is speech communication important

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Chapter 1: The Speech Communication Process

The Speech Communication Process

• Listener(s)

Interference

As you might imagine, the speaker is the crucial first element within the speech communication process. Without a speaker, there is no process.  The  speaker  is simply the person who is delivering, or presenting, the speech.  A speaker might be someone who is training employees in your workplace. Your professor is another example of a public speaker as s/he gives a lecture. Even a stand-up comedian can be considered a public speaker. After all, each of these people is presenting an oral message to an audience in a public setting. Most speakers, however, would agree that the listener is one of the primary reasons that they speak.

The listener is just as important as the speaker; neither one is effective without the other.  The  listener  is the person or persons who have assembled to hear the oral message.  Some texts might even call several listeners an “audience. ” The listener generally forms an opinion as to the effectiveness of the speaker and the validity of the speaker’s message based on what they see and hear during the presentation. The listener’s job sometimes includes critiquing, or evaluating, the speaker’s style and message. You might be asked to critique your classmates as they speak or to complete an evaluation of a public speaker in another setting. That makes the job of the listener extremely important. Providing constructive feedback to speakers often helps the speaker improve her/his speech tremendously.

Another crucial element in the speech process is the message.  The  message  is what the speaker is discussing or the ideas that s/he is presenting to you as s/he covers a particular topic.  The important chapter concepts presented by your professor become the message during a lecture. The commands and steps you need to use, the new software at work, are the message of the trainer as s/he presents the information to your department. The message might be lengthy, such as the President’s State of the Union address, or fairly brief, as in a five-minute presentation given in class.

The  channel  is the means by which the message is sent or transmitted.  Different channels are used to deliver the message, depending on the communication type or context. For instance, in mass communication, the channel utilized might be a television or radio broadcast. The use of a cell phone is an example of a channel that you might use to send a friend a message in interpersonal communication. However, the channel typically used within public speaking is the speaker’s voice, or more specifically, the sound waves used to carry the voice to those listening. You could watch a prerecorded speech or one accessible on YouTube, and you might now say the channel is the television or your computer. This is partially true. However, the speech would still have no value if the speaker’s voice was not present, so in reality, the channel is now a combination of the two -the speaker’s voice broadcast through an electronic source.

The context is a bit more complicated than the other elements we have discussed so far. The context is more than one specific component. For example, when you give a speech in your classroom, the classroom, or  the physical location of your speech, is part of the context  . That’s probably the easiest part of context to grasp.

But you should also consider that the  people in your audience expect you to behave in a certain manner, depending on the physical location or the occasion of the presentation  . If you gave a toast at a wedding, the audience wouldn’t be surprised if you told a funny story about the couple or used informal gestures such as a high-five or a slap on the groom’s back. That would be acceptable within the expectations of your audience, given the occasion. However, what if the reason for your speech was the presentation of a eulogy at a loved one’s funeral? Would the audience still find a high-five or humor as acceptable in that setting? Probably not. So the expectations of your audience must be factored into context as well.

The cultural rules -often unwritten and sometimes never formally communicated to us -are also a part of the context. Depending on your culture, you would probably agree that there are some “rules ” typically adhered to by those attending a funeral. In some cultures, mourners wear dark colors and are somber and quiet. In other cultures, grieving out loud or beating one’s chest to show extreme grief is traditional. Therefore,  the rules from our culture  -no matter what they are -play a part in the context as well.

Every speaker hopes that her/his speech is clearly understood by the audience. However, there are times when some obstacle gets in the way of the message and interferes with the listener’s ability to hear what’s being said.  This is  interference  , or you might have heard it referred to as “noise. ”  Every speaker must prepare and present with the assumption that interference is likely to be present in the speaking environment.

Interference can be mental, physical, or physiological.  Mental interference  occurs when the listener is not fully focused on what s/he is hearing due to her/his own thoughts.  If you’ve ever caught yourself daydreaming in class during a lecture, you’re experiencing mental interference. Your own thoughts are getting in the way of the message.

