Education is the wholistic development of an individual. Intellectual, moral and emotional knowledge are crucial to achieve the end wherein a pupil becomes a socially responsible, compassionate and functional member of a society. Education is more than what any school can provide to a child, and the learning does not, cannot and should not stop once a child steps out school boundaries.
Building effective communication skills through listening and speaking is essential to forming social and personal relationships. Our ability to reach out to people and understand them is a great way of learning from each other’s experiences and an opportunity to view the world from other’s perspectives. Success at communication, then, not only motivates and inspires interlocutors to interact with us based on the commonality of ideas but also allow them to open themselves to us and indulge in the exchange of ideas and thoughts.
But not everyone finds communicating with others as easy as some do, and most people are really bad at even starting or maintaining meaningful conversations. If that is the case for you, too, here are five easy steps to improve your skills without really breaking a sweat.
The Toastmasters club provides a good arena to prepare members to interact in different social situations. Table topics enable them to be prompt in responding to questions and build their confidence as they engage in conversations with people of diverse backgrounds. They make the members realize that they cannot become good communicators just by reading or surfing few tips on enhancing oral communication on internet. Rather, they have to become more socially active individuals engaging and molding in different social situations. Toast masters allows members to take initiatives in conversations as they prepare themselves and keep up with the current trends and events taking place around them.
Reading stories to children is a great way to practice on your speaking skills and learning to have detailed conversations by building upon random ideas. Toddlers’ inquisitiveness and imagination of this world is only limited by the time elders provide them. Reading to children opens up that world of imagination and their natural inclination to inquire leads to all sorts of questions. A LOT of questions.
Engaging with a child and building up stories to answer his or her queries is a great practice for your abilities to relate, think promptly and weave a story around a single strand of information the little one provides. These very abilities of understanding the speaker, relating his story with your own experiences and then adding a mutually interesting angle to the ongoing conversation is key to an effective communication and relationship in an adult setting. So the next time you see you nephew or niece running about, know that the child is the teacher of the man.
They say mimicry is the best form of flattery, and an effective way of polishing your speaking skills. If you think of someone as an amazing orator or someone who can have an effective communication with ease, the best tribute to him or her will be you mimicking that person’s way of communication. Whether that someone is a movie star, a news personality or your school teacher, you can observe the way they talk, the body language they maintain and the way they engage their audience to learn how to do the same yourself too. That’s one way to make an impression.
The world of accents is a tricky one and the variance in dialects and pronunciation inhibits communication even between people who have the same mother tongue. For this, you can try websites that offer lessons on courses and dialects. Let it be the British RP, Canadian or American English, by transcribing their oral discourses through phonetic symbols, you not only realize the inherent distinguishing patterns, but also why the accents differ from one another. Furthermore, if you are trying to sound more like a native English speaker, what you say becomes as important as how you say it. Your pace and clarity in our speech will lead to a more fluent adaptation of the native speaker accent, giving you more chances of communicating effectively.
Lyrics training is an innovative method of enhancing oral communication among students as they can learn English and other languages through music, a very likable activity, usually. And having fun while you learn is a great way to gain knowledge. Listening to music can be a great way of not only learning a language and words, but also how the language is spoken and the words are used in sentences by giving you an audible reference.
And singing the songs gives a great practice to your tongue too to learn the new sound and tongue rolls a language or dialect requires. This fun way of gaining knowledge will certainly add to your confidence and help you with improved oral communication.
Read more: Six ways to improve your vocabulary skills
The views and opinions expressed in the article are the writer’s own and do not reflect the views and policy of The Academia Magazine .
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