Socrates

"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing." 

Socrates

"To find yourself, think for yourself."

Nelson Mandela

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."

Jim Rohn

"Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day." 

Buddha

"The mind is everything. What you think, you become." 

Thursday, 24 September 2015

Guidelines for Delivery-Non verbal aspects of presenting a speech

Enthusiasm is shown through both the visual and auditory aspects of our delivery of speech. 

                                                                                                  Visual aspects of Delivery include appearance, movement, posture, facial expression, and eye contact.


Appearance:
Appearance is not a presentation variable as much as preparation variable. Speakers it seems are perceived to be more credible when they look professional look.

Movement:
The way you walk to the front of your audience will express your confidence and enthusiasm. Movement can also help you maintain contact with all members of your audience.

Posture:
Generally speaking good posture means standing with your spine relatively straight your shoulders relatively squared off and your feet angled t to keep your body from falling over sideways.

Facial expression
The expression on your face can be more meaningful to an audience than the words you say. Your facial expression will reflect your involvement with your message. Don’t try to fake it. Just get involved in your message. And your face will take care of itself.

Eye Contact
Eye contact is perhaps the most important non verbal facet of delivery. Eye contact not only increases your direct contact with your audience but also can be used to control your nervousness. Direct eye contact is a form of reality testing.

Auditory Aspects of Delivery

 Our para language - the way you use your voice says a  good deal about you especially your  sincerity and enthusiasm.

Volume
Your delivery should be loud enough so that your audience members can hear you.  Everything Say but not loud they feel you are speaking to someone in the next room.

Rate: Your speed in speaking is called your rate. There is a range of personal differences in speaking rate. Normal speaking speed however is between 120 and 150 words per minute.

Pitch

The highness or lowness of your voice pitch is controlled by the frequency at which your vocal folds vibrate as you push air through them. You should control your pitch so that your listeners believe you are talking with them rather than performing in front of them.

Source: Page No 344-345 Public communicationUnderstanding Human communication-Tenth Indian edition, Ronald B Adler& George Rodman, Oxford University press

Wednesday, 23 September 2015

Types of Speech delivery

There are for basic types of delivery 

    1. extemporaneous, 
    2. impromptu, 
    3. manuscript, and 
    4. memorises.     
  1. Extemporaneous:                                                                                An Extemporaneous speech is planned in advance but presented in a direct, spontaneous manner. This type of speech are are conversational in tone. It give the audience members the impression that are talking to them directly and honestly.It have some disadvantages. It is difficult to keep exact time limits to be exact in wording or to be grammatically perfect with an extemporaneous speech.                                                              
  2. Impromptu:                                                                                            An impromptu speech is spontaneous by definition but delivery style that is necessary for informal talks, group discussions, and common on others speeches.                                                    
  3. Manuscript:                                                                                                                     Manuscript speeches are read word for word from a prepared text. They are necessary when you are speaking for the record as when speaking at legal proceedings or when presenting scientific findings.                                                                       
  4. Memorised:                                                                                          Memorized speeches those learned by heart are the most difficult and often the least effective. They often seem excessively formal. 

Source: Page No 339-342 Public communicationUnderstanding Human communication-Tenth Indian edition, Ronald B Adler& George Rodman, Oxford University press

Friday, 18 September 2015

Public Communication


Sample Speech

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsPLJOjekZUPublic speaking involves communicating information before a large audience, talking to a crowd of people. In public speaking, the information is purposeful and meant to inform, influence or entertain a group of listeners.
There are five elements of public speaking, who is saying what to whom using what medium with what effect. In other words, who is the source of the message. What is the message itself.Whom is the audience, while the medium is the actual delivery method and ending in the effect

Nammalwar 

Choosing your topic

The first step of a speaker is to choose the topic to . Once we have chosen a topic we can be on the lookout for ideas. We can pop up in a variety of ways, we can surfing the Web, talking to friends, or listening to a lecture in class.  After  choose our topic we can begin developing it.face 

1. Defining Purpose

The first step in understanding the purpose is to formulate a clear and precise statement of that purpose.