A second form of interference is  physical interference  . This is noise in the literal sense -someone coughing behind you during a speech or the sound of a mower outside the classroom window. You may be unable to hear the speaker because of the surrounding environmental noises.

The last form of interference is  physiological  . This type of interference occurs when your body is responsible for the blocked signals. A deaf person, for example, has the truest form of physiological interference; s/he may have varying degrees of difficulty hearing the message. If you’ve ever been in a room that was too cold or too hot and found yourself not paying attention, you’re experiencing physiological interference. Your bodily discomfort distracts from what is happening around you.

The final component within the speech process is feedback. While some might assume that the speaker is the only one who sends a message during a speech, the reality is that the  listeners in the audience are sending a message of their own, called  feedback  .  Often this is how the speaker knows if s/he is sending an effective message. Occasionally the feedback from listeners comes in verbal form – questions from the audience or an angry response from a listener about a key point presented. However, in general, feedback during a presentation is typically non-verbal -a student nodding her/his head in agreement or a confused look from an audience member. An observant speaker will scan the audience for these forms of feedback, but keep in mind that non-verbal feedback is often more difficult to spot and to decipher. For example, is a yawn a sign of boredom, or is it simply a tired audience member?

Generally, all of the above elements are present during a speech. However, you might wonder what the process would look like if we used a diagram to illustrate it. Initially, some students think of public speaking as a linear process -the speaker sending a message to the listener -a simple, straight line. But if you’ll think about the components we’ve just covered, you begin to see that a straight line cannot adequately represent the process, when we add listener feedback into the process. The listener is sending her/his own message back to the speaker, so perhaps the process might better be represented as circular. Add in some interference and place the example in context, and you have a more complete idea of the speech process.

Fundamentals of Public Speaking Copyright © by Lumen Learning is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Don’t Underestimate the Power of Your Voice

• Dan Bullock
• Raúl Sánchez

It’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it.

Our voices matter as much as our words matter. They have the power to awaken the senses and lead others to act, close deals, or land us successful job interviews. Through our voices, we create nuances of meaning, convey our emotions, and find the secret to communicating our executive presence. So, how do we train our voices to be more visceral, effective, and command attention?

• The key lies in harnessing our voices using the principles of vocalics. Vocalics primarily consists of three linguistic elements: stress (volume) , intonation (rising and falling tone), and rhythm (pacing). By combining vocalics with public speaking skills, we can colors our words with the meaning and emotion that motivates others to act.
• Crank up your volume: No, we don’t mean shout. The effective use of volume goes beyond trying to be the loudest person in the room. To direct the flow of any conversation, you must overtly stress what linguists call focus words. When you intentionally place volume on certain words, you emphasize parts of a message and shift the direction of a conversation toward your preferred outcome.
• Use a powerful speech style: The key to achieving a powerful speech style, particularly during job interviews and hiring decisions, is to first concentrate on the “melody” of your voice, also called intonation. This rise or fall of our voice conveys grammatical meaning (questions or statements) or even attitude (surprise, joy, sarcasm).
• Calibrate your vocal rhythm with the right melody: Our messages are perceived differently depending on the way we use rhythm in our voices. Deliberately varying our pacing with compelling pauses creates “voiced” punctuation, a powerful way to hold the pulse of the moment.

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• Dan Bullock is a language and communications specialist/trainer at the United Nations Secretariat, training diplomats and global UN staff. Dan is the co-author of How to Communicate Effectively with Anyone, Anywhere (Career Press, 2021).   He also serves as faculty teaching business communication, linguistics, and public relations within the Division of Programs in Business at New York University’s School of Professional Studies. Dan was the director of corporate communications at a leading NYC public relations firm, and his corporate clients have included TD Bank and Pfizer. 
• Raúl Sánchez is an award-winning clinical assistant professor and the corporate program coordinator at New York University’s School of Professional Studies. Raúl is the co-author of How to Communicate Effectively with Anyone, Anywhere (Career Press, 2021). He has designed and delivered corporate trainings for Deloitte and the United Nations, as well as been a writing consultant for Barnes & Noble Press and PBS. Raúl was awarded the NYU School of Professional Studies Teaching Excellence Award and specializes in linguistics and business communication.

