Communication Skills

Communication Skills

Most of the students and teachers think that ‘soft skills’ means ‘communication skills’ and that too ‘Spoken English’ skills. Actually soft skills involve more than a hundred skills. Further communication skills involve four sub-skills of English Language. They are the following;

 

• Listening
• Speaking
• Reading and
• Writing

The first two skills are left to the fate of the students and the other two skills are not properly taught in the schools and colleges. These language skills are purely self-learning

skills apart from their syllabus.

The skill of listening remains an unused skill among students. They should follow the dictum

                                     “Learn to listen;

                                      Listen to learn”

A student who have secured state First in Tamil Nadu once observed that

                                     “He listened carefully in the class room”

Our present day students lack the power of observation, focus and mind control.  The world famous scientist, Newton professed that

             “If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing to  more  patient attention than to any other talent”.

The best part of communication lies in comprehending the speech of others and answering them in the proper manner. Interest, attention, and concentration are the three pillars of good listening.  Linguistic research suggests that to learn a foreign language one should spent minimum two hundred hours of listening whereas our students spent more than two thousand hours in listening to English spoken by their teachers in the class rooms. That shows their lack of awareness about the skill of listening.

The skill of speaking can be overcome by practicing the class room English. Further memorizing a few dialogues in day to day life will also help them to improve their Spoken English.

The skill of reading is often done by the students but without concentration. While reading the students should use intensive reading skills by underlining the key words and taking notes.

The skill of writing is the culmination of the other three skills and it involves an integration of the skills of listening, speaking, and reading.

The following tips will help the students to improve their learning of English quickly.

• Imitation of English Teacher’s voice in the class room
• Manipulation of sentences
• Creating their own mini or macro dialogues
• Using Electronic gadgets in their homes to learn English
• Integrating the four skills of learning
• Improving their word vocabulary
• Using good dictionary and thesaurus
• Making notes and expand them into complete sentences
• Continuous collection of good phrases, dialogues, and          

o   Sentences and

• Repetition of the above activities continuously

To acquire fluency in English, the following suggestions will be useful:

            

• Improving the word power
• Listening to Radio and T.V. News Reader’s voice
• Learning Grammar
• Listening to English hi-hit songs

All the above ideas are meant for the self-practice of students to improve their communication skills.