  • General Purpose .  Their are three types of general purpose, the purpose is general one.

    1. To Entertain: To give our audience an enjoyable listening experience.
    2. To Inform: To enlighten our audience by teaching it something.
    3. To Persuade: To move our audience toward a new attitude or behaviour.
  • Specific Purpose: This purpose is a specific one, our speech to accomplish a purpose.

    1. Result oriented:                                                                                                                        A result oriented purpose means that our purpose is focused on the outcoming we want to accomplish with our audience members. For example  our purpose is to tell our audience about organic farmimg. 
    2. .Specific:                                                                                                                                     To be effective a purpose statement should  be worded specifically . After our speech we would realise  the purpose  achieved and the audience will be able to following organic farming and decide to cultivate their farm through . organic method
    3. Realistic:                                                                                                                                We need to design a purpose that has a reasonable chance of sucess. After listening our speech  , audience will be able to list four sample steps to take to avoid becoming a victim of   fertilise using agriculture.           


2. Analysing the speaking Situation

Before choosing a speech topic, speakers should perform an audience analysis to determine what topics might be appropriate and of interest to this specific group.  The speaker has little information to decide what to cover and how to approach the audience; the competition judge has little information to assess the likely effectiveness of the effort. Speakers with specific audiences in mind generally present a clearer message.

The listener

  1. Audience Analysis: at least three types of audience  we are likely to encounter. They are passers by, captives and volunteers. Passersby, as the name implies are peopl who are not much interested. Captives are audience members who have gathered for some reason beside the joy of hearing a speech. Volunteers are audience members who gathered together because of common interest. Students in elective courses especially those with long waiting lists social organisation and action groups.
  2. Demographics
  3. The Occasion

3. Gathering Information


We can collect 
information through various method they are
Internet Research
Library Research
Survey  Research
Interviewing
sample speech



 


Introduction
Body
Conclusion

Source Ronald B Adler& George Rodman-Understanding  Human Communication

Thursday, 17 September 2015

Paralanguage-Meta communication

Paralanguage is most similar to verbal communication; however, it sends nonverbal messages in all phases of the communication process. Paralanguage refers to not what is said, but how it is said. Some of the characteristics of paralanguage include volume, rate, rhythm and pitch.
The major role of paralanguage is to express emotion. 

For example, research says that lower pitched voices are seen as more creditable.  Voice tone is used to detect deception, so a proper tone is most desirable.  Another form of para language is a raised pitch which would indicate emphasis, interest and excitement. 

Another form of nonverbal communication includes the pause, or use of silence.  Silence gives the idea a chance to be absorbed . 


Meta communication
The term meta communication to describe message that refers to other messages. Meta communication is an important method of solving conflicts in a constructive manner. It is not only tool for handling problems but a way to reinforce the good aspects of a relationship.

NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION FUNCTIONS



Verbal and nonverbal communication  are interconnected elements in every act of communication. Non verbal behaviors can operate in several relationships with verbal behaviors.

REPEATING
The repetition is not just favour one in communication.  People can communicate effectively by gestures accompanied with words .

COMPLEMENTING
 Nonverbal behavior can reinforce what’s been said. Complementing nonverbal behaviors match the thoughts and emotions the communicator is expressing linguistically. You can appreciate the value of this function by imagining the difference between saying “thank you” with a sincere facial expression and tone of voice, and saying the same words in a deadpan manner.

SUBSTITUTING
Many facial expressions operate as substitutes for speech. It’s easy to recognize expressions that function like verbal interjections and so on.  Nonverbal substituting can be useful when communicators are unwilling to express their feelings in words. A parent who wants a child to stop being disruptive at a party can flash a glare across the room without say.

ACCENTING
We use nonverbal devices to emphasize oral messages. Pointing an accusing finger adds emphasis to criticism. Accenting certain words with the voice (“It was your idea!”) is another way to add nonverbal emphasis.

 REGULATING
Nonverbal behaviors can serve a regulating function by influencing the flow of verbal communication. We can also regulate conversations nonverbally by nodding (indicating “I understand” or “keep going”), looking away (signaling a lack of attention), or moving toward the door (communicating a desire to end the conversation).

