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Chances are, you get lied to multiple times on a daily basis. But the good news is, spotting a fib isn't as difficult as you might think - so long as you know the signs.

Behavioral analyst and body language expert Dr. Lillian Glass, who has worked with the FBI on unmasking signals of deception, says when trying to figure out if someone is being dishonest, you'll need to pay careful attention to their facial expressions, body language, and speech patterns, she writes in her book " The Body Language of Liars."

Here are the telltale signs:

Mike Nudelman/Business Insider

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Chances are, you get lied to multiple times on a daily basis. But the good news is, spotting a fib isn't as difficult as you might think - so long as you know the signs.

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Wikipedia entry

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Body language must not be confused with sign language, as sign languages are full languages like spoken languages and have their own complex grammar systems, as well as being able to exhibit the fundamental properties that exist in all languages.

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From another perspective, many men are not very good at picking up and correctly interpreting subtle signals of female body language, especially if it was very subtle. They generally have 10 to 20 times more testosterone than women and they may mistake friendly smiles for sexual interest.

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Starter questions

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It may seem daunting to travel abroad, especially if there's a language barrier between you and the locals.

But instead of cramming a few phrases last minute, you can quickly learn how to communicate without having to speak a word.

All you have to do is master a few simple hand gestures - however, since what gestures mean varies from place to place, take a look at this useful infographic created by Work The World that decodes 42 different hand movements used around the world.

Work the World

Read the original article on INSIDER. Follow INSIDER on Facebook. Copyright 2016. Follow INSIDER on Twitter.

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42 unique hand gestures from around the world and what they mean

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It may seem daunting to travel abroad, especially if there's a language barrier between you and the locals. But instead of cramming a few phrases last minute, you can quickly learn how to communicate without having to speak a word.

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10 hand gestures

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What Different Hand Gestures Mean Around The World

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Discover different hand gestures you can use and what they mean.

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BC Nik Peachey

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The features of body language
Body language is made up of a whole range of features many of which we combine together without ever thinking about what it is we are doing or what we are expressing.

Eye contact can have a very significant influence when you are interacting with them.

It can play a key role in helping to establishing rapport and failing to make eye contact in many cultures is associated with being dishonest or having something to hide.

Eye contact also plays an important role in turn taking during conversation. Among a group of people, a speaker will often make eye contact with the person he or she wants a response from. Someone who wants to enter or interject in a conversation will catch the eye of the person speaking to indicate that they want to interrupt, and equally someone who no longer wants to listen will avoid eye contact.

People who know each other well can communicate mutual understanding with a single look.

Eye contact is also a way of communicating attraction.

Facial expression is one of the most obvious and flexible forms of communication and can easily convey mood, attitude, understanding, confusion and a whole range of other things.

Proximity is a far less obvious form of body language but can be equally as meaningful. It is also something that can easily be misinterpreted as it can vary so much from culture to culture.

Many British people require a lot of 'private space' and will often stand much further away from people than other nationalities whilst talking to them. They seldom touch each other whilst speaking.

Breaking these invisible boundaries can either make them very uncomfortable or signal attraction.

Posture can communicate a number of things.

Your posture can convey a whole range of attitudes, from interest or the lack of it, to degrees of respect or subordination.

Speakers often use posture to punctuate what they are saying, shifting forward in their seat or leaning in towards their interlocutor to punctuate an important point, or slumping back to indicate that they have finished making a point.

Gesture can be used to replace verbal communication.

Different finger, thumb or hand gestures can convey a range of meanings in different cultures, from insults to approval or even attraction.

Many good speakers or storytellers use hand gestures to illustrate their stories.

It can also form part of punctuation with head nods and hand movements, which relate to the stress, rhythm and tempo of their sentences. Speakers who use their hands a lot often let them drop at the end of a sentence. Heads often nod down when words in sentences are stressed.

One of the most obvious and in many ways useful gestures is pointing. "It's over there." "I want that one."

Why I teach body language
But if we use all these things subconsciously in our own language, so do we really need to 'teach' them in the classroom? For me the answer is yes. Although we do use and interpret all these factors in our first language communications, I believe that they aren't necessarily automatically transferable to the language we are learning.

Many students, especially when listening to a second language, focus so heavily on hearing and understanding 'the words' people are saying that they suffer from a form of cognitive overload. There is just too much incoming information for them to process and they miss many of these subtler messages.