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3.6: The Speech Communication Process

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Most who study the speech communication process agree that there are several critical components present in nearly every speech. We have chosen in this text to label these components using the following terms:

• Listener(s)

Interference

As you might imagine, the speaker is the crucial first element within the speech communication process. Without a speaker, there is no process.  The  speaker  is simply the person who is delivering, or presenting, the speech.  A speaker might be someone who is training employees in your workplace. Your professor is another example of a public speaker as s/he gives a lecture. Even a stand-up comedian can be considered a public speaker. After all, each of these people is presenting an oral message to an audience in a public setting. Most speakers, however, would agree that the listener is one of the primary reasons that they speak.

The listener is just as important as the speaker; neither one is effective without the other.  The  listener  is the person or persons who have assembled to hear the oral message.  Some texts might even call several listeners an “audience. ” The listener generally forms an opinion as to the effectiveness of the speaker and the validity of the speaker’s message based on what they see and hear during the presentation. The listener’s job sometimes includes critiquing, or evaluating, the speaker’s style and message. You might be asked to critique your classmates as they speak or to complete an evaluation of a public speaker in another setting. That makes the job of the listener extremely important. Providing constructive feedback to speakers often helps the speaker improve her/his speech tremendously.

Another crucial element in the speech process is the message.  The  message  is what the speaker is discussing or the ideas that s/he is presenting to you as s/he covers a particular topic.  The important chapter concepts presented by your professor become the message during a lecture. The commands and steps you need to use, the new software at work, are the message of the trainer as s/he presents the information to your department. The message might be lengthy, such as the President’s State of the Union address, or fairly brief, as in a five-minute presentation given in class.

The  channel  is the means by which the message is sent or transmitted.  Different channels are used to deliver the message, depending on the communication type or context. For instance, in mass communication, the channel utilized might be a television or radio broadcast. The use of a cell phone is an example of a channel that you might use to send a friend a message in interpersonal communication. However, the channel typically used within public speaking is the speaker’s voice, or more specifically, the sound waves used to carry the voice to those listening. You could watch a prerecorded speech or one accessible on YouTube, and you might now say the channel is the television or your computer. This is partially true. However, the speech would still have no value if the speaker’s voice was not present, so in reality, the channel is now a combination of the two -the speaker’s voice broadcast through an electronic source.

The context is a bit more complicated than the other elements we have discussed so far. The context is more than one specific component. For example, when you give a speech in your classroom, the classroom, or  the physical location of your speech, is part of the context  . That’s probably the easiest part of context to grasp.

But you should also consider that the  people in your audience expect you to behave in a certain manner, depending on the physical location or the occasion of the presentation  . If you gave a toast at a wedding, the audience wouldn’t be surprised if you told a funny story about the couple or used informal gestures such as a high-five or a slap on the groom’s back. That would be acceptable within the expectations of your audience, given the occasion. However, what if the reason for your speech was the presentation of a eulogy at a loved one’s funeral? Would the audience still find a high-five or humor as acceptable in that setting? Probably not. So the expectations of your audience must be factored into context as well.

The cultural rules -often unwritten and sometimes never formally communicated to us -are also a part of the context. Depending on your culture, you would probably agree that there are some “rules ” typically adhered to by those attending a funeral. In some cultures, mourners wear dark colors and are somber and quiet. In other cultures, grieving out loud or beating one’s chest to show extreme grief is traditional. Therefore,  the rules from our culture  -no matter what they are -play a part in the context as well.

Every speaker hopes that her/his speech is clearly understood by the audience. However, there are times when some obstacle gets in the way of the message and interferes with the listener’s ability to hear what’s being said.  This is  interference  , or you might have heard it referred to as “noise. ”  Every speaker must prepare and present with the assumption that interference is likely to be present in the speaking environment.

