Overcome the fear factor
Published: October 19, 2009
The Hindu Education Plus organised training programme in basic communication as part of E-Plus club activity at GMRIT in Visakhapatnam
“The basic factor that weakens the communication skills in a person is fear. Come out of the shell and attack the ‘factor of fear’ by indulging in more effective communication and you shall overcome the deficiencies.” This was the advice given by the Director of CTC Communication A.S. Prasad to the students and to the E-Plus club members of GMR Institute of Technology (GMRIT), Rajam, and Raghu Engineering College, Visakhapatnam, at a training session held on October 12.
The training session was organised by The Hindu Education Plus, as part of its E-Plus club activity.
The trainer pointed out that every individual is born with some inherent qualities of communication skills. It is the fear that does not allow an individual to come out of the self-created shell. “Various questions like: Am I speaking correctly, is my English faulty and is my accent right; cloud their mind even before the communication process could begin. That fear impairs the process,” he said.
He stressed upon the fact that soft skills have to be improved for better employability and to tackle the present crisis of global meltdown. “India has got the largest population of qualified young people in the world and we must make full use of that resource. The entire world is looking towards India and to utilise that opportunity- command over English language is a must. Skills have to be global,” he said.
Giving an insight into the basics of communication skills,
The Director of CTC pointed out that there are three primary aspects of communication: Language, pitch and body language.
“The language could be good, but if it does not correspond well with the pitch of the tone and the body language, the entire communication would go wrong. Good and effective communication is nothing but synchronised coordination between language, pitch and body language. Language is a tool and communication is an art,” asserted Mr. Prasad.
He also advised the students to take failure in their stride.
Supporting his statement he said, “Failure brings success, and all great men have had failed numerous times before achieving what they wanted to achieve.” He counselled the students to think English and speak English. The trainer emphasised that the students who are weak in the language and those who have come from Telugu medium background should stop using the English to Telugu dictionary to understand the meaning of English words. “By doing this you would not better your language skills but rather worsen it,” asserted Mr. Prasad.
Level of enthusiasm
The E-Plus clubs were started about a month ago in the engineering colleges and the level of enthusiasm and improvement in their communication skills were every evident. The students who were inhibited and who could not speak a few words in English without fumbling at the launch function, four weeks ago, came out openly at the training session, shedding all hang-ups. A few of them boldly participated in the group tasks and public speaking sessions during the training module.
SUMIT BHATTACHARJEE
IN VISAKHAPATNAM