CONTRADICTING

Some of the ways in which people contradict themselves are subtle, mixed messages have a strong impact. As we grow older, we become better at interpreting these mixed messages. Children between the ages of six and twelve use a speaker’s words to make sense of a message. But as adults, we rely more on nonverbal cues to form many impressions. For example, audiences put more emphasis on deliberate behavior (like the “thumbsup” sign) and unintentional cues (like facial expressions) can complement, contradict, or substitute for spoken messages. 

Language is a social institution

source:- http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/global-studies-and-languages/21g-034-media-education-and-the-marketplace-fall-2005/Language is essentially social and is probably not definable in terms of any individual psychological system. Language is a part of the culture of human communities that is shaped over historical time.The best way to understand phonemes, phonological patterns (and words too) is that they are social products created by a human community. A speaker community is a `complex adaptive system’ that creates over time a partially structured set of sound patterns for coordinating activity.

 Individual speakers are exposed to many of these patterns and imitate them as best they can. . a speaker has no choice but to induce his own idiosyncratic auditory version of linguistic conventions, a lexicon, phrases, idioms, constructions, etc. Typically the speaker does not have clear intuitions about any of the actual linguistic units. Of course, those of us who are literate have a vivid orthographic model for a language based on the alphabet, a recently engineered technology. Ordinary speakers have no alphabet. While a language does have some roughly alphabet-like properties, alphabets provide a completely inadequate representation of language.But alphabetical writing is a technology which achieved roughly its modern form about 3000 years ago.One major consequence of the development of literacy in the middle east was the growth of the institution of schooling for teaching literacy to children.Alphabetical writing is certainly very useful, but letters are artifacts. It is difficult to learn to interpret letter sequences as syllables and syllables as letter sequences, so we start teaching children as young as possible.


Traditional View: Language as a mental code 
The standard idea about language for at least the past century is that it consists of discrete sound units composed into discrete words which are, in turn, composed into sentences. 

Aspects of Language

How to Learn a Language and a Culture Language in Society -(Aspects of Language)


Cultural

Culture is the context of the social encounters between human beings, which involve language.  Each cultural group has a mother tongue and may have one or more additional languages.  The culture of a community is integrally related to the language they speak.  However, many different peoples may speak the same or very similar language, but still differ somewhat culturally.  

Spanish, Swahili and French are examples of multi-national, multi-ethnic languages. Same as Tamils from various locality differ according to their cultural background.  Thus the people's identity  differ from others who may speak the same language, due to different sets of experiences and the resulting different sets of expectations exist even in the same language "community."   Language is a medium of interaction in social relationships.
Communication events involve exchange of cultural information. 

Social

Language is a social medium, and thus a social skill.  Language is a major component in social events, communication events, interaction with other people. Learning language as a social skill heightens memory and competency.   Languages are used by social groups (families, clans, tribes, societies) to manage their relationships and cultural roles, obligations and interrelationships.

Cognitive
Language is not information, but the format for processing information -- not explanation, but mastery. This enables the learner to approach natural, spontaneous production, based on thought and intent. The real cognitive aspect of language is in our use of the language to think  The language as they speak it leads us to think as they think.
Conscious awareness of the models and structures may help the learner master the structures rather than be limited by them. But the models must be mastered, in order for thought to flow into communication. This is done through practice and use.
 This cognitive culture, woven into the fabric of the language, is called world view.

Physical
Language is a motor skill. A new language will feel funny, and difficult to produce.  The tongue, lips, throat and other speech apparatus have to learn new positions and sequences of positions.
This takes preparation, practice, mastery and training. 

Tuesday, 8 September 2015

PERSONAL LISTENING STYLES

CONTENT-ORIENTED

 listeners are most interested in the quality of messages they hear. They want to seek details and are good at analysing an issue from several perspectives. Content oriented listeners often enjoy ideas for their own sake and are willing to spend time exploring them in thorough exchanges of ideas. A content-oriented approach is valuable when the goal is to evaluate the quality of ideas and when there is value in looking at issues from a wide range of perspectives. A content-oriented approach can take more time than others may be willing to give, and the challenging of ideas that comes with it can be perceived as overly critical or even hostile.

