Communication Skills

UNIT 1 - Session 1
INTRODUCTION
Communication is a two-way process.
information or message is exchanged between individuals using language,
symbols, signs or behaviour.
Speaking, listening, reading and writing are the parts of communication, which
help us to understand others.
To learn a language, one needs to develop four key skills, namely listening,
speaking, reading and writing.
To learn a language, one needs to develop four key skills, namely listening,
speaking, reading and writing as shown in Figure 1.1.
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
Speaking more than one language can help a person communicate well with
people around the world. Learning English can help one communicate with people
who understand English.

Communication skills are needed to communicate effectively with people and

customers.
ELEMENTS OF COMMUNICATIONN
Communication involves a sender, who encodes and sends a message through a
channel, and a receiver, who decodes the message and gives feedback as shown
in Figure 1.2. Feedback is important in communication as it helps in knowing
whether the receiver has understood the message or not.
ELEMENTS OF COMMUNICATION
Session 1: Active Listening
Effective communication involves skills that can be utilised to send messages that
are clear, concise and accurate.

A clear statement is one which conveys the exact message that you are trying to
convey to the other person.
EXAMPLE - CLEAR
Here, we have two sentences. Now, which one do youthink is a clear statement?
(i) He went to his manager and said, “Please allow me to reach office at 11 AM on
Tuesday, 11 June 2019, as I have an appointment with a dentist.”
(ii) He went to his manager and said, “Please allow me to reach late to the office
on Tuesday, 11 June 2019, as I have an appointment with a dentist.”
In the first sentence, you must have noticed that the time is mentioned, which
makes the statement clear.
CONCISE STATEMENT
A concise statement is appropriately brief or to the point.

(i) The manager replied, “Alright, you may come late.”

(ii) The manager replied, “Alright, you may come late. But it is a matter of great
concern that most employees come late and you are also developing the same
habit.” .

Now, you can see that in the second sentence, there is no need to tell the
employee about the concern that the employer had at the moment. This could
have been shared at a different forum or separately.
ACCURATE
An accurate statement is one that is factual, i.e., its correctness can be verified.

Now, once again, let us learn through examples. (i) She informed the office that 50
per cent of the books given for binding have been completed.

(ii) She informed the office that most of the books given for binding have been
completed.

Now, you can see that in the first sentence, a measurable information is
mentioned, which makes the sentence accurate.
ADVANTAGE AND DISADVANTAGE
Effective communication skills help us to communicate the message correctly,
precisely and completely.

Lack of communication skills can result in confusion, frustration, wasted effort and
missed opportunities.
Listening skill
Every effective conversation starts with listening.

Listening skill is one of the most important skills in communication.

It is important to learn to give undivided attention to a person with whom a conversation is taking place.

aking place. Given below are some reasons why listening attentively is important. • We listen to obtain information.

• We listen to understand.

We listen to enjoy. •

We listen to learn.

• We listen to build and maintain relationships.

• We listen to resolve conflicts.

Factors affects of active listening
The various factors that affect active listening are as follows.

Eye contact: It is a form of body language. It is one of the most important

aspects in the communication process.

Maintaining an eye contact with the person you are talking to sends a signal to the
speaker that “Yes, I am talking to you or listening to you”.

Avoiding eye contact could mean that you do not want to listen to the person
speaking to you.
Factors affects of active listening
Gestures: These indicate to the speaker if you are listening or not. Keep your
hand and feet still while talking to someone.

Avoiding distractions: You need to identify the things that distract you. You must
physically remove the distractions in order to listen attentively.

For example, reducing the ringtone of your mobile phone or switching it off while
attending a meeting or listening to someone will avoid distraction. Another
example is that you should avoid glancing at the wristwatch frequently
Factors affects of active listening
Giving feedback: Feedback can be positive or negative. But in both the cases,
one needs to be polite so that the person to whom the feedback is being given is
not hurt or offended.
Stages of active listening
The five stages of active listening are as follows.
1. Receiving: It involves listening attentively.
2. Understanding: It is an informed agreement about something or someone.
3. Remembering: It refers to the retrieval or recall of some information from the
past.
4. Evaluating: It is about judging the value, quantity, importance and amount of
something or someone.
5. Responding: It is about saying or doing something as a response to
something that has been said or done
How to ensure active listening?
How to ensure active listening?
SESSION 2 PARTS OF SPEECH
SENTENCES

A ‘sentence’ is a group of words that communicates a complete meaning,

thought or action. For example, Raju goes to school.

A group of words, which does not make complete sense, is known as a

‘phrase’, for example, Raju goes.

A sentence always begins with a capital letter, and ends with a full stop,
question mark or exclamation mark.
Using capitals
It is easy to know what to capitalise if you remember the acronym ‘MINTS’.
MINTS is a set of simple rules that help you to capitalise words correctly.
Table 1.3: Capitalisation rules
Punctuation
There are 15 basic punctuation marks or signs used in English. These include full
stop or period, comma, question mark, exclamation mark, apostrophe, colon,
semi-colon, dash, hyphen, parenthesis, quotation mark, bracket, brace, ellipsis
and bullet point (
PUNCTUATION
Basic parts of speech
The different types of words we use in sentences are called parts of speech. The
basic parts of speech are nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs.
Supporting parts of speech
Session 3: Writing Sentences
A sentence is a group of words, which together expresses a complete idea that
has meaning.

A sentence, typically, contains a subject and an object, conveying a statement,

question, exclamation, or command.

Writing is constructed by putting sentences in sequence so that they are

understandable.
Simple sentence
A simple sentence is one that has only one subject and one predicate or has only
one finite verb.
Complex sentence
A complex sentence is one, which consists of two or more coordinate clauses,
joined by a coordinating conjunction.

A subject is a person or thing that does an action.

Verb describes the action

Object is the person or thing that receives the action.

Types of object
The object in a sentence can be either direct or indirect.

Direct objects are the ones directly ‘acted on’ by the action word (verb).

If we ask — “What does Nisha sell?”, the answer is ‘laptop’, which is direct object.
A direct object answers the question ‘what?’.
INDIRECT OBJECT
An indirect object answers the questions, such as “to whom” and “for whom”. For
example, in the sentence — “Abdul gave a gift to his mother.” The verb is ‘gave’.
What did Abdul give? A gift. To whom did Abdul give the gift? To his mother. Here,
‘gift’ is direct object and ‘his mother’ is indirect object.
Active and passive sentences
Sentences, where the subject does an action, are known to be in active voice.
Sentences, in which the subject receives an action, are known to be in passive
voice.
Types of sentences — Category II
There are mainly four types of sentences, i.e., declarative, interrogative,
exclamatory and imperative.
Paragraph
A group of sentences forms a paragraph.

While writing a paragraph, make sure the sentences have a common idea.

When you want to write about a different idea, make a new paragraph

For example, if you are writing about your school, the first paragraph can be of
sentences about the name, location, size and other such details. In the next
paragraph, you can use sentences to describe what you like about your school.