The importance of non-verbal communication

                                                   
                                          Discussions in COMM11003 week 8, Term 1, 2015
                                                             ----- written by JolleyNguyen ------

Communication plays an important role in our life. It includes verbal and non-verbal communication skills, but which one is more important? According to Mehrabian (cited in Beebe, Beebe & Ivy 2013, p. 85)  that people notice most about the emotional information or movements of our body which takes 55 percent of total, the next one with 38 percent is relevant to voice volume, pitch, rhythm and the rest with 7 percent comes from spoken words. 

Fig1.1:  The percentage of communication

Non-verbal communications consist of facial expressions, the rhythm, and pitch, tone of the voice, gestures through body language and the physical distance between the communicators. Clues, information as well as meaning can be given more through these signs than spoken communication.  Therefore, interpersonal communication not only involves the explicit meaning of words, the information or messages conveyed, but also refers to unclear messages which are expressed through non-verbal behaviors.  That is the reason why Eunson (2005, p.232) thought, ‘nonverbal communication can be a very powerful tool in understanding ourselves and others.’

There are some examples for the non-verbal communication. However, it depends on personal nonverbal communication which relates to an individual’s personal characteristics and cultural non-verbal communication which refers to characteristics that are common to a group (Dwyer 2009). In my case, I usually don’t keep eye contact with my partner if I am wondering about what they say or misunderstanding their meanings. Moreover, there are some gestures such as curling your hair, biting your nails or lips show how nervous you are. These gestures may depend on your characteristic in some ways. Many non-verbal behaviors are world-known and certain expressions have the same meaning around the globe such as a smile or laughter being a signal of positive emotions (Adler & Rodman 2003, p.157).      

Fig1.2 : The way people bow each other in Japan 

In Japan or Korea, instead of saying hello, hi or waving hands as in Australia, America, etc, Japanese and Korean usually bow with each others. Moreover, when one bows you first then the others have to bow lower than the priority to show their respect.  Otherwise, in Western society, people divide into 4 types of distance to define what kind of relationship between the communicators. There are intimate distance which is 45cm to define that you are speaking to whom you do not have a close relationship, personal distance which helps communicators get easier to see the other person’s expression and eye contact, social distance which is the normal distance for impersonal business, and public distance which is quite far and need help from non-verbal communication. 

In conclusion, to help you know clearly about non-verbal communication and its examples, you should spend a little time to watch this video: 

References:

 Beebe, SA, Beebe, SJ & Ivy, DK 2013, Communication: principles for a lifetime, Pearson Education, Boston

             Pie Chart, viewed May 12 2015, http://www.dennisgingerich.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Non-Verbal-Communication-Chart-Transparent1.png

               Eunson, B 2005, communicating in the 21st century, 1st edn, John Wiley & Sons Australia Ltd, Milton

              Dwyer, J 2009, Communication in business: strategies and skills, 4th edn, Pearson Education, Frenchs Forest

           Adler, RB & Rodman, G 2003, Understanding human communication, 8th edn, Oxford University Press, New York 

            Olafson, BT 2014, non-verbal communication assumptions, viewed 12 May 2015, http://grow2.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/non-verbal-communication.html

          Hall, V 2013, ‘ 8 types of nonverbal communication youtube’, viewed 12^th of May 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csaYYpXBCZg

          

How does planning work?

                                     Discussions in COMM11003 week 5, Term 1, 2015                                                                                                     - written by JolleyNguyen- 

     Planning in communication might be fallen into oblivion without knowing that in any type of communication you need to plan and logically organize your information as well as your audience ( Euson 2012, pp. 350-351) to make an impression with audiences. You cannot deny the importance of planning because it will create a lot of advantages when you are well-prepared in planning and organizing. A plan is not necessarily doing something, but deciding on how you will do something. Moreover, planning not only increases the efficiency of what you want to say, what you want to transmit but also reduces the risks while you are in conversation. 

     Locker and Kaczmarek (2011, p. 64) suggest that you should set aside two-thirds of your time for planning and revising when writing and this is appropriate for most communication practice. This will help you in some way leading to successful because you can maintain in good control, achieve the targets beautifully and planning helps you to express your creativity and innovation. Besides, if you are good at planning and do it well, you may readily choose the best way of all available strategies. It helps you become a good decision maker. Therefore, why don’t you spend a liitle time of yours to plan your day, week or even months?

      For instance, if you want to create a plan for a typical week including time for your study, work, family or other activities, you should need organize it carefully every detail. You should analyze the most important event first about its time, place and then notice the others.  When you create a schedule for your own, you might be more active as well as control about the time. Moreover, everything will be done perfectly if you do the same as what you have planned.

     Let’s create one for your own. 