PEOPLE-ORIENTED

People-oriented listeners are especially concerned with creating and maintaining positive relationships. 
Those who are people-oriented show a strong concern for others and their feelings. They are external in focus, getting their energy from others and find much meaning in relationships, talking about 'we' more than 'you' or 'they'.

They tune into others’ moods,and they respond to speakers’ feelings as well as their ideas. People-oriented listeners are typically less judgemental about what others have to say than are content-oriented types: They are more interested in understanding and supporting people than in evaluating them. It is easy to become overly involved with others’ feelings.

Image result for critical listening means that you as a listenerACTION-ORIENTED

People who are time-oriented have their eyes constantly on the clock. They organize their day into neat compartments and will allocate time for listening, though will be very concerned if such sessions over-run.
Action-oriented listeners want speakers to get the point quickly, be concise and focus on work expectations. They are confident, critical, focused on solving problems and want to get tasks done.  Action listeners are not concerned with establishing relationships or listening to a drawn-out story. Effective communication with action-oriented listeners needs to be direct, organized and delivered at a fast but controlled pace.source
Action-oriented listening is most appropriate when taking care of business is the primary concern: Such listeners keep a focus on the job at hand and encourage others to be organized and concise. Action-oriented listeners seem to minimize emotional issues and concerns, which may be an important part of business and personal transactions.


 TIME-ORIENTED

Time-oriented listeners are most concerned with efficiency. They view time as a scarce and valuable commodity.  They grow impatient when they view others as wasting it. A time orientation can be an asset when deadlines and other pressures demand fast action. On the other hand, a time orientation can put off others when it seems to disregard their feelings. Also, an excessive focus on time can hamper the kind of thoughtful deliberation that some jobs require.

INFORMATIONAL LISTENING

 Informational listening is the approach to take when you want to understand another person. When you are an informational listener, your goal is to make sure you are receiving the same thoughts the other person is trying to convey

CRITICAL LISTENING

Critical listening is a form of listening that if usually not mentioned, since it involves analysis, critical thinking and judgementWhereas the goal of informational listening is to understand a speaker, the goal of critical listening (also called “evaluative listening”) involves evaluating an idea to test its merit. In this sense, we could say that non critical listeners are unquestioning, or even naive and gullible.
While experts on learning and communication almost universally demean the importance and value of critical listening, when it comes to real life, listening critically is used every day.
For example, if there's an upcoming election and you need to decide who to vote for, you probably use some form of critical listening when you watch a televised debate. You listen, AND you evaluate. The key though, is to try to understand the other person FIRST, before one evaluates.


EMPATHIC LISTENING 

We listen both informationally and critically out of self-interest. In empathic listening, however, the goal is to build a relationship or help the speaker solve a problem. Empathic listening is the approach to use when others seek help for personal dilemmas. Empathic listening is also a good approach to take when you simply want to become better acquainted with others and to show them that their opinions and feelings matter to you. Empathic listening can accomplish both of them, because when listening helps another person, the relationship between speaker and listener. 

When we listen empathetically, we go beyond sympathy to seek a truer understand how others are feeling. This requires excellent discrimination and close attention to the nuances of emotional signals. When we are being truly empathetic, we actually feel what they are feeling.
In order to get others to expose these deep parts of themselves to us, we also need to demonstrate our empathy in our demeanour towards them, asking sensitively and in a way that encourages self-disclosure.

Reasons For Poor Listening

source file
Listening effectively is hard work.The physical changes that occur during careful listening show the effort it takes: Heart rate quickens, respiration increases,and body temperature rises.20 Notice that these changes are similar to the body’s reaction to physical effort.This is no coincidence, because listening carefully to a speaker can be just as taxing as more obvious efforts.You can manage the effort that’s required to listen well if you prepare yourself for the task. If you know that passive listening won’t be enough, you can invest the energy to understand others. 

