Noise is indeed a barrier to communication, it is unavoidable and prevalent in just about every environment.
Some types of noise are:
* physiological noise - this includes hearing disorders, impairments and disabilities that make it difficult to send or receive messages, for e.g. deafness
* semantic noise – the unintended meanings aroused by the use of certain behaviours or symbols that distract your attention from the main purpose of what someone is saying, for e.g. two persons are having a discussion and one of them uses profanity, the other person will focus most of his/her attention on the profanity instead of the real message.
* psychological noise –this is an internal force that interferes with the sender’s or receivers interpretation of messages for e.g. preoccupation- the sender or receiver is focused on issues not related to the message.
* physical noise – this includes distractions from the environment for e.g. operation of heavy machinery In spite of noise, we must seek creative ways to communicate every day.
In the classroom setting, noise provides many barriers to communication, teachers must utilize innovative methods to continue with the communication process in an effective manner in order for teaching and learning to occur on a daily basis.
NOISE IS A BARRIER
Some barriers to communication in classrooms
1. Wrong choice of medium – (i) children have various learning styles for e.g. auditory learners, visual learners and tactile learners. If a teacher uses a chart this will only appeal to the visual learner (learns by looking) however, the teacher could use a wider variety of media such as a (a) computer, it emits pictures and sounds, so both visual and auditory learners (learns by listening) will learn from it, (b) models, are three dimensional representations of real objects, the tactile learner (learns by