Founder-CEO, KANDOR, Rinkal Shukla is a highly accomplished and renowned public speaking coach, leadership trainer and public speaker. She has delivered result-oriented training based on her extensive experience of 12 years in a wide range of industries, like real estate, banks, entertainment and media, manufacturing, IT, FMCG, pharmaceuticals and B-schools. Rinkal has conducted innumerable workshops on public speaking, leadership and management, presentation skills, communication skills, team-building, job delegation, sales training, and time management. She has lectured extensively on investment and finance, self-improvement methodologies and public speaking without stage fright.
Effective communication skills are important to be successful in every aspect of life. The modern education model puts a lot of stress on the importance of preparing a student to become the best professional on a definite platform. Effective communication is an essential part of professional life no matter what field a student is in. Students with effective communication skills will, probably, contribute more to class discussions, ultimately achieving more from their experience in class, and will be more productive members in group projects.
Communication is a two-way process that signifies there is a communicator and also one who is being communicated with. Effective communication can help build and encourage a safe learning atmosphere where students can learn, prosper and grow. It is very important to build good communication skills from an early age for a child’s growth, as well as future learning. Communication skills that students learn at school are vital and transferable across every part of their lives.
Effective communication skills will help them make a huge impression and allow them to engage in clear conversations. This includes both written and spoken communication and the ability to transfer information to another person efficiently and effectively.
Here are 8 simple ways to improve effective communication skills among your students.
- Encourage Students to Engage in Conversation
To improve effective communication skills among students, it is important to motivate them to initiate and engage in conversation. Most of them may not want to talk at all initially. This becomes difficult for them to express their feelings accurately when they are upset or stressed. So, we should inspire them to get involved in activities. Commence, and support, talks through art activities, paired reading activities, and when playing games. We should discuss the events taking place in the classroom and their feelings about these activities. This way, you can offer support, as well as provide a platform to establish stronger communication skills among your students.
- Safe Ambience
Create a supportive and safe ambience where students feel comfortable to open up and show their ideas and thoughts. This will help students improve effective communication skills; an ambience that permits students to ask whenever they require help which is vital to their academic success. Additionally, to support effective communication, it is important to have an open-door policy and allow students to talk about anything.
- Use of Technology
Technology is changing every day and it enhances communication quite effectively. Today, it has become easy to learn the best communication strategies through a variety of technological resources that are available. So, students can also use these resources to improve their communication skills.
- Active Listening
You should listen actively to show students that you care about what they feel and want to say. Listen to hear students, not just to respond and give an answer. Sometimes, just lending an ear can be immensely useful in promoting a caring and supportive ambience. A vital way to improve effective communication among students is listening to them. Actively listening to students and encouraging them to ask more questions in the classroom will be more helpful.
- Teamwork
Teamwork is an essential way to improve effective learning among students. Doing group work and more team activities are excellent ways to take the mind away from competing with one another and focusing more on working together to achieve great results. This can inspire communication, collaboration, and cooperation and assist students in communicating more and effectively showing themselves with their classmates. Group presentations, such as team-building exercises, also play an important role in sharpening the verbal, as well as written, communication skills of students.
- Allow Students to Share Opinions
Allowing students to share their opinions in the classroom is again a vital way to improve effective communication. Asking their opinions in the classroom will also help them develop better communication skills. You can teach your students to share their thoughts and opinions in the classroom. And once they begin to share their views in the classroom, they become comfortable and can speak on any given topic.
- Positive Feedback
Sometimes, teachers forget to give positive feedback when a student has performed well. This positive feedback encourages students to perform better in every field. Giving positive feedback is an important part of encouraging effective communication among students. Research shows that students who receive praise believe that they can achieve tasks and be successful. Another advantage of positive feedback is that it can help build a student’s confidence, a supportive ambience, and create good harmony.
- Reflective Learning
Teachers can record the students while going through selected texts and group presentations, which is a proven method for understanding their communication weaknesses and strengths. Students can judge each other’s performance while communicating in small groups. They can be asked to criticize one another for poor communication so that they get used to receiving constructive criticism and can improve their communication skills.
To further improve communication skills among impacted students, you can get better results by promoting a more open and shared learning ambience.
If you are wondering how to improve communication skills among your students, you can surely follow the methods mentioned here.