Oral Communication
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Oral communication involves spoken interaction between two or more people using both verbal and nonverbal cues like body language and gestures. Effective oral communication requires understanding the audience, adapting one's message based on the audience, and actively listening to feedback. Key techniques include maintaining eye contact, adapting one's body language, tone, and style of speech to match the audience, and reflecting on cues from listeners. Mastering oral communication skills is valuable for personal, academic, and professional success as it allows for confident presentation of information and understanding of others.
Oral Communication
- 1. Oral Communication Definition: A communication is a link or a medium involved between message sender and the message receiver. Oral communication is the spoken interaction between two or more people. Oral communication involves body language postures and gestures for an effective communication, not everyone is an effective communicator. Interruption: It breaks the continuity or uniformity & hinder or stop the action of someone by breaking in. whenever a message is composed we need to consider what content to include, how the receiver will “interrupt” it and how it may affect our relationship. “Interruption creates problem in Communication” Techniques for Effective Oral Communication: As a speaker there are several elements of oral communication of which we need to be aware in order to learn how to use them to our advantage. Let’s see with a few important skills for interacting with our audience. Eye Contact: Maintaining eye contact with our audience is the simplest thing we can do to establish a relationship. Eye contact serves many purposes. First, it establishes that the parties are listening. Second, eye contact indicates receptiveness. Third, eye contact is a basic expressive form. A speaker can learn a lot from the audience by just reading what their eyes are saying. Body Language: As a speaker, the messages we send through our body language affect how our audience perceives us. Whether we are interacting one on- one or with an auditorium of 200 people, the effectiveness of our message is affected by how we carry our self. Style and Register: Tone and pace of speech affect how our audience responds to us. We want to match our tone to that of our audience. We do not want to come off as ignorant. Rather, we need to sound confident at a basic level so that we do not lose credibility with our audience. Understanding the Audience: Whether we are interacting one-on-one with a friend or coworker or speaking before a large group, understanding our audience is a part of effective communication. Our audience will have differing levels of knowledge and differing expectations. Adapting to Audience: Now that we know to whom we are speaking, we need to know how best to address them. We need to determine what level of content and tone are appropriate to our audience. If we are dealing with a person one-on-one, we want to be more personal in our tone. If we are speaking before Congress, we want to appear more professional. Active and Reflective Listening: As a speaker we should always listen to what our audience has to say, whether it is spoken or not. As a speaker we broadcast a variety of verbal and non-verbal cues, as does our audience. Learning how to read and interpret those cues is part of being a successful communicator.
- 2. Steps for Improving Oral Communication: Oral skills both speaking and listening are at the very foundation of literacy. Classroom talk helps us to learn, to reflect on what we are learning, and to communicate our knowledge and understanding. We need authentic opportunities to learn how to listen and speak effectively in a variety of situations in pairs, and in small and large groups. We are sometimes assigned an oral activity (e.g. working in small groups) without a clear understanding of what is expected and how to be most effective. Conclusion: The oral communication skills include the areas of content, language, nonverbal delivery, organization, use of visual aids, and vocal delivery. Learning how to become an effective communicator will be one of the most valuable skills we can learn. It will help us in our day-to-day personal, academic, and professional life. Knowing that we can effectively speak and present to others will give us the confidence to do well in many spheres of life. In our role as a preceptor, we will find that being able to understand and communicate with our peers will make our job much easier and rewarding.