Interference can be mental, physical, or physiological.  Mental interference  occurs when the listener is not fully focused on what s/he is hearing due to her/his own thoughts.  If you’ve ever caught yourself daydreaming in class during a lecture, you’re experiencing mental interference. Your own thoughts are getting in the way of the message.

A second form of interference is  physical interference  . This is noise in the literal sense -someone coughing behind you during a speech or the sound of a mower outside the classroom window. You may be unable to hear the speaker because of the surrounding environmental noises.

The last form of interference is  physiological  . This type of interference occurs when your body is responsible for the blocked signals. A deaf person, for example, has the truest form of physiological interference; s/he may have varying degrees of difficulty hearing the message. If you’ve ever been in a room that was too cold or too hot and found yourself not paying attention, you’re experiencing physiological interference. Your bodily discomfort distracts from what is happening around you.

The final component within the speech process is feedback. While some might assume that the speaker is the only one who sends a message during a speech, the reality is that the  listeners in the audience are sending a message of their own, called  feedback  .  Often this is how the speaker knows if s/he is sending an effective message. Occasionally the feedback from listeners comes in verbal form – questions from the audience or an angry response from a listener about a key point presented. However, in general, feedback during a presentation is typically non-verbal -a student nodding her/his head in agreement or a confused look from an audience member. An observant speaker will scan the audience for these forms of feedback, but keep in mind that non-verbal feedback is often more difficult to spot and to decipher. For example, is a yawn a sign of boredom, or is it simply a tired audience member?

Generally, all of the above elements are present during a speech. However, you might wonder what the process would look like if we used a diagram to illustrate it. Initially, some students think of public speaking as a linear process -the speaker sending a message to the listener -a simple, straight line. But if you’ll think about the components we’ve just covered, you begin to see that a straight line cannot adequately represent the process, when we add listener feedback into the process. The listener is sending her/his own message back to the speaker, so perhaps the process might better be represented as circular. Add in some interference and place the example in context, and you have a more complete idea of the speech process.

• Provided by : Florida State College at Jacksonville. License : CC BY: Attribution

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Why are speech, language and communication so important?

February 1, 2019

Everyone talks about the importance of communication but what does it actually consist of and why is it so important? Each day we use communication, speech and language to connect with people and the world around us. In fact, communication is a basic right and every individual should reach their full communicative potential in terms of speech and language.

Let’s take a closer look at what these terms actually mean. Communication is a two-way process between participants where they exchange information, ideas, feelings, and create and share meaning. This may be done through different means such as spoken or written language, gestures or visual aids. Language is a formal system of words and symbols through which we communicate. We might do this through speaking, listening, reading, writing and viewing. Due to the nature of language, users have the ability to create and share infinite meanings. Speech   is made up of the sounds within a language, and it is one of the main ways in which we communicate with people.

Language can be classified as receptive or expressive. Receptive language is how we understand language, which is usually through listening or reading, and expressive language is how we use language, which is usually through speaking and writing. Communication also includes a range of other skills such as social communication, sentence structure, word meaning and vocabulary, grammar and the production of speech sounds.

Now, whilst this may sound overwhelming and confusing, most of us unconsciously use these skills across the day.  Think about a simple activity, such as ordering a snack from the canteen or café. Firstly, you use receptive language skills to read and view the menu and make a choice. You then use expressive language and speech to place your order. You might also use non-verbal communication by pointing to the item or the menu. You then use receptive language to understand the response, such as the price or wait time. Additional communication skills are layered into this interaction such as eye contact, turn taking and social communication, such as greetings and manners. So, to complete what looks like a simple action in a small part of your day, you are using a multitude of communication skills, language and speech skills!

