Good Communication Skills for Better Jobs and Career Prospects

1. Introduction

What is speaking? In my opinion, speaking is when we have something in our mind and we want to deliver, share or send that idea, information, emotion, message or opinion to the other person so that particular person can understand what we have in our mind. In other words, speaking is an art to convey or relay message which exist today in many forms, country, ethnic, community and culture. Nevertheless I believe that when we talk about speak, we are not only talking about every single word that came from our mouth but realize it or not we’re talking about some form of oral communication and most humans have developed an ability to communicate through oral language. In today societies, oral languages can be found all over the world and born in every corner of the globe and more specially English as it world mostly widely spoken. Language can be used to convince, to convey information and to persuade. When we seek to convince, convey information and persuade we are talking about changing people’s minds. In other words, the language that we use is extremely important to get other people to understand what we want to delivered. Sometimes, we never thought the idea of simple language expressing extraordinary ideas. Today, Bahasa Malaysia always government preferred for the official and National language and our mother tongue since we were born. But an increasing demand for English due to globalization, Malaysia government taking proactive measure and gigantic steps to emphasize English as second language such as the about the policy of teaching Mathematics and Science especially in primary and secondary schools. As English is widely spoken around the globe and occupied in modern society due to the economic, information technology, politician, academic, scientific, broadcasting and internet. This action creates an opportunity for Malaysian as market growing demand for those who can proficient in English in order to meet and stay competitive in international market. This can be achieved through proper training and this is when the need for speech training in English comes in handy as it will increase self-confident and enabling to become effective communicator.

The purpose of this paper is to look the importance of English as a medium of communication especially when we focus on a group of school leavers. Moreover, the question of what benefits can we get if we speaking effectively and confidently in English. Many graduates today unprepared to enter the work place as most job manager role fast becoming from shift operation to team builder. As stated during MELTA 22nd of April 2003.

“Based on the resolutions of MELTA (Malaysian English Language Teaching Association) National Colloquium on the Role of The English Language In National Building held on 22nd of April 2003 at Sheraton Subang Towers and Hotel, Subang Jaya Selangor, "English Language plays a significant role in the enhancement of the economy and international-level political initiatives as well as cross cultural communication." English Language is also being identified to be one of the factors that many graduates unemployed. The unemployed graduates are urged to polish up their English and communications skills to better equip themselves, (Friday, November 04, 2005). English is now a medium at all level of education in Malaysia, from primary to tertiary level.”

Sadly enough, due to lack sufficient exposure in English either in school or usage in home, this can adversely affect the development of future careers and overcoming the challenge of making important decision. Therefore, learning oral communication skills thru personal development is important which brings personal potential for success or failure and achieve high quality in deliver presentation. It is important to step out of the comfort zone in order to stay competitive in global market. Being lack of exposure in English not an as excuse not to take proactive measure that helps bridge the gap. What does the phrase "comfort zone" mean exactly? Comfort zone is quite simply where we feels are most comfortable! We can become comfortable with many sorts of things either good or bad or more important is how we can move from this comfort zone to become highly successful person and set a trend to lead and let for others to follow. Highly successful people will step outside his or her comfort zone in order to accomplish his or her goals. Comfort zones are a matter of mental conditioning that allows you to create and operate within a "safe" set of boundaries that create a false sense of security. Once a comfort zone has been established, many people will tend to stay within the limits of that zone.

2. Oral Communication Skills and Personal Development

What is oral communication? A really basic definition that serves this purpose was found on www.teachingteams.arizona.edu/docs/OralCommunication.pdf - its says that "oral communication is the spoken interaction between two or more people"...however, it is"composed of multiple elements" which "result in the success or failure of the interaction" This definition embodies the goal that we are trying to achieve- to make our presentation successful and effective.

The basic concept of communication can be defined as the way we communicate by talking. The way we talk can reveal our thoughts, personality and shape our daily lives. There are a few type of oral communication such as monologue, conference, announcement, dialogue, narration, speech, debate, to name a few.

The definition given by Wikipedia, while primarily referring to spoken verbal communication, typically relies on words, visual aids and non-verbal elements to support the conveyance of the meaning. Oral communication includes discussion, speeches, presentations, interpersonal communication and many other varieties. In face to face communication the body language and voice tonality plays a significant role and may have a greater impact on the listener than the intended content of the spoken words. Mitchell, Scriven and Wayne (1990) report that public speaking skills are particularly crucial given that fifty-eight percent of new employees are expected to deliver at least one oral report of twenty minutes or less in the first six months of employment. As a presenter, we need to master oral communication in proper training in order to capture the audience and at the same time to boost our confidence. It understands that every now and then we all need a little extra support to embrace our full potential and face various challenges and difficulties. I believe oral communication can bring a message across faster than written communication and since we are living in a pace-conscious society, being informed efficiently is very important to all the people.

