EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION:

EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION:

The understanding of the various barriers to communication helps us to find out ways and means of overcoming these barriers.
American Management Association has formulated the following commandments for effective communication:
i. Clarifying ideas before communication
ii. Know purpose of your communication
iii. Understand physical and human environments of communication
iv. Consult others in planning communication
v. Take care of contents and overtones of communication
vi. Convey value of communication to the receiver
vii. Do follow up action
viii. Understand the importance of communication
ix. Your actions should be congruent with communication
x. Practice good listening – Good Listening is the basic pre- requisite for effective
communication.
LISTENING:
A close synonym of listening is hearing; hearing is any sound that goes through the auditory nerves or sound waves as they enter the ears. But hearing with understanding is listening. We should listen to understand and respond. Listening is a trait of powerful personality because this trait requires many other traits to be part of your personality like patience,calmness and openness. Good listening is a sure short solution of barriers to communication.

COMMUNICATION – THE CONCEPT

COMMUNICATION – THE CONCEPT

The best way to understand any concept is to refer to dictionary for its meaning. The English word ‘communication’ is derived from the Latin noun ‘Communis’ and the Latin verb ‘Communicare’ that means ‘to make common, to transmit, or to impart’.
In simple words, communication is the activity in which we share any idea, feeling, opinion and information between two or more persons in a way that both parties have common ground of understanding. Thus in communication three aspects are of utmost importance – transmission of message, listening/receiving of message and common understanding of message among parties involved. The transmission can be done in many manners like by words -spoken or written, by body language or signs. And understanding means that both parties receive same meaning of the desired message in their mind and that can be confirmed with the help of feedback. When understanding is achieved only then communication is complete.
Communication has been defined by many theorists:
W.H.Newman defined, “Communication is an exchange of facts, ideas, opinions or emotions by two or more persons.”
Allen Louis defined "Communication is the sum of all the things one person does when he wants to create an understanding in the mind of another it involves a systematic and continuous process.”

COMMUNICATION SKILLS – A KEY TO SOFT SKILLS
Among all the soft skills the most important is Communication Skills as adequate communication skills are a prerequisite for a range of other soft skills. Communication is a basic activity of human beings which is undertaken by us every moment apart from the time when we are sleeping. Even now while reading these lines you are indulged in communication. It is so important that we can say that the foundation of our society, family, relationships and organisation is communication. Do you think we should study, learn and be trained in an activity which is so natural and obvious to us. The answer of this question is yes. In support of this answer let’s discuss the story of Robinson Crusoe – a traveller who got trapped in a lonely island for 30 years. There was not a single human being with whom he could talk and when he came back to his country he was not able to speak as he forgot how to speak.
Thus, in order to become masters in soft skills first we have to get expertise in communication skills. Especially in tourism and travel industry where you have to continuously communicate effectively with different type of people viz. tourist, airlines people, hotel staff, guide, visa officer, taxi drivers ,transporters etc.

SOFT SKILLS - Basic Concept

 SOFT SKILLS - Basic Concept

Soft skills are also called People Skills. These are desirable qualities for certain forms of
employment that do not depend on acquired knowledge, rather they include common
sense, the ability to deal with people, and a positive flexible attitude .
According to Wikipedia “Soft skills refer to the cluster of personality traits, social graces, and
facility with language, personal habits, friendliness, and optimism that mark people to varying degrees. Soft skills complement hard skills, which are the technical requirements of a job.”
Refer to the example discussed in the beginning what differentiates the two doctors is their competency in soft skills. The doctor who was positive, caring and friendly was remembered by you as compared to the other doctor.

Examples of soft skills
•Communication skills
•Problem solving skills
•Teamwork capability
•Negotiating skills
• Self-management
• Time management
•Conflict management
•Cultural awareness
•Responsibility
•Etiquette and good manners
•Courtesy
•Self-esteem
•Sociability
•Integrity / Honesty
•Empathy
•Work ethic

Soft skills differ from context to context and vary from individual to individual perception. Also the problem with soft skills is that there is a basic assumption that they are inborn skills. But a closer examination of these skills would suggest otherwise. While some individuals exhibit these skills naturally, some learn these skills on their own through experience but for a majority of individuals these can also be acquired and nurtured over time. That's why it's so important to focus as much on soft skills training and development as you do on traditional hard skills. Soft skills help you to gain an edge in your personal life, social life as well as in your job. Many researches have proved that individuals with good soft skills are preferred more for a job than the one who lacks in soft skills.

