Effective communication is the key of success to all relationships. It is inevitably important when we are interacting at school or workplace. On top of that, I do feel that it is equally important when it comes to maintaining personal relationships. Communication can be channeled through a few means in assisting the sender to bring his point clearly across to the receiver; be it face-to-face, or via the World Wide Web. As for me, a year 3 NUS Science student, communication influences my academic and personal life to a great extent.
Firstly, effective communication comes in handy during tutorials and laboratory sessions. We are often assigned into different groups with other students whom we might not know before to conduct an experiment or presentation. Effective communication helps to break the ice among us and avoid miscommunication, thus acting as a catalyst to hasten our progress in completing task (which is necessary as time is gold, especially for NUS students!). For an instance, when I was doing a biochemistry experiment with my lab partner, we always reminded each other of what to do and what we have done. It is crucial as skipping or adding steps in an experiment could lead to different outcomes. Hence, effective communication helps me to work with different people in completing a task as a team.
Secondly, effective communication also plays a vital role in fostering my personal relationships. It helps to reduce misunderstanding when we are communicating, especially with our loved ones. For an example, I used to misunderstand my mother as being over-protective as she set curfew and disallowed me to do things that she thought might be harmful to me. I came to know later that what she did was out of her care for me. It was the way that we communicated which created misunderstanding between us. Things might be easier if we understood each other and communicated more effectively. Therefore, I believe effective communication could enhance a relationship tremendously.
All in all, communicating effectively could leave a big impact in one's life and allow one to shine in professional and personal aspects.
Hi Mei!
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing about your experience! Honestly, I have had the same experience and felt displeasure towards my parents for being strict with me. I often get into arguments with them when I am not able to understand their intentions and reasons for the things that they do. It was only after a good "thrashing-out" session did I realise that everything they did was for my own good.
Hence, I agree that while having effective communication skills are important for our survival in school and the workplace, being able to communicate effectively plays a huge role in maintaining interpersonal relationships too. After all, communication is a dynamic process and when both parties are effective communicators and active listeners, the (good) intentions can be conveyed and interpreted correctly. This will play a part in improving the relationship between the two parties.
Cheers,
Qianwen
Hi!
ReplyDeleteI like the way you illustrate the importance of communication especially in doing a lab experiment. It is vital to keep each informed consistently as a single mistake ruin an entire experiment and restarting an experiment often takes up a lot of time.
From time to time, we meet new people and sometimes we are required to work with them. I think this is not only true for students (getting a new lab partner or group mate), it applies to workplace and many other settings as well. If we are unable to communicate with others effectively, it does not only impair our performance in work, it can also jeopardize any relationships we have with others. Our verbal and non-verbal messages may be misinterpreted frequently because we do not express them clear enough to be appropriately understood by others.
Hi Mei!
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, thanks for sharing this post! I really agree that effective communication skills are very important in both of our professional and personal lives.
I particularly like the point that communication can be channeled in a way that it helps the sender to bring his/her point clearly. I am not sure if this is really the case, but according to my knowledge, people often generalize that Asians put the responsibility of successful communication on the listener, while Westerners emphasize that the speaker is responsible to help the listener to understand. Nonetheless, this point clearly shows that the listener can help the speaker as well, so in the end everyone takes part in achieving an effective communication.
Hi May!
ReplyDeleteGuten Abend! Danke, gut. Und Ihnen? =)
(* Sorry, please bear with me for replying here. I have not learned on how to reply to comments in my own blog.)
Anyway, thanks for sharing your experience! I agree with you that communication plays an important role in building stronger personal relationships and helps us in task-based job. You reminded me that communication happens at everywhere, even when we are doing a very technical science practical. I myself made some mistakes too due to miscommunications with my lab partner. They were minor and silly mistakes that we can still laugh at them every time we talk about lab, but these mistakes tells me that I did not do well in communicating with others too.
I think communication helps us in learning too. We learn from other’s experience, and we learn more about what we are studying from lecturers too through communication. This is why I remind myself not to feel annoyed when I do not get what the foreign lecturer says in class due to his or her accent, because I myself do not speak as good as others as well, and I believe that the best teacher is our own listening ear. =) When we stop paying attention, no matter what others say it will be useless too.
Just to share. Thanks for your wonderful post and I am looking forward to your next post!