When teachers deal with listening in class, this is most commonly done with the use of recorded text on audio tape or CD, so these more visual factors in the communication are neglected in our students' second language development.

Many of these traits of communication can have different meanings or be interpreted in completely different ways in different cultures.

How to teach body language
So how can we deal with body language and help our students to interpret it. For me one of the most useful mediums for this has been video and particularly video without the sound. Whenever I use video clips in class with my students I always play them through at least once without the sound on first.

There are a number of different tasks that I've used depending on the type of clip being shown.

It's often interesting to play the clip through and get students to speculate about the relationships of the people in the scene.

Who is emotionally closest or involved with which other characters?

What's the relationship between characters?

Who is feeling angry?

What is each person feeling or thinking?

You can also try to get students to predict what they think characters are talking about or even what they are saying. If their level is low then they can predict what kinds of things they would be saying in their mother tongue.

If you have access to, or can transcribe the script for the clips you use, you can get your students to try to act out the scene using the script before they hear it. Just let them watch first and think about what the character they have to play is likely to be thinking or feeling. This gets the students attempting to interpret their body language and express it through the way they read the script.

I've also found it interesting to do cultural comparisons using a scene from the target culture with a similar scene on a video from their own culture. Just choose something fairly straightforward, like a group of friends in a café or restaurant and aks students to look for differences in the way they interact.

Do they touch when they meet?

How close do they sit when they talk?

Do they touch whilst talking?

Do they make eye contact?

Do they openly express any emotions?

If you can't find parallel clips, then you could just watch a clip from the target culture and ask your students to think about how the scene would be different if it were in their country.

Getting students to view silently before they listen to a scene or video clip can also help them to look for 'subtext'. It is often the case that things are being implied which aren't stated in words. Getting students to focus on these factors can help to raise their awareness of the non-verbal communication, which is happening.

If you have time, try preparing two 'false' scripts for a scene. These can be slight variations on the authentic one. Then give the three scripts to the students and get them to watch the clip silently and deduce which of the scripts is the correct one.

If you can't get access to video from the target culture then you can still use clips from the students' mother culture. Things like politicians speaking or televised debates where there are a number of people round a table discussing something can be really useful. You can pause and get students to predict who will be speaking next, or who is making a point.

Conclusion
I believe that whatever kind of silent viewing you do and whatever you choose to focus on will ultimately help your students to understand when it comes to listening. They will at least have developed a conceptual framework for what they need to understand and will have built up some expectations of what they will hear. Listening should not be an activity we do divorced from visual context. What we see is part of the comprehension experience and body language forms a large part of how we communicate our message, even if at times we are unaware of it. Comprehension of body language may not help them when it comes to expressing themselves, but it's surprising just how much you can understand without ever hearing a word. If you don't believe me, why not try turning the volume off the next time you are watching TV. You'll be surprised.

Further reading
Field J. 'Skills and Strategies: Towards a new Methodology for Listening' ELT Journal Volume 52/2 April 1998
Willis J. 'The Role of the Visual Element in Spoken Discourse' ELT Documents 114. (Paradigm)

Nik Peachey, trainer and materials writer, British Council

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The features of body language Body language is made up of a whole range of features many of which we combine together without ever thinking about what it is we are doing or what we are expressing. Eye contact can have a very significant influence when you are interacting with them.

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Public speaking video

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Using Body Language Can Help Your Public Speaking Skills

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Body language includes posture, eye contact and gestures, how you move your hands and arms. Using body language can help you communicate better and improve understanding.

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Public speaking

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Today, we return to the subject of successful public speaking centering on the physical message of presentation.

Some call this 'body language.' Charles LeBeau is a professor of public speaking and has written several books about how to do it well.

Mr. LeBeau tells VOA that body language includes posture, eye contact and gestures - how you move your hands or arms.

"For the physical message, a lot of non-native presenters are going to have problems with posture, and eye contact, and gestures. I think a lot of this comes from nervousness. Not only are they nervous because they're doing a presentation, but in addition to that they're really nervous because of their English, and their lack of confidence, lack of experience in their English, they're trying to figure out the grammar, what I want to say, and they're having all kinds of difficulty doing that, and also controlling their body."

