Communication Skills Exercises
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There are a considerable number of communication skills lessons, theory and demonstrations that have been put up on the web. However, it is equally important to implement some communication improvements on ourselves. Improving and polishing such communication skills is no crash course, but is life long process and this improvement and development process continues to go on and on. Therefore one of the best communication skills exercises is to start talking correctly, in a grammatical sense. Apart form that, start solving small grammar and composition exercises, once or twice a week. Reading the newspaper and writing down your interpretations in a few lines, or writing the summary of a book that you have just read, in a single paragraph are some effective communication development exercises.
In order make the communication skills exercises more simplified and transparent, they have been classified into verbal and written. The communication skills drills aim at overall development of speech, writing and presenting content.
Verbal Communication Skills Exercises
Verbal communication is an important aspect of day to day communication with our fellow human beings. Verbal communication is also the most frequently used form of communication. The following exercises will help you polish your skills.
The best way to polish your skill is to practice, by actually communicating. For this select a topic such as 'comments on Obama administration' or 'summary of Mama Mia!'. Start off, as if you narrating the facts to your friends or colleagues. Record the facts on your cell phone and hear it later. Rerecord and try to, grammatically and factually, correct yourself at the second attempt. This is the simplest exercise and also the best communication skill test, all you need is your cell phone.
Verbal communication can be further enhanced by other exercises such as playing 'Whose line is it anyway' games, as it makes your brain think quickly in the proper manner. A similar exercise again involves using your cell phone. Sit on a park bench and try to imagine and conduct conversations with far off people.
This one is my favorite, as it involves a considerable amount of body language. Stand in front of a mirror and narrate to yourself an imagined dialog between yourself and and your boss or colleague. Make sure that you flash off a considerable volume of 'style' in the language, as well as your body language. It would be a great idea to record the entire conversation, sounds stupid, but is helps greatly as you can easily point out your own clumsiness and mistakes in the entire conversation.
Another exercise that you can do, with a group of friends, is a general conversation. Start off with any topic under the sun and successively add sentences in a synchronized and uniform order. There must be no grammatical mistakes, as well any out of context and totally unrelated sentences.
Often, you have fall outs and misconceptions in presentations and meetings, as a result of miscommunication. Hence, whenever you have some important meeting or presentation, beforehand, present it in front of 3 types of audiences. Beginners (example: people who do not understand anything about your work), common or neutral people (your friends who work in the same or related fields) and thirdly, experts. This will enable you to phrase your discussion in a simple as well as complex manner.
Apart from these exercises, you can also take a look at some of the verbal communication techniques and verbal communication styles.
Written Communication Skills
Written communication skills exercises are as important as verbal communication and even a simple reminder note posted on your colleagues desk can be very important.
The best communication skills workout is to write a short summary of your day, in a small diary. Let the handwriting be clean and the content factually and grammatically correct. Believe it or not, the diary starts taking to you after a few days. You can take this writing to a new level by writing out your reactions and emotions of the days headlines. Again correctness and factual clarity is necessary.
The second one is my personal favorite, writing a description. The exercise is simple, all you need to do is describe some object or emotion. The best topic is to write about nature. Take a flower for example, say rose. Write down your emotions about the flowers, make it generic, but very thoughtful. After a certain time, start using difficult adverbs and adjectives in the writing. It is necessary that you factually stick to the chosen topic. After some days start setting a time or word limit for yourself.
Next, address the same write up to somebody, such as your parents or family. This exercise sounds stupid, and out of context, but believe it or not, it will definitely help you in improving your business writing and business communication
The last exercise is letter writing, address a letter stating some good facts about any subject under the sun. the three important principles that you should bear in mind while writing the letter are comprehensives, grammatical clarity, punctuation and factual flow.
Such simple exercises will help you to polish and refine your communication skills. You will realize that effective communication skills in business, start making an impact on your clients, colleagues and superiors. You may also have a look at some of the effective communication tips for guidance. Do one exercise per day and in no time shall you become affluent in the art of communication. I hope that you find the communication skills exercises resourceful. Good luck.
Article Source: Articlelogy.com
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