Making Connections: Understanding Interpersonal Communication

Letter of Advice
Jasmine Lewis
COM 200

Dear Ashley and Josh, Congrats on your new engagement! I know from experience that marriage has many trials and both parties have to be willing to dedicate and put their all into it once you join as one. The most important thing that makes a marriage or any other relationship successful is communication. There are going to be disagreements but knowing how to talk everything out and compromise when needed are also ways to have a long healthy life together. Practice needs to start now instead of waiting until you both say “I Do.” Over the past five weeks, I have been studying interpersonal communication and would like to offer some advice that will be very useful to you both
Kathy Sole, author of “Making Connections: Understanding Interpersonal Communication”, defines communication as a process by which we share ideas or information with other people. Therefore, it is essential to be able to distinguish between the principles and misconceptions in effective interpersonal communication. Automatically, we think of communication as talk, but it is much broader than just speech. Facial expressions, hand gestures, body movements, and body positions are also types of communication. Communication has a meaningful purpose. We always communicate for a reason which may be to meet personal needs, to learn about ourselves, other people, and the world, or to build and maintain relationships with others. Communication is a complex process, and we will never know everything there is to know about ourselves and our relationships with others. However, the more we do understand, the better we can relate to others in our world and the more we can enhance our interpersonal relationships. (Sole,
One cannot understand others, respond effectively, or provide supportive feedback without taking the time to listen and hear everything that was said. One study estimated that 45 percent of all communication time is spent listening, compared with 30 percent speaking, 16 percent reading, and 9 percent writing .We sometimes confuse hearing with listening. Listening involves hearing, but it is much more than just the physiological act of your ears perceiving a sound and transmitting the auditory sensation to your brain. Listening is a complex psychological process that can be defined as the process of physically hearing, interpreting that sound, and understanding the significance of it (Hayes, 1991). While most people think they are fairly good listeners, studies show that the majority of people listen poorly and inefficiently (Lee & Hatesohl, 1993). According to John Adair, to be an effective listener, one must possess six qualities which are motivating yourself to listen, clearly hearing the message, paying attention to the message, correctly interpreting the message, evaluating the message, and remembering and responding appropriately. Motivation yourself to listen to one another simply means to make eye contact, focus on what the other will say, and having an open mind about what is about to be said. Outside distractions such as noise makes it impossible to hear what is being said and leads to assumptions being made.