 So, let us look at various aspects of the communication skills. The topics that we will discuss will be modes and dimensions of communication, oral communication, written communication and at the end some prescriptions for developing communication skills. So, the aspects of communication that are of importance are communication style. So, it can be formal, it can be informal, it can be casual. Many times students have difficulty distinguishing between informal and casual. Actually during presentation, for example, oral presentation, okay, presentation in conferences, it is a formal presentation, whereas talking to people in the class, right, when a teacher is talking to students in the class, but not discussing about the topic, then it is an informal discussion. So, one can be informal rather than being formal, but one should try to avoid being casual, right. So, casual people have difficulty distinguishing between casual and informal. So, how do you distinguish between casual and informal? Can someone help here? What is the difference between casual and informal? For example, a formal dress would be a coat and shoes and so on, right. A casual dress will be t-shirt. A t-shirt is not necessarily informal, right, it is a casual wear. It is not called an informal wear. So, informal is between formal and casual, okay. As you have rightly said, it has to do with the extent of seriousness and accuracy. For example, if you are talking to someone with your feet on the wall, right, one foot on the wall, now is it informal or is it casual, right, it is casual. So, if one needs to be informal, then one must remember it should not degrade to casual. It depends. If you are talking among friends, for example, it is fine, but particularly when you are talking to people of different levels, that is the next point. The mode of communication, vertical and horizontal, there are two modes. Vertical communication means it is between people of different status. Teacher and a student, right, these are different status. Horizontal on the other hand is between people of the same status, say between colleagues or between friends and so on. Dimensions of communication, understanding and agreement, effectiveness and efficiency. They are the four dimensions of communication. Understanding and agreement, many times it is seen that there is disagreement between people because they have not correctly understood what is being communicated. It may be that of the person who is listening or it may be that of the person who is talking, right, who is the originator of the communication. Now, just as you can have disagreement because of misunderstanding, you can have agreement because of misunderstanding also, that is also not good, that if two people agree, but they are not understood each other, that is also not a good situation. So, good situation is one where understanding is there. There can be agreement or disagreement, that is not really bad, right, but there should be correct understanding and proper understanding. So, it is our duty to communicate in a way in which it is understood properly by the other person. Now, that is how we come to the other two dimensions, effectiveness and efficiency. So, what is meaning of effectiveness? Efficiency is said to be effective if the other person understands correctly and exactly what you want to say, right. What is efficiency? What is the amount of effort that is being spent in order to be effective? So, in order to make people understand what you want to say, how much effort are you spending? How many words do you use, right? That is efficiency, that is where efficiency comes in. So, you must be able to do things with minimum effort, then it is efficient communication. Let us focus a little bit more on effectiveness and efficiency. So, let us look at ineffective communication, an example of ineffective communication. One of the students, he finished his MS, this is a practical, I am taking practical cases, finished his MS and then joined a job. And then after a few months he sent an email, this was the email, sir my employer wants a letter about the completion of my thesis written by you. Now, it is not clear whether the thesis was written by you, which is in all likelihood what might have happened if this is the way the student is writing and the thesis was commanded by the reviewers or whether the letter is to be written by you about the thesis. So, this is an example of ineffective communication, it is not able to communicate what the person wants to say. Now, as against this, let us consider another interesting example of an effective communication. Now, this was a letter written by the person Ogil Chandrasen to Saibganj divisional railway office in 1909. It is this letter that is supposed to be responsible for introduction of toilets in the train, until then there were no toilets in the train. So, this is a person who described this problem. Now, the important point about this is it has been effective in the sense it has achieved the result. Grammatically if you see and the words the way the words have been used, it looks such a bad English. So, what is crucial here to see is that grammar is not necessarily the essential element of effective communication. It is important that you be grammatically correct, but grammatically correct or use of the words which are used in English does not necessarily ensure that you will be effective. For example, the previous communication if you see, grammatically I do not find anything wrong. It is arrangement of the words that is responsible for ineffectiveness here. On the other hand, here in this case the description is very vivid of what is the problem the person has faced. So, moment you write a letter like that, I mean what would have happened to the person is very clear and then you feel that some action should be taken about it. So, the point I am trying to make here is that effectiveness is not limited to grammatically correct writing. It is much more than that. How you describe? How you are able to effectively describe