and I'm also a bit hard of hearing (what I think may be a verbal processing disorder in my brain, because I have had several hearing tests and they have not been able to find anything wrong). You would think this means that I agree with the author of this article.
Yet I find verbal communication still very valuable when it is paired with facial expressions and body communication (especially hand gestures). Some concepts are extremely difficult to get across without these additional elements.
There have been many times that I've read extensively about a topic and struggled to imagine what they are describing, then watched a YouTube video of someone simply standing in front of a camera and describing the topic, and only then does it finally click for me. It goes the other way, too, of course (hearing it first without understanding and then reading it to have to click), but it suggests to me that both are valuable for understanding.
If I had to choose only one, I would choose reading. However, being limited to only reading would reduce my ability to learn about complex topics.