How can you break this skill down?
To exit an ongoing conversation or to end a conversation, the student must be able to identify an appropriate point to segue out of the conversation. This requires awareness and timing that can be quite sophisticated. Specifically, it is not appropriate to interrupt or cut someone off. It is also not appropriate to end a conversation if someone has just asked a question or is waiting for a response. Finally, if someone is talking about something of importance to them, the student must be sensitive to that if exiting a conversation.
There are two sequences of instruction that you must consider.
A) Response to Closure Attempt: If the student is still engaged in the conversation but the other person shows signs of wishing to exit, the skill of exiting and closing conversation requires the following sequence.
1) Attribution skills (e.g., I am connecting body cues and words to see that my conversational partner wants to end the conversation; I am connecting body cues and words to recognize that this person is losing interest or has other things to do). In this case, the attribution skills help the student identify if and when the other student is using a ‘wrap up’ statement or an ‘exit’ statement.
2) Self-regulation – This involves the self-statements to avoid pursuing the conversation when the conversation partner expresses intent to exit that conversation.
3) Generation of an appropriate response to conclude or exit the conversation is the last step. If the other person uses a wrap up and an exit statement, the student needs to use an exit statement to close the conversation. As noted, the student must know what to say to politely exit the conversation.
B) Initiation of Closure Attempt: If the individual is motivated to end the conversation, the skill of exiting and closing conversations requires these steps.
1) Attribution skills (e.g., I am connecting body cues and words to see that my conversational partner wants to continue the conversation; I am connecting body cues and words to recognize that this person is talking about something serious and now is not the right time to exit).
2) Recognition and “Wrap up’ at the appropriate moment (timing the exit or conclusion) – This is the skill of finding a point in conversation where it is possible to ‘wrap up,’ to make a statement of verbal closure. It involves finding a closing point or a way to put off the completion of the discussion. It involves recognition of a place in the discussion where the individual can insert a placeholder or bookmark, as it were.
3) Self-regulation – This involves the self-statements to politely wait if the conversation partner expresses some need to continue to get to conversation closure.
4) Generation of an appropriate response to conclude or exit the conversation is the last step. Beyond the closure or ‘wrap up,’ the ‘exit’ statement concludes the conversation and allows exit. The student must know what to say to politely exit the conversation. The formality of their departure hinges on who they are talking to. Saying “I gotta go” to a supervisor is less polite than saying “I have to go now. I’ll see you next week!” Saying “alright, alright, alright” while the other person is still talking will negatively affect future interactions. How the student says it is just as important as what the student actually says. Eye contact (or approximations) and tone of voice, in particular, are very important.
What sub-skill should you target first for the student to initiate? Given what the student can do presently, how will you present the task so that the student can perform steps within his capacity while learning a new step?
Consider the student who keeps talking to you, even when you are using every possible polite verbal and non-verbal cue to end the conversation. Some students struggle to respond, even when cues are explicit (“I don’t have time to talk anymore, I have to go”). For such students, they are not motivated to end the conversation, and they fail to recognize where the other person’s motivation lies. Sadly, some people tend to avoid these students because they know that it will be difficult to “escape” from the conversation. For some students who are driven to talk about their high interest area, it may be necessary to first implement concrete rules that they can follow to regulate what they talk about and when. Such rules would be visually depicted, and adherence to those rules would be practiced and reinforced across repeated opportunities. For this student, you would focus initially on the first sequence, A, noted above. Responding to closure attempts will be primary.
It will be important to systematically target recognition of attribution skills: the non-verbal and verbal cues that signal disinterest and exit attempts by the conversational partner. Start with more explicit signs and shape their recognition of more subtle signs over time. Paired with this instruction would be strategies designed to help the student see how the other person might perceive their persistent behavior. In this case, strategies identified within Showing and Deciphering Interest should be examined in conjunction with this topic.
It is likely that you will start with the A sequence of Response to Closure for many students to build recognition of the verbal and non-verbal signals of others in conversation. The B sequence, Initiation of Closure, is more complex and involves both motivation to close the conversation and attention to conversational details to wrap up a topic and provide a polite closure. This is quite sophisticated but is a skill that can be built on the three-step sequence of Response to Closure. Initiation requires one additional step built into the sequence.
Within the Initiation of Closure sequence, note that ‘wrapping up’ is a more complex skill than ‘exiting.’ For some students, you will start by practicing exiting and then build on that skill by adding a wrap up within the practice.