the situation or your own idea? Now, let us look at efficient and inefficient communication. How inefficient communication can be made efficient? That is also shown here. Now, many times we use a, we are verbose, we use a too many words to describe something which can be described using one or two words. Here are some examples, a considerable amount of instead of saying a considerable amount of you just say much, a considerable amount of work has been done. You can only say you can just say much work has been done. The given data, this is, it is unnecessary to add the word given, the words given, you just say data instead of saving, instead of saying in the event that you just say if in the event that this happens that will happen, you just say if this happens that will happen. Deposited precipitate. Now, any precipitate is always deposited, there is no need to say deposited precipitate. The nature of Hoyle's work is always of a provocative kind, which is same as saying Hoyle's work is always provocative. So, this is where the efficiency comes in. If you carefully observe how much, how many words you use to describe the situation. In fact, research on thesis writing and paper writing has shown that if a person or a student has written a paper or a thesis for the first time, the first draft that the student or the scholar writes, an experienced writer can reduce the size of this to one-third of the original length. That much inefficiency is there in communication of a novice. Someone who is not experienced in writing. In fact, one of the places I did this course, there was a person who attended the course out of interest, who had done PhD several years ago and is now teaching. Now, after the discussion on this communication skills and this kind of hints where we tend to be inefficient in communication, he went back and actually saw some of the papers that he had written. And next day he came and told me that, sir what you say is true, though not to one-third, I could reduce my paper by 40 percent. Whatever I had written during my PhD days, the same papers if I were to write today, the length of those papers would be 40 percent less. So, you can imagine how much inefficiency is there in communication, because the point is if you take too many words to describe your idea, people will lose interest because they cannot sustain their interest for a long time. So, that is where you are losing out. So, based on the type of research undertaken, suppose if it is case study kind of research, so then is it not better to use better words to explain the situation? Can you please elaborate, what do you mean by saying better words? Yeah, like instead of saying just if, then that if is supported by the associated words in two, three words that way. Yeah, in the event that for example, no, not at all. In fact, you should not, you should avoid, in fact, the examples that we have given are some common mistakes committed by people, like that there is a long list actually. No, in empirical research, okay normally it is accepted, in case study kind of research and mostly the language found appears to be that way. Yes, no, there may be what you mean is if you are telegraphic, if you are telegraphic then you may not be clear to other people. So here we are not talking of being telegraphic, right, that is the other extreme. Here we are trying to suggest how you can be efficient, there is a difference between efficiency and being telegraphic, right. Maybe what you mean is that it is better not to be telegraphic and use a few more words so that people understand things clearly. If you mean that then you are right, yes, but please understand that replacing in the event that with if is not being telegraphic, it is being efficient. Writing the Hoyle's work is always provocative, instead of writing the nature of Hoyle's work is always of a provocative kind is being efficient, it is not being telegraphic. You do not convey anything more, nor do you make the statement more interesting by using the left hand side of these arrows that are shown here. So point is you may try to describe a situation by different means. Let us make this point very clear. In order to be clear, you may use different explanations, right. That is possible. If that way you are increasing the length, in order to be clear that is alright. But within the sentence, you need not use words which can be avoided, right. So you explain a point from different perspectives. That way you can increase the length, okay. That will add clarity but not just using more words where things can be said using one word. So how the communication skill is very important and it takes an effort to develop it can be seen by this particular statement of Pascal, who was one of the great scientists, right. So while writing a particular letter, this is what he has said in the beginning. I am writing a long letter since I do not have the time to write a shorter one. So if you want to make things compact, it takes time, it takes effort, okay. That is why we have said the first draft of students, it is going to be long because only by effort you can make it crisp. In the context of reporting results, if I may give an example, you know nowadays you have for many journals a letter section and a full length paper section, right. So you apply general of applied physics. It will have applied physics letters, right as an adjunct journal where you can report things in a compact form and which are useful for rapid publication. It is in general more difficult to write a letter than to write a full paper because you have to compress everything in a short space without being unclear, without being telegraphed, okay. So that is where if you have the habit of writing letters and if you have written several letters definitely your communication skills will be good. It is not very easy to write short papers. It is also not very easy to give short talks, okay, effectively. It is important to note always that communication is for others. Improvement in communication improves quality of