Communication skills are very important for us. Everybody has to interact with each other in our daily and social lives. Moreover, we still have to interact with other colleagues in our professional lives. The methodology to develop the effective communication skills is interactive and participative. It is also important that we can convey our messages clearly and effectively to other people, so that they can understand what we are talking about.
Effective communication skill is very important for me as an international student. I faced many barriers in communications especially in public speaking, non-verbal communication and the language itself.
When I first came to Singapore at 2003, I have some language difficulties in communicating with local and foreign people. English is not my mother tongue and I took English as a second language in Myanmar. English is not the priority language except for English classes in my school. Moreover, the local slang confuses me as I am a non-Singaporean. I could not catch the local accent for first few months during my school days. It was until I had more local friends to talk to before I can overcome my language barrier.
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During my poly days, I had to give oral presentations for projects. At first, the inconvenience in language translation made me very nervous in explaining my work in front of my classmates and lecturers. Therefore it made me to realize that we must practice more to develop our oral presentation skills. It also further emphasizes that the public speaking skill is an important tool for work presentation too.
Appearance, movement, facial expression and voice convey mean non verbal communication. We always make interpretations from these actions. Therefore, we should fully understand the usage, characteristics and function of those non verbal communications effectively. In face-to-face interactions, cultural differences can complicate the framework of understanding within the interaction. In my country, we know that pointing with a leg is a kind of very bad behavior and we try to avoid doing it. However, it is a normal for someone to do it in Singapore. Therefore we have to adapt ourselves to different cultures when we explore different places or people.
In Summary, we should learn to know and understand the concept of effective communications especially across cultures. If we can overcome those barriers of communication, we will become the competent communicators in our daily interactions.
5 comments:
hihi May!
Yeah I'm sure you have came a long way before coming to this class... speaking in a language that you are totally unfamiliar with makes it more difficult for you to perform as well as you can do back there in your country!
So lets hope that you can make a very good conversationalist in this class! We'll speak up more in class next session onwards and put them into practice~~~ hehe... I'm sure Grace will be super happy if our group makes the noisiest group in the class!
Hi May
I do understand the life of being an international student. We were on the same boat since poly days. I believe our communications skills improved much compared to those days. But we still need to continue learning and trying as our communication skills have not reached the same level as others yet. So keep trying .Jia You !
I agree that when you are in another country, there will be barriers in communication. When I visited other countries, I faced some communication problems as well because of different slangs and cultures. I also feel that developing oral presentation skills is important because it is rather unnerving to present in front of a group of people.
Hi..
Yeah I totally agree with the problem of presentation as well. For me, sometimes I may get nervous and will just end up talking too fast and losing my audiences along the way. Let's learn to improve our presentation skills from everyone in this course and overcome this barrier!!! Cheers!
Hi May, thanks for sharing your personal experiences and in so doing, highlight to us the cultural barriers that foreign students face in their daily interaction with both locals and other foreigners.
Do make use of the opportunities in class to improve your communication skills. Remember, practice makes perfect so don't be afraid to speak up during class discussions!
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