1. Task 2 – Explain the principles off
effective communication
By Zain Riasat

2. General communication skills
 “Understanding cultural difference, finding ways to engage an
audience and being able to adapt to a situation.”
 Wherever you go you are bound to come across cultural differences, these
can range from variety of things such as the language people use (e.g.
English people say "petrol" compared to Americans who say "gasoline") to
the way they greet each other (English & Americans shake hands compared
to Japanese who bow) and the way they eat (some Asian countries use
chopsticks instead of knives and forks).

3. Adapting
 The rule is then to adapt yourself to your surroundings rather than expecting
them to treat you the way you expect.
 If you were English and went to America and asked for “chips” you would get
“crisps” in return because of the difference in meaning of the word.
 Effective communication has a number of common elements. When
communicating, remember the following:
1. Modulate your voice
2. Correct terminology
3. Suitable format
4. Communication is unambiguous

4. Engaging audience
 When being taught by a teacher you sometiems think is the technique the
teacher using actually working for you. Most teachers in the school would
create a Powerepint presentation and would run through it for the whole
lessom ,with you expected to take notes. No one asks the question off am i
actually gaining knowledge/ learning from this?
 Another example would be Mr Wright’s way of teaching for our BTEC class.
Instead of showing us a presentation he would upload a flipped video which
covers the topics we need to know. For homework we would watch this
video prior to our next lesson. So when we have our next lesson we would
go over what was in the video etc.
 https://sites.google.com/site/btecict/unit-30/task-4

5. Potential barriers
 The barriers to cultural differences are when you go abroad not to offend
there culture. You sometimes only realise cultural differences when you go
abroad. That’s why it’s ideal to do some research on how they operate. So
when your there you don’t end up offending there cultural ways.
 Learning and researching about the country you are going is what you can
do to prevent the barrier. Other examples are taking a translator with you or
a small dictionary to help you communicate or when you have arrived just
mention the fact that you don’t know much about their culture and apologise
if you offend them in any way.

6. Interpersonal skills
 It’s your ability to relate to others, these skills include such as not only how
we communicate with others, but also our confidence, and our ability to
listen and understand. Problem solving, decision making and personal stress
management are also considered interpersonal skills.
 There are a number of ways in which we physically communicate. The most
common way is to enter into verbal exchanges. Sign language is a common
method of communicating with those who suffer from hearing difficulties.
The obvious difference is that the American system has been developed for
only one hand whereas the English system uses two hands. As a reader
you would suggest that you would know automatically which system your
looking at.

7. Positive and negative language
 Do you show a negative body language when someone's talking to you?
 There are many ways to say negative things without making them sound bad
and rude. Your body language makes the negative phrase sound good
instead of bad. For example when you swear at your friend but your showing
an “happy emotion”, your friend will realise you don’t mean it in a bad way.
 Speaking slowly and doing it deliberately often shows the communicator you
are frustrated. When someones shouting it gives you the indicator that
they’re angry.
 Positive body language is easily recognised because you know when
someones interested in what your saying. For eg when in a interview your
sitting with an open body, arms well positioned, sitting straight, showing eye
contact etc.

8. Potential barriers
Method Potential barrier How can you overcome?
Spell check When writing documents you Microsoft Word and other
often make mistakes in programs have a Spell checker
spelling, it’s a mistake we all which when you click on it. All
make. To make sure your words which are spelt
documents are up to date and incorrectly, you have an option
look professional. to make them correct.
Cultural differences Going on holiday can be a To overcome this it would be a
nightmare if you don’t know good idea to do some research
what people are saying. How before you go abroad. This
certain people live and their may about their living,
culture? To ensure you don’t language etc. At least this way
offend their culture what would it shows that you are trying to
you do? avoid the difficulties that may
occur.
Ringing someone When your on the phone to To get rid of the barrier you
someone, you sometimes lose should move away from the
signal. area to get signal.

9. Communicate in writing
 Spelling and grammar mistakes are common within everyone. When writing
letters, e-mails, etc mistakes are made.
 A spellchecker checks the spelling of individual words. Spellcheckers are
able to identify whether the letters in a word are missing or whether they
have been switch around (in the wrong place).
 The barriers to prevent this from happening are using spell check to review
your work and making sure all corrections are made. You can also ask
someone to proofread it for you. You should try to do this yourself once
you’ve created a document of some sort. When using a computer or a laptop
then software is available for you to use.

10. Identifying relevance
 Being able to extract relevant information from writing is a skill. You have to
decide which parts of the information you need and which you don’t.
1. Reading the document so you understand in general what it is about.
2. Read it again and make notes about the key points of the text, which is
relevant to you.
3. Interpreting the relevant information into your own words.
 As time goes on you will learn and be able to recognise what information is
important and which can be ignored.

11. Note taking
 It is a great skill being able to take effective notes, particularly as you
progress through education, taking notes is time consuming. Taking notes in
longhand is time consuming. For this reason many people use some form of
shorthand.
 Shorthand methods are written languages that use symbols that are quick to
write as abbreviations. Examples are; Want = wnt, Don’t= dnt, Anymore=
ne mre.
 A key point about taking notes is that you should always write up notes in full
as soon as possible after taking them, because then you might not
remember what you meant. Especially if you made a lot of errors.