MESSAGE OVERLOAD
The amount of speech most of us encounter every day makes careful listening to everything we hear impossible. As many of us spend as much as one-third of the time we’re awake listening to verbal messages—from teachers, coworkers, friends, family, salespeople, and total strangers. This means we often spend five hours or more a day listening to people talk. It is  impossible for us to keep our attention totally focused for that amount of time. Therefore,we have to let our attention wander at times.

RAPID THOUGHT
Listening carefully is also difficult for a physiological reason. The average person speaks between 100 and 140 words per minute. Thus,we have a great deal of mental “spare time” to spend while someone is talking. But instead of listening we are tempted thinking about personal interests, daydreaming, planning a rebuttal, and so on.

PSYCHOLOGICAL NOISE
Another reason why we don’t always listen carefully is that we’re often wrapped up in personal concerns. We give more importance to  our  messages than others are sending. Everyone’s mind wanders at one time or another, but excessive preoccupation is both a reason for and a sign of poor listening.

PHYSICAL NOISE
 The world in which we live often presents distractions that make it hard to pay attention to others. The sound of traffic, music, others’ speech, You can often listen better by insulating yourself from outside distractions. This may involve removing the sources of noise: turning off the television, shutting the book you were reading, closing the window, and so on. In some cases, you and the speaker may need to find a more hospitable place to speak in order to make listening work.

HEARING PROBLEMS
Sometimes a person’s listening ability suffers from a hearing problem—After a hearing problem has been diagnosed, it’s often possible to treat it. The real tragedy occurs when a hearing loss goes undetected

FAULTY ASSUMPTIONS
 We often give others a mental brush-off because we assume their remarks don’t have much value. When one business consultant asked some of her clients why they interrupted colleagues, she received the following responses: My idea is better than theirs. The egotism behind these comments is stunning. Dismissing others’ ideas before considering them may be justified sometimes, but it’s obviously a mistake to rule out so much of what others say . . . especially when you consider how you would feel if other people dismissed your comments without hearing you out. The key to success seems to be the ability to speak well. Another apparent advantage of speaking is the chance it provides to gain the admiration, respect, or liking of others—or so you may think. Tell jokes, and everyone may think you’re a real wit. Men typically interrupted conversations far more than women. Their goal was usually to control the discussion. Women interrupted for very different reasons: to communicate agreement, to elaborate on the speaker’s idea, or to participate in the topic of conversation.

 CULTURAL DIFFERENCES The way members of different cultures communicate can affect listening.24 For instance, one study of young adults in various countries showed marked differences in listening preferences. Young Germans favored an action-oriented approach: They engaged speakers directly and were highly inquisitive.This style contrasts with the indirect approach of high-context Japanese listeners.Young Israelis were also less vocal than Germans and focused on careful analysis of others’statements.By contrast,young Americans emphasized the social dimension of a conversation and were more focused on how much time a conversation was taking.

 MEDIA INFLUENCES A final challenge to serious listening is the influence of contemporary mass media, especially television and radio. A growing amount of programming consists of short segments: news items,commercials,music videos, and so on. (Think of Sesame Street and MTV.) 

OVERCOMING CHALLENGES TO EFFECTIVE LISTENING-Faulty listening behavious


Source file
Despite the importance of good listening,people seem to get worse at the skill as they grow older. Ninety percent of first-grade children could repeat what the teacher had been saying,and 80 percent of the second-graders could do so; but when the experiment was repeated with teenagers, the results were much less impressive. Only 44 percent of junior high students and 28 percent of senior high students could repeat their teachers’ remarks.


PSEUDOLISTENING
PSEUDOLISTENING is an imitation of the real thing. Pseudo listeners give the appearance of being attentive: They look you in the eye, nod and smile at the right times, and even may answer you occasionally. Behind that appearance of interest, however, something entirely different is going on, because pseudo listeners use a polite facade to mask thoughts that have nothing to do with what the speaker is saying.
SELECTIVE LISTENING
Selective listeners respond only to the parts of a speaker’s remarks that interest them, rejecting everything else. All of us are.