2.1 Personal Development

In personal development, it is important to learn and communicate in oral communication effectively. This will help develop bilingual competence and improve group and public speaking skills will contribute to language proficiency. According to Charles Godbout, its helps us set out with clarity our goals, the course of actions that we need to initiate in pursuit of such goals, conveying our needs to people who may help us with our goals, and utilizing the available relevant resources. When we have realized our goals, we may share them with other people or use them in our company, good communication skills play an important role. If we want to improve our confidence, we must work out to be able to be more effective in dealing with professors, classmates, colleagues, customers, supervisor, and subordinates. It’s help to establish good relationship, connection and possess good quality which later contribute to the desire of our dreams in our own terms. Moreover, it could boost our performance, project good image and handle problems more efficaciously and efficiently and communicate more clearly to public. The essence of communication is to understand and be understood clearly. The varying personalities and background as well as the different points of view may pose challenges in understanding things and people. If our communication skills are improved, the benefits are wide.

Having excellent communication skills, we may possess the abilities in successful response from people and the surroundings; become effective problem solving and decision-making skills and improved professional and personal image. The truth is that good communication skills are vital to our personal growth. It should be among the areas that we should give consideration if we are having a personal development plan. If we are good at communication, we may still include some exercises that may enhance our skills. If we have difficulties in communication, it should be among our top priorities in our development plan. Learn to express our concepts in several approaches. Learn to understand what people are trying to convey through their gestures, body language, and not just through their words. There are three areas of communication that we need to be good at. These are writing skills, listening skills, comprehension skills, and oral communication skills. But for this paper, we are going to focus only in oral communication and we should learn the techniques to catch the attention of our listeners and audiences. When we have caught their interests, it is important to maintain their concentration on you. Avoid boring people and keep the conversation or speech lively and interesting. Better still put some humor into our communication or presentation. Our personal development plan should allocate time for exercises that would enhance our communication skills.

2.2 The Purposes of Communication

There are four basic purposes for communication. Almost all of these purposes are better served through verbal communication than other options like E-Mail or print.
First, communication can be used to convey information. Of all the purposes of communication, this is the one that can be adequately accomplished through text-based media as well as verbally. Many businesses use E-mail or interoffice memos in this way. It is used simply to pass information such as meeting times or new policies from administration to employees.
Second, communication can be used to ask for help. Asking verbally for help has been shown to trigger natural empathy in the listener more than text-based communication. Often seeing the person asking for help increases the likelihood that a request will be granted. Like other verbal communication, verbal requests also mean that a request can be stated clearly and any miscommunication can be immediately rectified.
The third purposes of communication is to influence a listener or audience. This is the type of communication used by politicians. While this includes non-verbal cues like appearance and dress, the most important aspect is what words and syntax they choose to use. This is the most important component of influencing an audience.
The fourth and final form is entertainment. Once again there is a clear advantage to verbal communication over text-based communications. For example, most of the top comedians in the country make their living in live shows where they can readily interact with an audience rather than in text-based communication like books or websites.

3.0 Interpersonal

What are interpersonal skills- The definition given by Wikipedia, interpersonal skills can be referred to as the mental and communicative algorithms applied during social communications and interactions with others to obtain certain results. Interpersonal skills represent the behaviors and feelings that exist within every human being .Interpersonal skills influence our interactions with others. Characteristics like shyness or boldness, quietness or passiveness, are all different examples interpersonal skills. In other words I agree with the above mentioned definition that how well our relationships among our colleagues, co-workers and our friends are depends how well we gain respect from them. It is importance to behave and understanding individual differences. Likewise, ensuring each and everyone had equal opportunity to contribute, maintained excellent communication and coordinated their thoughts, mindset, ability and experience increases the productivity in the organization and achieved company goal. When synergies become energy these reduce any issues with regards from interpersonal conflict and create happy work environment.

4.0 Group and public speaking

What is public speaking – The definition given by Wikipedia is the process of speaking to a group of people in a structured, deliberate manner intended to inform, influence or entertain the listeners. Fear to stand in front of the crowd, finding our self terrified of a live audience looking at us if not overcome can disrupt careers and found ourselves the most embarrassing moments in our life. Remember to be confidence either in our self and the message that we want to deliver to audience. Learning to overcome and quickly conquer our fear to become and confident is one ideal way to continuously learn and grow through experience. Participate actively in conversation with colleagues, friends and family and public forum. All this training just to get ourselves familiarize and help overcome our fear with audience. The most importance aspect to overcome fear is to know our subject, what are the messages we want to deliver to our audience. It is important as well to prepare spiritually, intellectually, physically and emotionally to deliver value in order to influence and properly hit our objective target among audience, speak with confidence, and be sincere, whether you mean it or not. Apart from the content itself, building good delivery during presentation is essential as well and it requires building personal strength and better delivery habits which adds bonus during speech. It will benefits others area as well such as during interview, meetings or about anything if one would like to leave a good impression. First of all, understand that you 're a natural performer. As sociologist Erving Goffman reminded us in his 1972 book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, each of us plays many roles in our daily lives. We are the one that shape who we are and what we are going to present to the audience to fulfill their needs. Here are the three ways that will improve public speech apart from the content of the speech:

a) Personal Appearance

Creating vital first impression is as important as the way we dress and the way we groom effect the delivery of our speech. Care and good attention should focus should be given how smart we look and dress in order to create that first and last impression to audience. Looking and feeling fresh and fabulous give a big impact to the audience and we feel much better.

b) Vocal Tone

Vocal tone is a function of two things: our vocal cords and our body cavities. How our body cavities? When we speak, our voice originates at our vocal cords and then resonates through our chest, throat, and head as it comes out of our mouth. That 's why people sound funny when they have a cold - with plugged sinuses, our voice can 't resonate well. So, to improve vocal tone, one must "open up" their chest, throat, and head cavities.

