Communication Skills
Communication Skills
This domain tests how well you understand communication as a two-way process and can apply it in school, work and everyday situations. Expect questions on the communication cycle, verbal and non-verbal messages, listening, feedback and barriers.
Core rules and concepts
- Communication is the exchange of information, ideas or feelings through a sender, message, channel, receiver and feedback. Encoding is putting the idea into words or signs; decoding is interpreting it.
- Verbal communication uses words; non-verbal communication includes facial expressions, gestures, posture, eye contact and tone of voice. Tone and body language can contradict words.
- Feedback closes the loop. It is not the same as a reply: it tells the sender whether the message was understood.
- Listening is active, not just hearing. It involves attention, paraphrasing, asking questions and checking understanding.
- Barriers can be physical (noise), semantic (jargon, ambiguous words), psychological (stress, prejudice), cultural or organisational (long chain of command).
- The 7Cs of effective communication are clarity, conciseness, concreteness, correctness, coherence, completeness and courtesy.
Worked example
A supervisor tells a new worker, 'Finish the report soon.' The worker submits it after three days; the supervisor expected it by lunchtime. The words were sent and received, so this is not a channel failure. The problem is a semantic barrier: 'soon' is ambiguous. There was also no feedback check. A clearer message would be: 'Please email me the one-page report by 1 p.m. today; tell me now if you need data.' The worker should paraphrase the deadline to confirm it.
Traps that cost marks
Do not treat hearing as listening; do not say feedback is only praise; do not label tone of voice as verbal; do not ignore context; and do not write that the receiver encodes - the sender encodes and the receiver decodes.