Developing Communication Skills

by Z. N. Patil, The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad & Yeasmin Sultana, Ph.D. Research Scholar, Assam University, Silchar

Life is a process of communication. Our activities and relationships depend on our ability to connect and communicate. A large part of our private and professional life is a series of communication events. We communicate with family, friends, visitors, acquaintances, colleagues and casual passers-by. We can communicate through body language and verbal language. Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, and Mr. Bean are probably the best examples of communication through body language. However, most of us communicate through verbal language and body language together. We use body language to complement, contradict and highlight what we say through verbal language.

All of us know that language is an instrument. It’s a tool like a saw, a hammer, and a drill. It’s a tool of communication. We communicate our ideas, thoughts, feelings, opinions, attitudes, information and even misinformation through language. We’re sure you’ll have noticed that different people express the same idea in different words. They use different sentence patterns. That’s why we say that style is the man. Let’s cite an example. Suppose, there are two young men who want to express their love for their girl friends. One of them is a realist and doesn’t believe in expressing his love in a poetic manner. He would like to say to his beloved, “I’ll love you till I die. That’s it.” The other one is a poet and would like to express his feelings in a poetic way. He would like to say, “I’ll love you till all the mountains in the world melt due to the heat of the sun, till all the oceans go dry, and till the all the deserts fly away.” (more…)