We need the faith to find and set our own voice free; but we can gain comfort from the knowledge that it is the right voice can speak in our voice and give audiences what they came to hear.

c) Voice Projection

It doesn 't matter what you say if people can 't hear us! Weak (not quiet, but weak) voices can give the impression of fear and anxiousness, two impressions we don 't want to give. To develop good voice projection, remember this principle: our strength doesn 't depend on our mouth or throat, but on our lungs. In other words, when people yell until their throat is sore and they can 't speak anymore, they 're just hurting themselves and not using the air support they could for a full, strong voice. To develop that support, we need to have faith in our voice. Our voice contributes to language proficiency; help develop bilingual competence, increase self-confidence and self-worth. And it is the reason every one of us has the sheer inborn talent to persuade and inspire listeners.

5.0 Conclusion

In sum, the important of school leavers acquired communication skills especially in English English Language plays a significant role in the enhancement either in career or personal development. Effective communication is critical for the success of any organization. Through the use of proper communication skills, individuals will be better able to function as a group, thus allowing organizations to share information, analyze situations and to set goals (Nelton, 1995).

Moreover, good oral communication skills have, in fact, been found to be the second most important job skill by the American Society of Personnel Administrators (Curtis, Winsor, and Stephens, 1989). As such, the need to develop personal development to increase self-confident and to boost personal quality to deliver good presentation skill to audience. In other hand, the better the communication skills acquired, not only it will help to create a better impression but also improve relationship as well as increase effectiveness both as a speaker and as a person as it increases our ability and capacity.

As the writer of this essay, I conclude that good communication skills especially in English are needed by school leavers for better job or career prospects and they will be better trained to compete for a job not just locally but to compete and bring value from nationally to globally.

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References,
Bean, Devin (June 13, 2008) Public Speaking Exercises - 3 Ways to Improve Personal Presence, Vocal Tone, and Voice Projection Retrieved July 07, 2011 from http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Devin_Bean
Curtis, D. B., Winsor, J. L., & Stephens, R. D. (1989). National preferences in business and communication education. Communication Education, 38, 6-14
Genard Gary (2011) Speak for Success! Retrieved July 07, 2011 from http://publicspeakinginternational.blogspot.com/
Godbout, Charles (2005-2011) Communication Skills And Personal Development Plan. Retrieved July 07, 2011 from http://www.articlesnatch.com/Article/Communication-Skills-And-Personal-Development-Plan/88844
Mitchell, R. B., Scriven, J. D., & Wayne, F. S. (1990). An analysis of business recruiters’ assessment of the importance of verbal, nonverbal, and group interaction communication skills. Paper presented at the meeting of the Association for Business Communication International/National Convention, San Antonio, Texas.
Nelton, Sharon. (Nov 1, 1995). Face to face: by communicating the old-fashioned way - through talking and listening to customers and employees - companies are achieving new goals
Types of Communication (2011 Verbal Communication Retrieved July 07, 2011 from http://www.t ypesofcommunication.org/communication/verbal-communication/verbal-communication/

References: Bean, Devin (June 13, 2008) Public Speaking Exercises - 3 Ways to Improve Personal Presence, Vocal Tone, and Voice Projection Retrieved July 07, 2011 from http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Devin_Bean Curtis, D. B., Winsor, J. L., & Stephens, R. D. (1989). National preferences in business and communication education. Communication Education, 38, 6-14 Genard Gary (2011) Speak for Success! Retrieved July 07, 2011 from http://publicspeakinginternational.blogspot.com/ Godbout, Charles (2005-2011) Communication Skills And Personal Development Plan. Retrieved July 07, 2011 from http://www.articlesnatch.com/Article/Communication-Skills-And-Personal-Development-Plan/88844 Mitchell, R. B., Scriven, J. D., & Wayne, F. S. (1990). An analysis of business recruiters’ assessment of the importance of verbal, nonverbal, and group interaction communication skills. Paper presented at the meeting of the Association for Business Communication International/National Convention, San Antonio, Texas. Nelton, Sharon. (Nov 1, 1995). Face to face: by communicating the old-fashioned way - through talking and listening to customers and employees - companies are achieving new goals Types of Communication (2011 Verbal Communication Retrieved July 07, 2011 from http://www.t ypesofcommunication.org/communication/verbal-communication/verbal-communication/