DEFINITION OF COMMUNICATION

Communication is the process of attempting to suggest information

from a sender to a receiver with the use of a medium. Communication

requires that all parties have an area of communicative commonality. There

are auditory means, such as speaking, singing and sometimes tone of voice,

and nonverbal, physical means, such as body language, sign language,

paralanguage, touch, eye contact, or the use of writing. Communication is

defined as a process by which we assign and convey meaning in an attempt

to create shared understanding. This process requires a vast repertoire of

skills in intrapersonal and interpersonal processing, listening, observing,

speaking, questioning, analyzing, and evaluating. Use of these processes is

developmental and transfers to all areas of life: home, school, community,

work, and beyond. It is through communication that collaboration and

cooperation occur.[1]

Communication is the articulation of sending a message, through

[2]
different media whether it be verbal or nonverbal, so long as a being

transmits a thought provoking idea, gesture, action, etc. Communication is a

learned skill. Most people are born with the physical ability to talk, but we

must learn to speak well and communicate effectively. Speaking, listening,

and our ability to understand verbal and nonverbal meanings are skills we

develop in various ways. We learn basic communication skills by observing

other people and modeling our behaviors based on what we see. We also are

taught some communication skills directly through education, and by

practicing those skills and having them evaluated.

Communication as an academic discipline relates to all the ways we

communicate, so it embraces a large body of study and knowledge. The

communication discipline includes both verbal and nonverbal messages. A

body of scholarship all about communication is presented and explained in

textbooks, electronic publications, and academic journals. In the journals,

researchers report the results of studies that are the basis for an

everexpanding understanding of how we all communicate. Communication

happens at many levels (even for one single action), in many different ways,

and for most beings, as well as certain machines. Several, if not all, fields of

study dedicate a portion of attention to communication, so when speaking

about communication it is very important to be sure about what aspects of

communication one is speaking about. Definitions of communication range

widely, some recognizing that animals can communicate with each other as

well as human beings, and some are more narrow, only including human

beings within the parameters of human symbolic interaction.

Nonetheless, communication is usually described along a few major

dimensions: Content (what type of things are communicated), source,

emisor, sender or encoder (by whom), form (in which form), channel
(through which medium), destination, receiver, target or decoder (to

whom), and the purpose or pragmatic aspect. Between parties,

communication includes acts that confer knowledge and experiences, give

advice and commands, and ask questions. These acts may take many forms,

in one of the various manners of communication. The form depends on the

abilities of the group communicating. Together, communication content and

form make messages that are sent towards a destination. The target can be

oneself, another person or being, another entity (such as a corporation or

group of beings).
ORAL COMMUNICATION

The first step in planning an oral presentation involves acknowledging

two fundamental differences between oral and written communication.

One essential goal of oral communication is to make personal contact

with the audience, and to help connect them to the content. Reading a

written report aloud is not usually an effective strategy for engaging with the

audience. The needs/preferences of the audience play an even larger role in

oral presentations than in writing. The content of presentations should be

prepared with this goal in mind.

Second, oral presentations are fleeting (or time-sensitive). If readers

get lost or stop paying attention for a few minutes, they can always flip back

a few pages. Listeners, on the other hand, usually can’t interrupt the

speaker and ask that s/he start again and go back a few minutes. Once

words are uttered, they vanish. Presenters can account for the fleeting

nature of oral presentations by making sure that the presentation is well

organized and by making structure explicit in the talk, so the audience can

always knows where they’ve been and where they’re going.

ORAL COMPOSITION VS. ORAL PRESENTATION
NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION

Nonverbal communication (NVC) is usually understood as the process

of communication through sending and receiving wordless messages. Such

messages can be communicated through gesture; body language or posture;

facial expression and eye contact; object communication such as clothing,

hairstyles or even architecture; symbols and infographics. Speech may also

contain nonverbal elements known as paralanguage, including voice quality,

emotion and speaking style, as well as prosodic features such as rhythm,

intonation and stress. Likewise, written texts have nonverbal elements such

as handwriting style, spatial arrangement of words, or the use of emoticons.

However, much of the study of nonverbal communication has focused

on face-to-face interaction, where it can be classified into three principal

areas: environmental conditions where communication takes place, the

physical characteristics of the communicators, and behaviors of

communicators during interaction.[1]

THE IPA

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

Origin

The IPA was first published in 1888 by the Association Phonétique

Internationale (International Phonetic Association), a group of French

language teachers founded by Paul Passy. The aim of the organisation was

to devise a system for transcribing the sounds of speech which was

independent of any particular language and applicable to all languages.

A phonetic script for English created in 1847 by Isaac Pitman and Henry Ellis

was used as a model for the IPA.

Uses

• The IPA is used in dictionaries to indicate the pronunciation of words.

• The IPA has often been used as a basis for creating new writing

systems for previously unwritten languages.

• The IPA is used in some foreign language text books and phrase books

to transcribe the sounds of languages which are written with non-latin

alphabets. It is also used by non-native speakers of English when

learning to speak English.

 Where symbols appear in pairs, the one on the right represents a

voiced consonant, while the one on the left is unvoiced. Shaded areas

denote articulations judged to be impossible.