DEFENSIVE LISTENING
Defensive listeners take innocent comments as personal attacks. Teenagers who perceive parental questions about friends and activities as distrustful snooping are defensive listeners

AMBUSHING
 Ambushers listen carefully, but only because they are collecting information to attack what you have to say. The cross-examining prosecution attorney is a good example of an ambusher.
INSULATED LISTENING
insulated listeners simply fail to hear it or, rather, to acknowledge it. If you remind them about a problem—perhaps an unfinished job, poor grades, or the like—they’ll nod or answer you and then promptly forget what you’ve just said.

 INSENSITIVE LISTENING
Insensitive listeners are the final example of people who don’t receive another person’s messages clearly. People often don’t express their thoughts or feelings openly but instead communicate them through subtle and unconscious choice of words or nonverbal clues or both. Insensitive listeners aren’t able to look beyond the words and behavior to understand their hidden meanings. Instead, they take a speaker’s remarks at face value.

STAGE HOGGING


Stage hogs (sometimes called “conversational narcissists”) try to turn the topic of conversations to themselves instead of showing interest in the conversation. Interruptions are a hallmark of stage hogging. Besides preventing the listener from learning potentially valuable information ,stage hogging can damage the relationship between the interrupter and the speaker. 

MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT LISTENING


 Listening is misunderstood by most people. Because these misunderstandings so greatly affect our communication, we need to take a look at four common misconceptions that many communicators hold.

source file

1. Listening and Hearing Are Not the Same Thing

 Hearing is the process in which sound waves strike the eardrum and cause vibrations that are transmitted to the brain. Listening occurs when the brain reconstructs these electrochemical impulses into a representation of the original sound and then gives them meaning. Barring illness, injury, or earplugs, hearing can’t be stopped.  Your ears will pick up sound waves and transmit them to your brain whether you want them to or not. Listening, however, isn’t automatic. Many times we hear but do not listen. Sometimes we deliberately tune out unwanted signals: .

Listerning  consists of several stages.

Ø  a).After hearing, the next stage is ATTENDING—the act of paying attention to a signal. An individual’s needs, wants, desires, and interests determine what is attended to, or selected

Ø  b) The next step in listening is UNDERSTANDING—the process of making sense of a message. In addition to these steps, understanding often depends on the ability to organize the information we hear into recognizable form. The successful understanding consists number of factors, most prominent among which were verbal ability, intelligence, and motivation.

Ø  c). RESPONDING to a message consists of giving observable feedback to the speaker. Offering feedback serves two important functions: It helps you clarify your understanding of a speaker’s message, and it shows that you care about what that speaker is saying.

Good listeners showed that they were attentive by nonverbal behaviors such as keeping eye contact and reacting with appropriate facial expressions. A slumped posture, bored expression, and yawning send a clear message that the audience are not tuned in to the speaker. Listening isn’t just a passive activity. As listeners we are active participants in a communication transaction.

d)The final step in the listening process IS REMEMBERING. This is true even if people work hard at listening. A listener can be remembered only half of after were retained. Within two months half of the half is forgotten, that is we remember 25 percent of the original message. People start forgetting immediately (within eight hours the 50 percent remembered drops to about 35 percent).

2. Listening Is Not a Natural Process

Another common myth is that listening is like breathing: a natural activity that people do well. The truth is that listening is a skill much like speaking: Everybody does it, though few people do it well. Listening requires Effort Most people assume that listening is fundamentally a passive activity in which the receiver absorbs a speaker’s ideas, rather the way a sponge absorbs water. Every kind of listening requires mental effort by the receiver. And experience shows that passive listening almost guarantees that the respondent will fail to grasp at least some of the speaker’s ideas and misunderstand others.


All Listeners Do Not Receive the Same Message When two or more people are listening to a speaker,we tend to assume that they all are hearing and understanding the same message. In fact, such uniform comprehension isn’t the case. Physiological factors,social roles,cultural background,personal interests, and needs all shape and distort the raw data we hear into uniquely different messages.