We have all seen nervous presenters in classrooms and meetings. One effect of being nervous is moving from side to side. A presenter does not need to stand perfectly still. In fact an audience can lose interest in a speaker who does not move.

How a speaker moves is important. Whole-body movement should be slow and planned to command attention. Such movement helps to communicate confidence.

New public speakers know that they should look at the audience while they speak. But they look at their notes on a paper or at the screen if they have an electronic presentation.

"With posture, the typical problem that I see is that they are often moving back and forth, and they're not facing the audience. They'll often be facing the white board or the screen with slides and be talking to that rather than talking to the audience. Same thing with eye contact - they find it really, really difficult - some of them find it really difficult - making eye contact with the audience, because they'll be looking at their notes, they'll be looking at their computer, they'll be looking at the screen, they will be looking at the floor. The problem of having notes, and trying to talk from notes , often is a big problem. So they have trouble with eye contact."

Charles LeBeau says the best way to avoid this problem is to use images and few words for notes instead of sentences. The image should help communicate the point you want to make. Writing a few words with the image on your slide helps you remember that point. Then you can look at the audience while speaking.

"Another problem I've noticed is oftentimes there'll be a lot of sentences or words on the slides and no images. So I think the key is if they can figure out what images to use that will communicate their message, because the images will communicate faster and more clearly than words."

Holding on to notes also makes it more difficult for a speaker to gesture naturally. Mr. LeBeau's book, " Speaking of Speech," discusses this. He says gestures should support the point the speaker is making. For example, when talking about three ideas, hold up three fingers to introduce them. Then hold up one finger while explaining the first idea, two fingers for the second, and so on.

Other experts advise moving your body to a different place for each idea. Stay in place until you finish making that point. Then move to the next place on the stage or in the room.

Mr. LeBeau says a good way to change your body language is to make a video of your presentation and watch yourself. This helps you to become aware of what you need to change.

"I find often times, the gestures don't look natural. They are poorly delivered, or they are just nonexistent. Students can video themselves, and then look at it, they can clearly see: "Oh, My! I had no idea that I looked like that! My posture! I'm moving all over the place. Look at my hips. It's going back and forth and back and forth. And my eye contact! All of these other goofy things that I'm doing without noticing it, or thinking that 'well, it's not such a big deal.' But if I can see it I can realize oh, 'ok, I see, I see, I see what I'm doing.' I think that helps them change more quickly. So they can do their presentation again, and work on changing, then they can compare, and they can see that they can make quick improvement."

An important part of public speaking is practice. When you practice remember these important tips: Be aware of your posture, eye contact, and gestures. Record yourself using a phone, tablet, or camera. Watch yourself and plan what you will do to improve.

Look for opportunities to speak and gain more confidence. Mr. LeBeau says his students find the physical message the easiest thing to change in order to become a better presenter.

"The first thing that we deal with is the physical message. And the reason we do that is so students can have a real positive experience really quickly. You know, I looked like this in the beginning and now, after one day, or a couple of classes, now I look like this - I do look much better! I think it helps them feel more positive about the experience. It helps them see that 'yes, I can do this, I can look confident.' So, I think that it's the easiest to change, and maybe the most important thing to deal with first."

In our next Speaking Tips, we will look at the visual message, the visual aids you show the audience, and the story message, how to organize the ideas you present.

I'm Jim Tedder.
Dr. Jill Robbins wrote this story for Learning English. Catherine Weaver was the editor.
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Words in this Story

posture - n. the way in which your body is positioned when you are sitting or standing

eye contact - n. a situation in which two people are looking directly into each other's eyes

gesture - n. a movement of your body (especially of your hands and arms) that shows or emphasizes an idea or a feeling

nervousness - n. having or showing feelings of being worried and afraid about what might happen

confidence - n. a feeling or belief that you can do something well or succeed at something

stage - n. a raised platform in a theater, auditorium, etc., where the performers stand

aware - adj. knowing that something (such as a situation, condition, or problem) exists

opportunity - n. an amount of time or a situation in which something can be done
Now it's your turn to use the words in this story. How do you feel about public speaking? What helps you to be more confident when you speak? Write us a comment to share your experiences with learning to give a good presentation.
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Improve Your Public Speaking With Body Language

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Today, we return to the subject of successful public speaking centering on the physical message of presentation. Some call this 'body language.' Charles LeBeau is a professor of public speaking and has written several books about how to do it well.