1. Effective verbal communication

2. General communication skills
Audience – your audience will determine what kind of language you use and how you deliver the message.
You need to be selective in your choice of terminology to ensure everyone understands your message.
There may be language and cultural differences within your audience.
You may decide to present your message in a different format for different audiences, i.e. children v professional.

3. General communication skills
Your message: fact v opinions – Having adapted the content and style to meet the expectations of the audience, you should next try to focus on the message you are trying to convey.
Fact – can be proved, they are either true or false. Data can be tested and checked
Opinions - more complex – they vary from one source to another. Opinions can be strong or weak and can be influenced by knowledge or lack of it.
STICK TO FACTS……………

4. General communication skills
Techniques for engaging audience interest– imagine listening to a speaker whose voice never varied in tone… when delivering your message, written or verbally, make sure you vary your tone.
Verbally you can create interest by pausing.
Face to face you may use multimedia, hold up objects, play music or film.
Written can include pictures, diagrams, change of font
REMEMBER – too much activity can detract from your message

5. Interpersonal Skills Communicating interpersonally
For communication to happen, two or more people are involved. One person expresses a message through words (spoken or written), signs, signals, facial and bodily expressions or even silence.
The other person uses his/her senses (mostly sight and hearing) to gather aspects of the message

6. Cont’d
Someone who is deaf cannot hear your words and may rely on lip reading a body language, whereas, someone who is unsighted or at the end of a telephone line, relies on the tone in the voice.
Change of tone is often used to express emotion, i.e. anger or joy.

7. Interpersonal Skills
Barriers to communication – to communicate effectively you should aim to prevent or reduce the effect of barriers as much as possible.
Some examples:
Distractions – i.e. someone walking in late, mobile
phones, tea trolley, leaving early.
Background noise – i.e. humming of the air
conditioner, music.
Body language - i.e. negative, closed, aggressive,
bored.

8. Interpersonal skills
Types of questions – communication is not just two people speaking in turn, there needs to be a link between the people. Questions can help create a link.
Open questions can be an invitation to pick up the conversation and take control. E.g. “What do you think about this?” – it invites a response.

9. Cont’d
Closed questions are expressed in such away that the options for a reply are limited, usually only yes or no, e.g. “Would you like a cup of tea?” or even less specific “Would you like something to drink?”. This could result in a yes or no answer and would need another question to find out what they wanted to drink.
Probing questions can be used to delve deeper into the answers given to obtain more information.