Improving Communication Skills for Students

This assignment delves into the crucial role of effective communication skills in education. It analyzes diverse methods and frameworks employed to foster improved communication abilities among students, encompassing areas like interpersonal interaction, public speaking, and professional communication. The assignment references academic studies and research papers that highlight the significance of communication training in enhancing student learning outcomes.

Running head: COMMUNICATION SKILLS
COMMUNICATION SKILLS
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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Interpersonal communication skills can be defined as important factors which each and
every person should try to maintain and incorporate properly in their professional as well as
personal life (Ramani et al., 2017). Some of the factors of interpersonal communication that
seem to develop and strengthen communication with each others are proper feedback giving and
receiving skills, maintaining clarity in conversations, communicating with empathy and
friendliness, open mindedness as well as effective listening (Hamzah et al., 2016). Individuals
who have developed communication skills are found to establish effective relationship with other
that ultimately help them to reach their intended goal successfully (Kunc, Malpass & White,
2016). This assignment will first use 5 different tools that will help to identify two important
communication issues that I have which I need to improve over time. This should be supported
by a literature review. Following the literature review there will be an action plan which I would
follow in order to develop my poor communication skills. These are represented in a sequential
manner.
The first tool that I have used in order to reflect my communication skills is called the
talkaholic scales. This tool has been found to be very helpful in knowing whether an individual is
compulsive speaker or not. By the word compulsive it might sound negative and it might make
the reader feel that being a compulsive speaker means that the individual talks many unnecessary
things which are not wanted to be heard by others. However this is not true as researchers are of
the opinion that a person, who talks more, maintains more open - mindedness, transparency and
clarity. They are are perceived positively by the members of the team and also by seniors. This
tool usually compels the individual to undertake a series of questions for which he needs to mark
himself. This score that he would get would be categorised into three categories. These are
borderline Talkaholic,where the score range between 30 to 39, less talkaholic when the score is

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below 30 and High talkaholic where the score is above 40. In this case I have achieved a score of
about 30 which is suggesting that I am just on the border of being less talkaholic and borderline
Talkaholic. From this set of questionnaire I have realised that I am quite introvert and I do not
like providing feedback as well as receiving feedback. Therefore I have made a negative image
of myself in my workplace for which I am not being able to communicate freely with my
colleagues.
The next tool which is used by me for this reflection assignment is willingness to listen
Diagnostic tool. This tool is extremely important for judging whether an individual has proper
listening skill. Listening skill is very important as it can increase productivity in business and
effectivity in business communication. They reduce miscommunication and also help to grow
bonds and relationship among different members. This tool has 24 questions which are needed to
be marked by the grading system of 1 to 5 and there is a particular formula which is used to
measure the score. Scores below 59 shows that the individual has no willingness to listen and
when the score is above 89 it shows high willingness. Score between 59 and 89 shows moderate
willingness to listen. In this I scored 70 which shows that I am in the category of moderate
listening skills. This is not a very good sign of a business professional as moderate listening will
never help me to overcome any critical situations and become victorious. Rather I might face
different kinds of miscommunication and will not be able to grow bonds among different
members of the team. Therefore I also need to develop my listening skill.

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The next tool that I have used for this Reflection assignment is called the personal report of
intercultural communication apprehension also called Prica. This is helpful for an individual who
wants to know whether he has any gap in his intercultural communication skills .This tool has 14
important questions which need to be marked with the range of 1 to 5 and then the score is to be
calculated with a proper formula. Here there are three categories where the individual will be
assigned for being Low intercultural, moderate intercultural and high intercultural when the
marks will be below 32, 32 to 52 and above 52 respectively in this tool I found myself to belong
to the moderate intercultural group because I gained a score of about 40. This might be because
I have certain biases which get reflected during my communication with the people from other
cultures. Moreover, I am also unsure about how to behave with them as I do not have any
knowledge about their cultural preferences and inhibition point.
The next Tool that is used by me is called the tolerance for this agreement scale. This tool helps
to measure the degree to which an individual is able to tolerate other people when they disagree
with what he believed to be true. People who usually score low in this tool is unable to handle
more people disagreeing with him and therefore gets involved in different types of conflicts.
Individual who is scoring high in this tool have the capability to deal with more disagreement
and thereby can prevent himself from getting into any conflicts. This tool consists of 15
questions which needs to be answered with the scoring from 1 to 5. This score is then categorised
into three important groups of people like people with high TFD, low TFD and moderate TFD
when the score is above 46, below 32 and between 32 and 46. As I scored here 46, it means that I
am on the borderline of being high TFD and moderate TFD. This means that I am being able to

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take in disagreements successfully and strategically try to point out myself so that I do not
engage into any conflicts.
Another tool that I have used for my reflection is the personal report of public speaking anxiety.
It also like the other tool gives out a score and this is then categorised into three distinct
categories here I got a high score in public speaking with states that I am quite confident when I
speak in front of my friends as well with strangers.
Two issues have been identified by me that require immediate attention from my side for
betterment of my career. I have realized that the first problem which I need to look after is my
feedback providing skills to people. I failed to provide effective feedback to people because I
think that they will take me to be judgmental about their performance and they may develop a
feeling that I am interfering in their professional life. I also have a poor feedback receiving skills
because I get apprehensive that others may misguide me for their own advantages. Another skill
that I also need to mention here is my poor listening skills. I tend to become overconfident in my
approach. I do not provide scope to the speaker so that he can clarify himself or say something
important regarding anything task. These two issues need to be tackled by me properly so that I
can develop proper communication skills.
The first experience that I wanted to share here took during my placement years in the
firm. Our leader has made a team of 3 individuals of which I was also one member. The team
members provided a proper planning and thereby we divided our responsibilities and were
assigned with specific task. However I was absent for work one day when some modifications
were made in the task. The next day when I came back to work my team members came to us me

