ORAL COMMUNICATION

The house is on fire! (Run for your lives, call 911!)

The house is on fire. (I am so happy; my insurance fraud scheme is going better than I planned.)

The house is on fireagain. Yeah I know. But please dont bother me with such problems. Its 2 AM and tomorrows a workday! (My neighbor is such a bother. I wish he would stop his chemistry experiments.)

 Man is a social animal. One of the essential activities of the human race, communication is the transmission of thoughts from one mind to others. It is a process in which people share thoughts, ideas and feelings with each other. Communication as an essential function of civilization basically consists of writing, reading, speaking and listening.

 The act of transmitting messages between a speaker and a listener in order to be understood may be illustrated in several stages: 1.The process starts with a stimulus in the form of an occurrence such as an idea, a startling news, a disagreeable remark or a positive comment that activates the sensory processes of a person who is known as the sender.

2. The stimulus is transmitted by the nerve fibers to the brain which in turn recognizes the event. Its perception is affected by the senders experience, environment, or culture. The senders brain identifies the event and evaluates it on the merit of the stimulus. 3. His thoughts are being encoded into language symbols or words which must be in the same language that the listener knows and understands.

4. This the stage where the sender is ready to externalize his thoughts into the environment by means of using an available channel to transmit the message. 5. Speech sounds are uttered in proper sequences to transmit the message. 6. The sounds containing the message are heard and the gestures that accompany them are seen by the receiver.

7. The receiver now decodes from sound to language and encodes from thought to words. 8. The response is now carried by the wavelengths to the first speaker, the original source of the message. 9. The sounds and subsequently the language and message are heard. The listener now evaluates them and reacts using the same channel in the same manner of exchange.

THE LISTENING PROCESS Listening is the cognitive process whereby we attach meanings to aural signals. It is a very important area of communication because we spend most of our time in work and play listening. Oftentimes however, we do not listen effectively.

 Our inability to listen well leads to misunderstanding and miscommunication at all. Good listening begins with a willingness to participate completely in a communicative situation. It does the following: it stimulates better communication; it contributes to and promotes better responses among the members of the group; it helps you enjoy what you hear, it assists you in understanding what is being said, and it enables you to react to what is said.

 There are three kinds of listening: 1.In emphatic listening, we listen to understand the feelings and emotions of others. 2.On the other hand, we evaluate and form opinions about what we heard in critical listening. 3.If we, as listeners, are required to take part in the interaction, then the kind of listening involved is reciprocal.

 There are some barriers that make us incapable of listening effectively such as: 1.Prejudging, that is when we jump to the conclusion that we understand the speakers meaning before it is fully expressed. 2.Criticizing delivery and physical appearance, when we focus on the external aspect of the speaker

3. Listening too hard, when we concentrate on the details we miss the speakers point. 4. Intrusion of the past, which color the way we understand a person at the present time of communication. 5. Drifting thoughts, when we take too much time to fill our minds with other thoughts while we try to listen.