learning process and interpersonal relations. It is found that the way you communicate also affects the interpersonal relation between people, right. So if you are not able to get the right words to explain your idea, you cannot get other people interested in you, right. So that is how it affects the relations. Now we will discuss a few points about oral communication and then we will have the activity of presentation by one of the students. How to be effective in oral communication? This is a slide which is very, very important. The data presented here is based on research on oral communication. What is it that makes oral communication effective, okay? We have already seen earlier with an example that grammatical correctness does not necessarily imply effectiveness and in spite of being grammatically wrong you can be effective, okay. So what is it that makes a communication effective, oral communication effective? So research has shown that 55% of the impact that an oral communication makes is because of non-verbal factors, it is very, very interesting. So what are the non-verbal factors? Gesture and facial expression. These two factors are supposed to make 55% impact in communication, oral communication, right. Something very significant. I mean if all of us want to improve our oral communication skills then it is something we should note because it tells you where you should put in effort to improve your communication skills. If I think that if I improve my language then I will be more effective, right. If I improve my vocabulary I will be more effective, yes, but not beyond a certain point. So according to this particular research only 7% impact is made by the words. Only 7% impact in communication, oral communication, we are talking about oral communication here is made by words. So after 55% impact because of non-verbal factors such as gesture and facial expression, the next what is important is vocal factors. And this 38% includes spoken, sorry not spoken words, pauses, stress, intonation. These are the three factors which constitute the 38% of the impact. So where do you pause when you speak your sentences? Do you pause at all or you do not pause? This is very, very important. Stress. Do you utter all words with equal stress or do you choose some words for giving more emphasis? The quality of voice and so on, it is not just the loudness, the quality of voice, it is like you know in singing many people can sing but not all of them have the same quality of voice. Some voices they sound very nice, some do not sound as nice. So quality of voice, this is also a very important factor in oral communication. Now a factor to note is the attention span of the audience is initial 20 minutes of concentration, lapse for next 10 to 20 minutes, slight recovery and then renewed lapse till the end. This is what research has shown. Now we conduct classes for one hour and now we are doing four hour classes. So how do you manage to hold the attention of the audience? This is a very important issue in oral communication. So unless you use some special methods and you are good communicator, you cannot hold the attention of the audience. So this is put here to emphasize the importance of developing communication skills. And this is also the reason why you will find all conferences they ask you to present for 20 minutes. That 20 minute period has come from this research that when you discuss a large number of ideas, you should not do so for more than 20 minutes. Because more than 20 minutes, a person cannot concentrate on an idea. If you switch over to a new idea, since the other idea is new, one may again start concentrating. But again after 20 minutes, beyond 20 minutes it will again the interest is likely to win. So the attention span can be increased by adding variety to the talk. So this is the most important thing, you should add variety. So how do you add variety interaction? So that is why the people say that you should make the classes interactive. You should invite comments from the people, write ask questions, let them ask questions and so on. So from this point of view, it is not a good idea to tell the audience that look you listen to me for one hour and only at the end of one hour you ask me questions. It may be alright if there is a formal talk where a chief guest is speaking and at some occasion that is a different situation where he will speak for one hour. You cannot possibly interject and ask him questions there. But otherwise in a teaching learning process or research kind of environment, it is good to have interactions. Use diagrams, if your presentation slides have only text, it is going to be less interesting than if you introduce diagrams. So you should think whether whatever you have written in text can be put in the form of diagrams. The other extreme of having only diagrams is infinitely much more acceptable than having only text in slides. Then use audio visuals. Then vary the pace of speech. That means some sentences can be uttered fast and then some sentences can be uttered slowly. Change the pitch of the voice. Length of sentences. They also suggest that you use long sentences followed by short sentences. This kind of variation in the length of sentences. Pauses, repetition, gesturing with hands and humor. And humor is very very important. Somehow if you can add humor, make people laugh. That is also something that can increase the attention span. So admittedly these are fairly challenging tasks because you must do all this at the same time. You should remember to modulate the pitch of the voice, change the length of the sentences, pause and then add humor and all this. Therefore it is a very challenging exercise how to develop our oral communication. So one must spend sufficient time on this. So evidently the way to learn it is you focus on one or two aspects first and you get a grip of that. Then you go on adding other things because simultaneously if you try to achieve all, you know it will be confusion. So the way to develop these kind of skills where many things