Assimilation

Assimilation

If speech is thought of as a string of sounds linked together, assimilation is what happens to a sound when it is influenced by one of its neighbours. For example, the word ‘this’ has the sound s at the end if it is pronounced on its own, but when followed by ʃ in a word such as ‘shop’ it often changes in rapid speech (through assimilation) to ʃ, giving the pronunciation ðiʃʃɒp. Assimilation is said to be progressive when a sound influences a following sound, or regressive when a sound influences one which precedes it; the most familiar case of regressive assimilation in English is that of alveolar consonants, such as t, d, s, z, n, which are followed by non-alveolar consonants: assimilation results in a change of place of articulation from alveolar to a different place. The example of ‘this shop’ is of this type; others are ‘football’ (where ‘foot’ fυt and ‘ball’ bɔ l combine to produce fυpbɔ l) and ‘fruit-cake’(fru t + keik → frυ kkeik). Progressive assimilation is exemplified by the behaviour of the ‘s’ plural ending in English, which is pronounced with a voiced z after a voiced consonant (e.g. ‘dogs’ dɒ z) but with a voiceless s after a voiceless consonant (e.g. ‘cats’ k ts).

The notion of assimilation is full of problems: it is often unhelpful to think of it in terms of one sound being the cause of the assimilation and the other the victim of it, when in many cases sounds appear to influence each other mutually; it is often not clear whether the result of assimilation is supposed to be a different allophone or a different phoneme; and we find many cases where instances of assimilation seem to spread over many sounds instead of being restricted to two adjacent sounds as the conventional examples suggest. Research on such phenomena in experimental phonetics does not usually use the notion of assimilation, preferring the more neutral concept of coarticulation.

Approximants

Approximants

Approximants are sounds made by narrowing the oral cavity but not enough
to cause turbulence in the airstream; the airstream is said to be smooth. The
beginning sounds of lye and rye are approximants. The narrowest point in
the airstream is wider in approximants than in fricatives, but is not as wide
as it is in vowels. Approximants are more sonorant (resonant, i.e., naturally
loud) than consonants, but less so than vowels. They are like consonants in
that they typically occur before or after the vowels of syllables (see below).
English has three kinds of approximants.

Lateral 

approximants are made by touching the tongue to the alveolar

ridge while allowing the air to pass along one or both sides, as in [l]—inlack, call, and callow.

Central

 approximants are made by raising the sides of the tongue so that
the air flows along the center of the tongue, as in [r]—in rock, roll, and Rory.
[r] is regarded as an alveolar sound.

Glides (semivowels)

come in two kinds: palatal and labio-velar. Palatal glides are made by raising the tongue toward the hard palate, close to where the vowel in eat is made. The first sound of yet, yolk, and y’all is a palatal glide, represented phonetically as [j]. Labio-velar glides are made by rounding the lips and simultaneously raising the back of the tongue toward the velum,

close to where the vowel sound of ooze is made. Labio-velar glides thus have

two places of articulation—they are both labial and velar. The first sound of
wet, wall, and wink is a labio-velar glide, represented phonetically as [w].

kinaesthetic/esia

kinaesthetic/esia

(Sometimes spelt kinaesthetic.) When the brain instructs the body to produce some action or movement, it usually checks to see that the movement is carried out correctly. It is able to do this through receiving feedback through the nervous system. One form of feedback is auditory: we listen to the sounds we make, and if we are prevented from doing this (for example as a result of loud noise going on near us), our speech will not sound normal. But we also receive feedback about the movements themselves, from the muscles and the joints that are moved. This is kinaesthetic feedback, and normally we are not aware of it. However, a phonetics specialist must become conscious of kinaesthetic information: if you are learning to produce the sounds of an unfamiliar language, you must be aware of what you are doing with your articulators, and practical phonetic training aims to raise the learner’s sensitivity to this feedback.

UNDERSTANDING CULTURE

UNDERSTANDING CULTURE

Understanding a culture is like peeling an onion. It has several layers that can be peeled off to develop a keen insight of the culture. Broadly, we think in terms of following three layers:
(i) Outer layer
It is what other people associate with that culture, its visual realities:
1. Behaviour
2. Dress
3. Food
4. Language
5. Habitats
It is also referred to as the „Explicit Culture‟.
(ii) Middle Layer
It refers to the values and norms the community holds – these may be right or wrong, good or bad.
(iii) Inner Layer
It is the deepest level and understanding - it leads to the core of it. It is the key to working successfully with other cultures. The core consists of:
1. Basic assumptions
2. Rules
3. Methods of solving or coping with problems
These rules and methods become so embedded in the members who take to it much like breathing, without even stopping to think about them. It is very difficult for outsiders to recognize these. It is also known as the „Implicit Culture‟.