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to provide me all the information about the alterations that was made so that there is no
overlapping of the same task among the different group member. Due to my impatient listening
skills I got them short and told them that I had already understood and I need no more
information from them. However due to improper listening I had mistakenly conducted the same
work which was also done by my other team members and therefore it completely resulted in a
massacre of the result which was expected from us by our leader. My group failed miserably and
I was held responsible for this.
Another experience took place during my first month of internship. I was made the leader
of conducting a team of 6 members where I was supposed to develop a research procedure for
analyzing the growing incidence of retention from our company. I called upon a meeting and told
my team members that we would be developing an interview procedure for 120 employees of the
organization to understand their perceptions and of the work in the organization. To this one of
the member suggested that conducting interview for 120 people would be lengthy and therefore
conducting online survey would be easier but due to my overconfidence I did not receive the
feedback from the team members. However in reality the research took a long time to get
completed for which I was criticized by my mentor. If I would have taken their feedback and
would have given my own feedback, and thereby developed a discussion environment, the work
would have been more fruitful.
Researchers over the years have conducted experiment to find out the importance of
effective communication in both personal as well as professional life. They have stated that
effective communication helps in developing positive influence in different types of decision
making processes (Fujimori et al., 2014). They do so by presenting a particular strong point of
view that is helpful in forming a mutual understanding among the speaker as well as the listener.

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Individuals who are capable of proper communication procedures can deliver efficient decisions.
They also provide solutions which are accurate, timely and also have relevant information
(Hassani et al., 2016). They also help in developing healthy relationships by encouragement of
team members through trust and understanding. Jackson (2014) has stated that proper skills of
listening are an important part of developing effective communication. This is helpful in
providing the right information in the right process. And effective listening procedure is a kind of
communication skills which allow understanding of the opposite individual. It is also important
for listening to the response provided by the opposite individual in order to develop an idea about
their point of view. Any interruption or cut in the smooth flow of effective listening procedure
can be defined and termed as an ineffective listening (Fujimori et al., 2014). Researchers of the
opinion that listening is one of our most important factor for a professional and as well as for the
personal life because it helps in developing strong relationship. Gregory and Brian (2015) has
provided a number of different types of listening skills. A listener should always provide proper
attention by directly looking at them. While listening, they should not engage into any other
activities as this might make them miss out important information from registering into the brain
(Lin et al., 2013). The listener should also study the proper body language at the same time of
listening. While the opposite person is speaking, the listener should show genuine importance to
his discussion to prevent disappointment and lack of interest in the speakers. This can be
responded by listener repeating that in his own words in order to clarify whether the listener
properly understood what the speaker wanted to say. Article published by Hatala et al., (2014)
has stated that the listener should not always do not try to provide rationally behind what the
opposite person is speaking but whether he should try to understand from the point of view of the
of the speaker and try to gain knowledge about the perceptions of the speaker. He should develop

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the scheme to allow the speaker to complete his statement before giving any Views or opinion
(Jackson, 2016. Moreover other important factors that a listener should try to implement for
developing his interpersonal skills are to be timely in reaction to the speaker. This is significant
in both personal and professional life and timely speaking and reacting reduces the chance of any
sort of future misconceptions and also help to reduce the chance of any unsuccessful
commitments.
Researchers have stated that feedback is the information that can be defined as the
reaction to a particular discussion product or about the performance of a particular task.
Feedback is mainly provided to make task better or for the improvement. Feedback however is
restricted to only describing up the behaviour and never can be applied to personality. Feedback
sharing should be specific as possible. Conrad (2014) has stated that this helps in bringing the
main focus in the entire discussion procedure. Just like listening skills, feedback providing and
listening skills should also be timely for best benefits. It can bring out positive effects rather than
making the situation worse. Effective feedback actually helps in providing ideas to an individual
where he can understand what has gone wrong in his decision so that he does not repeat the same
mistake again in the future time. Many researchers suggest feedback as an occupational support
that helps in making an individual dedicate more into his professional and personal life and does
not allow him in getting burned off. It also helps an individual to learn about what other
perceives about his working style, capability, performance or, character (Linton et al. 2016).
Many other researchers have stated that feedback can help in providing motivation, improvement
of performance and can also act as a tool for continued learning.
The Action Plan which is proposed for the development of the listening skill and
feedback skills should follow smart objectives. The smart objectives of a specific goal are where

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the objective which would be proposed would be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and
timely. The goals would be development of effective listening plan and feedback giving and
receiving skills. For that I need to engage in different kinds of workshops that conduct tuition
classes on development of communication skills. Moreover I can also get admitted to the
university discussion forums which are usually held tri-weekly. The mentors can help me in
overcoming different barriers which I am facing in my communication skills. I can also go
through important communication models which are proposed in different article journal over the
years by eminent researchers. I can collect the journals from the digital library and follow them
closely to develop evidences of learning proper listening skills. This should be measurable. The
better I become in my listening skills I would be able to provide more efficiency in my personal
and professional task. The increase in success of my different types will help me to measure the
success of the different initiatives I take. This course should be attainable easily. Different types
of workshops, mentor, discussion forums journal papers etc are not that much costly and could
be afforded by me. I can also easily access the library which does not require any extra
subscription. Therefore the goal set is easily attainable. Moreover the initiatives I should be
taking should be relevant because that would help to me to make me aware of the different issues
I am having in my listening skill and will help me to develop skills which would overcome my
improper listening skills. A total of 6 months will be required for development of the listening
skills. A gnat chart is provided in next page.

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