Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Why effective communication is important?

In Singapore, it is hard not to see people around us as we are a growing population in a tiny piece of land. Thus it is important for people to develop effective communication skills so as to be able to converse with these people make a relationship out of it.

Effective communication allows me to put across my ideas clearly so that people listening to me will understand. This skill would be especially crucial when I enter the workforce. For instance, if I want the customers to buy my products, the advantages of the products must be accurately and effectively be received by the customers. On the other hand, when I fail to communicate effectively, misunderstanding can happen easily as others might misunderstand the actual meaning of what I am trying to convey.

Besides that, able to communicate well can be to my advantages too. For instance, I will be able to convince the others that my view is right. For example in tertiary education, there are various versions of answers for questions. These answers are mostly findings and speculations from the authors. However, students only accept answers that are able to convince them and accept it as the true answer. Thus the truth is defined by how much we can convince the person. If we are able to convince the others, our ideas and beliefs will be acceptable to them.

Lastly, I believe that effective communication skills need to be honed at all time. Just like other skills, it requires constant practice and self improvement. However, with the rise of the use of the Internet, more people are spending their time with their computers rather than communicating with their families and friends. This is a worrying situation as confining yourself to your own world or home for too long will dull a person’s ability to hold an effective communication with the others. So it is time to move your bottoms if you are one.