Effective Communication Skills 2

Task One
Effective communication is very vital to every aspect in our life, no
matter for academic or career. As a civil engineering student,
effective communication is essential to my career. If I dont
communicate well with my colleague, misunderstand may cause
and things will go worse. After joining this course, I perceive some
important theories of communication and know how to make use of
them to improve my communication skill. I will compare and
contrast two interpersonal communication theories that I have
learned in this course.
The first theory I have learned is emotional intelligence. EI is the
ability to perceive emotion, integrate emotion to facilitate thought,
understand emotions and regulate emotions to promote personal
growth. It is equally important to IQ. EI is not innate talents. We can
use EI to control our emotion. It is composed of characteristics of
Self- awareness, Self-management, Social awareness and
Relationship management in the Daniel Golemans high level model.
Self- awareness is the aware of emotional variety. To understand
and identify ones own emotion can help us to have accurate selfassessment and understand our strengths and weaknesses. In selfmanagement, well emotional self-control is required. I need to
restrain impulses and contradictory emotions while working with
other. Conflict and different opinion always occur in a group
discussion. Therefore, it is important to show your honesty and
integrity when come to such a similar situation. As for the social
awareness, there are so many perspective to look at the same
thing. Thus, we need to feel other people's emotions and
understand other people's point of view. In the future, this can guide
me to become a person that can easy to realize needs of client and
other service objects. Finally, the Relationship management is the
most significant element in the theory. It points out how to build up
a strong leadership. This require an ability to guild, inspire and
persuade others to accept ideas. Also, the relationship management
includes Conflict Management which tell us how to reduce disagree
in order to coordinate the consensus. It can help me to establish a
good relationship to my colleague in the future.
The second theory I have learned is Neuro Linguistic Programming
(NLP). NLP is more complicated theory than EI and mention deeply
about how to improve communication skill. Its intention is to explore
the heart and neurology. This inter-personal communication is quite
a helpful stuff. In the lesson, I have done an activity to analyze the
listeners thinking by watching which way their eye are pointing at.
Eye will tend to point to Specified direction corresponding to the
sensory system when answering a question. After this activity we
come up that in general people looking up means that they are

visualizing or imagine something, pointing at the Centre means they

are generally remembering or constructing sounds and looking
down means they are generally dealing with kinesthetic senses or
feelings. By understanding the listeners thinking we can enhance the
effectiveness of our communication. I think this technique is the most
useful tool in Neuro Linguistic Programming. It can help me in the future
career. I may work in the construction site as an engineer or a supervisor
while I start my career in civil engineering. I need to take reasonable care
for the health and safety of the worker on site. I need to hold Tool Box
Talks frequency. The talks given to those workers mention about the
existing hazards and reminders of safe working on site. It can avoid
accident happening on site. The technique can give me some clue on the
peoples degree of understanding and their thinking. I can ensure every
workers are truly understand what I am talking. On the other hand, I will
look straight to people eye when communicating with him. It made me
feel actively and more enthusiastically during communication. It is
because eye movements can motivate different parts of the brain and it
can help me think critically when communicate with people.

In conclusion, emotional intelligence and NLP Eye Accessing Cues are very
useful to me on developing effectiveness communication. It makes me
understand communication is not only involving speaking, but also
emotion control and eye contact. I hope I can make use of those theory to
improve my communication skill effectively and to help my career.

Task Two
Communication is extremely important especially for my career. As an
international student, I felt difficult and anxiety to communicate with
people in English during the first year I studied in United Kingdom. English
is not my first language. Speaking English became my first challenge in
my university life. After 2 years, my communication skills have been
improved a lot. There is still a big room for improvement. I also realize how
important it is to improve my communication skills effectively.
In the first year of my university life, I joined a group of five members. The
members were all local students. Thus, there existed a communication
problem. However, they didnt isolate me for communicating poorly. In
fact, they often slowed down the speaking Rhythm in order to
accommodate me. Sometime I could not even express myself in English.
They used to correct my English sentence and pronunciation. As time gone
by I felt confident to communication and speak more fluently. I was very
appreciated with my group mates and felt luck to work with them. In order
to get improvement on my communication skill, I chose to step out of my
room and participate more to the society of the University in my leisure
time. Thus, I joined the University swimming team and made a lot of new
friend there. My interpersonal relationship was extended. Joining the
swimming team not only improved my communication skill, but also
helped me to relax after a busy day. My personal strength is emotional
intelligence. I have the ability to control and manage my emotion properly.
Emotion do not influence my decision much. Many times when we came to
argument on some issue and someone tried purposely to frustrate my
conviction. I relaxed by taking a deep breath in order to tamp down my
negative emotion. Calming down didnt scatter anger but avoid conflict
and frustration. With this yielding temper I can accommodating others
view and enable cooperation among group mates. Finally I can achieve the
aim of effective communication to balance between emotional feeling and
intellect thinking.
There is room for improvement on my nonverbal communication.
Nonverbal communication is about using nonverbal signals. Wordless
communication or body language enhance the effectiveness of
communication. Generally it makes use of Facial expressions, body
language or tone of voice to express or receive message properly.
Language is inadequate to express feeling and intention. We need to pay
extra attention to peoples nonverbal expression which will help us to
understand other's emotions, attitudes, personal characteristics, or even
their intention. Sometime it help me build truly and honest relationship
between my teammate and colleague. For example, I can pat a teammate
or colleague on the back to Comfort them or by handclap to praise their
work on his success. Developing the ability to understand and use
nonverbal communication can help me to deepening the connections with
others. Also, it reinforce my expression and build better relationships with
others at life or work.
I set up a serval measures to improve my nonverbal communication. There
are two parts, one is to understand nonverbal communication and the
other is how to deliver it. For the first part, I will try to notice people in
public area how they use body movement when communicate with others.
I will observe the special nonverbal signals according to their nationality
because people from different countries tend to use distinct gestures. By

understanding each culture of different body language, I can understand

well how they act and react to each other. Especially in UK consisting of
many different cultures, if I have the ability to recognize body language of
people from different countries, it helps me a lot on my life and career in
UK. For the second part on delivering, I will practice myself in front of the
mirror using body language. In the future presentation, I will try to use
more body language to signal confidence, avoid some behavior like
looking down on the floor, averting eyes and try to be confident by smiling
and maintaining eye contact.
In conclusion, effective communication not only ameliorate our
understanding on a person or situation but also help us to deal with
difference opinions, establish trust and respect. I wish I can use the
knowledge I learned from the effective communication to enhance myself
both in the social skills and the future career.