have to be done at the same time is to first do one at a time and then you try to integrate. So let us look at since we want to develop the skill, the importance of each of the aspects of communication. What is the importance of the pause? Pause gives prominence to a word by isolation. So if you pause then utter a word then again pause. The word which you have uttered in between two pauses acquires emphasis. It raises suspense. The negative aspect is sometimes pauses can be caused by nervousness or memory lapse. So pauses should be intentional that is what is meant here. Stress, what is the role of stress? Within sentences each word is not of equal earth shattering importance. So nouns and verbs receive more stress than adjectives and adverbs. Another important thing in stress is the accent. The accent is the stress given to syllables within a word. So when you say that someone is speaking English with a Marathi accent, someone is speaking English with Bengali accent, someone is speaking English with Malayali accent, this accent matters a lot in communication. I will give you an example to illustrate this point. I was doing this course in one of the NITs and the participants were teachers who have taught for 5 to 10 years. The one of the teachers after I spoke about this communication skills and various aspects he came to me after the talk and said, so all this theory is alright but you know it does not work in practice. I have tried my best for last 5 years. I have put in lot of effort to improve my communication and I think I have done it but the students always give me a poor feedback in teachers evaluation. They do not understand the amount of effort I am putting in to make the subject clear and so on. Now when I spoke to him for few minutes I could understand where is the problem. But it is a personal thing. So you have to tell a person exactly where he has a problem. Now it is best done at a young age when people are not very sensitive. At a very late age it becomes difficult partly because it may be difficult to change also. The main problem with this person was he had a very heavy Bengali accent. So it was very difficult to understand his words. That is why the people had difficulty understanding him. The problem was with the accent. So all of us have the impact of our mother tongue on the English that we speak. This is natural and sometimes it can add variety also. So because you have different ways in which people speak English. But the accent should not be to such an extent that other people do not understand what you are speaking. The intonation, variation of pitch conveying subtleties of meaning should be connected with the thoughts and attitudes of speaker. So you should vary the pitch. But the variation of this pitch should be such that it should convey what you want to say effectively. It is not just being sing song. So it is a skill. Few more aspects of non-verbal behavior. Now what we have seen is the verbal aspects involving pause, stress and intonation which constitute 38%. Now we said 55% is non-verbal. So some of the things of importance there are how close you are to the speaker, to the audience. Proximity. Now if in a classroom for example if the teacher is far away from the student the impact is noticeably less. So if it is a small class definitely you must insist that all students come and sit in the first bench. It is very, very important. You let the audience be as close to you as possible. Orientation. This is very important. What is the relative position of the speaker and the audience? So many times what happens is the location of the speaker is affected by the location of the computer which has which stores the power point slides. Because nowadays in conferences and so on power point slides you know use of slides is by default the method. Now supposing in the room it is so arranged that the computer is at one corner. So the speaker is forced to move to a corner. Now corner is a bad place because you cannot make eye contact with the audience. If you do not make eye contact then you cannot make impact on people. So proper eye contact it is very important for you to be in a position from where people are as close to you as possible all of them. So this is the orientation also orientation. For example if your slides are projected on the screen. Now you have to look at the screen and then talk. This is where you should minimize your reading of the slides. You must always be facing the audience and occasionally you may just move towards the slide and then read the point. But you should be facing the audience most of the time. So this is an important point in making impact. So posture, touch and body movements that is nods and gestures these are other important aspects. Facial expression if a person has a very serious face or keeps a very serious face immediately loses impact on the audience. Gaze and eye contact then appearance of course the dressing and so on. Parallel language sometimes the speakers have the habit of using things such as okay alright etc and so on very often very frequently. Why does this happen this is because these kind of sounds are used as stepping stone for a different idea or a different sentence. It is like if you are jumping around you will step and then jump. So these are the steps particularly when you have difficulty moving from one idea to other these kind of things such as okay alright and so on will increase in number and they will then affect the communication. In fact I clearly remember we had a teacher in our student days who had the habit of frequently asking am I making myself clear. And particularly when he would discuss difficult concepts this particular sentence am I making myself clear would you know come out almost every alternate sentence right you say one sentence and then you say am I making myself clear and then you utter another sentence and then am I making myself clear. So these kind of habits they also reduce the impact on the audience. So we must be careful about using these things and then visual aids.