 References:

   Eunson, B 2012, Communicating in the 21st century, John Wiley & Sons, Milton

    

    Locker, KO & Kaczmarek, SK 2011, Business communication: building critical skills, 5th edn, McGraw-Hill, New York

    Gaurav Akrani,2012, importance of planning – why planning is important?, viewed 12th of May 2015, http://kalyan-city.blogspot.com/2012/02/importance-of-planning-why-planning-is.html

   McGill, R 2012, ‘The 5 minute lesson plan’, viewed 12^th of May 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPPkwfLbzkM

The importance of knowing your audience in communication

                                          Discussions in COMM11003 week 2, Term 1, 2015
                                                    ----------Written by JolleyNguyen--------------- 

The communication is therefore faced with an audience and every participant has an imagined audience when communicating (Marwick & Boyd 2010, p115). Therefore, there are many kinds of audience who is a group of people or an individual coming to listen to the speaker. When you are in communication, you should notice your target to create an effective conversation. 

Frankly, it is very essential to know your audience through stepping into the mind of them, understanding their perspective to create a better link between the speaker and a listener as well as an audience. In some ways, if you are in a conversation and you know how your target is, what you are aiming to, you will be able to from a relationship easily with your audience, making a successful and interesting communication.  Just imagining about you had a presentation in front of many people, you kept talking without any people’s notice. What would you feel?  That is the reason you should keep your audience interested and engaged to your topics, by according to Thill and Bovee (2013, p. 9) that talking about a great skill to acquire is the ability to recognize, understand and respect the wishes and needs of each member of the audience. 

Communication can create variety of relationship with various types of people in different setting of our lives. In every case, you have to communicate depending on your audience and your situation. You may understand that there is a big different gap between your family, your best friends and your work colleagues, the one who is not close to you or has higher position than you when sharing emotion or transmitting information.  In my opinion, talking to my family members or my best friends is the most comfortable because of the well understanding of targets and the good communicational environment.  

References: 

• Marwick, A & Boyd D 2010, I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapses, and the imagined audience, New Media & Society, Vol 13, No 4, pp114-133
• Thill, JV & Rovee, CL 2013, Excellence in Business Communication Pearson, Boston, 10th edn
• Mike Consol, 2011, the 7 keys to knowing your audience, viewed 11th of May 2015, http://www.sanleandrochamber.com/blog/post/the-7-keys-to-knowing-your-audience/  

Do you communicate in an effective way?

                                      Discussions in COMM11003 week 1, Term 1, 2015

                                                 ------Written by JolleyNguyen------

             It is believed that people cannot live without communicating because "communication can be defined as the process of understanding and sharing meaning” according to Pearson J and Nelson. Therefore, everyone all knows how to speak to each other, how to share information but to be a good communicator is not easy at all.

             Effective communication is the key to success in relationships, in the workplace and across your lifetime. It is also an important element of success for every organizations, leaders, managers, supervisors, and employees.  An organization whose people communicate effectively experience fewer of misunderstandings that creates friction between people, wastes time, and causes mistakes. Effective communication can be also an advantage for your career. Good communication skills not only  give people an edge in getting the jobs they want but also help them move up the ladder to better paid positions or successful job they have. Moreover, daily issues and problems can be solved readily with the one who communicates well. Dwyer (2009, p. 72) argues the importance of personal and social competence because those people ‘who are personally and socially competent build positive, constructive relationships’

         

             In this today’s professional world, there are a lot of effective communicators who are successful with their field. For instances, many professors or presenters in Ted Talks are effective communicators because they know how to inspire their motivation, transmit their knowledge and people get easy to listen and understand what they want to say. 

  Figure1 :  Baratunde Thurston speaks as a well communicator in Ted talks.

Source :  May, Kate Torgovnick 2015, Behind-the-scenes gallery: TED2015 comes to a close

            So what do the reasons make they become such a good communicator like that? 

            

            Indefinitely, they get a special skills when dealing with written and oral presentations. They know how to organize their sayings, their words and they have the awareness of the audience. . For Eunson (2012, p. 456), interpersonal skills include ‘assertiveness, listening, questioning, framing or problem defining, and influencing skills’.

References:

    Pearson, J., & Nelson, P. (2000). An introduction to human communication: understanding and sharing (p. 6). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill

  Dwyer, J 2009, Communication in business: strategies and skills, 4th edn, Pearson Education, Frenchs Forest.

   May, Kate Torgovnick 2015, behind-the-scenes gallery: TED2015 comes to a close, viewed 9^th 

May 2015 , http://blog.ted.com/behind-the-scenes-gallery-ted2015-comes-to-a-close/ 

   Eunson, B 2012, Communicating in the 21st century, John Wiley & Sons, Milton