It is amazing to think that we start to develop our speech, language and communication skills from birth. Children usually develop their basic foundation skills of speech, language and communication in their first 5 years, and continue to develop and refine their skills right up until adult years, as they learn to use speech and language for literacy, reading and increasingly complex and formal purposes.

When children start school, they are expected to have developed the speech, language and communication foundations needed to participate in learning in the classroom and the playground. The Australian Curriculum has a strong focus on communication in terms of language, literacy and literature, with teaching and learning having a focus on oral language. This can impact children who might have difficulties or a delay with their speech, language and communication, as they may have difficulty understanding and sharing information, creating meaning, communicating requests, interacting and playing with others, developing literacy and numeracy skills and participating in learning activities.  In fact, it is estimated that approximately 24% of children have speech, language or communication difficulties at school entry.

Now this can sound concerning, but in reality, some children just need a little support from a speech and language pathologist to develop their skills. Speech and language pathologists study, assess and treat communication difficulties, including those relating to speaking, listening, understanding and using language, reading, writing, social skills, stuttering and using voice. Speech pathologists work with individuals of all ages but early intervention has been proven to be most effective and meaningful for a child, to help them reach their milestones and continue with their learning. In most cases, a child does not ‘outgrow’ their difficulties and they do not ‘go away’ without intervention.

Sometimes parents and teachers can find it difficult to identify speech, language and communication difficulties in a child, as it may often be masked by other skills. Often, they may notice other changes such as frustration, avoidance or refusal to complete homework, participate in activities or talking situations. It is important to remember that they may have speech, language and communication difficulties for a range of different reasons, and it is not a cause of parenting or a child being lazy.

All children develop at different rates but most children learn skills within an age range. You can help your child’s speech and language development by:

• Talking, reading and playing together
• Listening and responding to what they say
• Commenting about your actions and your child’s actions
• Using your home/primary language as well as English
• Using new and different words
• Starting to use longer sentences as they get older
• Encouraging your child to play with other kids

Speech Pathologists are here to work together with families and teachers to make learning fun! If you’re unsure if your child has speech, language and communication needs or difficulties, we welcome you to get in touch with us here at Beam Health to book in a consultation with our experienced Speech Pathologist .

Delna Pryde

Speech Pathologist

American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. (1993). Definitions of communication disorders and variations [Relevant Paper]. Available from www.asha.org/policy .

American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. (n.d.). Early identification of speech, language, and hearing disorders. Available from: www.asha.org  

Speech Pathology Australia. (2017). Speech pathology in schools. Available from  www.speechpathologyaustralia.org.au

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1.1 Why Is Public Speaking Important?

Learning objectives.

• Explore three types of public speaking in everyday life: informative, persuasive, and entertaining.
• Understand the benefits of taking a course in public speaking.
• Explain the benefits people get from engaging in public speaking.

Christian Pierret – Leader – CC BY 2.0.

In today’s world, we are constantly bombarded with messages both good and bad. No matter where you live, where you work or go to school, or what kinds of media you use, you are probably exposed to hundreds. if not thousands, of advertising messages every day. Researcher Norman W. Edmund estimates that by 2020 the amount of knowledge in the world will double every seventy-three days (Edmund, 2005). Because we live in a world where we are overwhelmed with content, communicating information in a way that is accessible to others is more important today than ever before. To help us further understand why public speaking is important, we will first examine public speaking in everyday life. We will then discuss how public speaking can benefit you personally.

Everyday Public Speaking

Every single day people across the United States and around the world stand up in front of some kind of audience and speak. In fact, there’s even a monthly publication that reproduces some of the top speeches from around the United States called Vital Speeches of the Day ( http://www.vsotd.com ). Although public speeches are of various types, they can generally be grouped into three categories based on their intended purpose: informative, persuasive, and entertaining.

Informative Speaking

One of the most common types of public speaking is informative speaking . The primary purpose of informative presentations is to share one’s knowledge of a subject with an audience. Reasons for making an informative speech vary widely. For example, you might be asked to instruct a group of coworkers on how to use new computer software or to report to a group of managers how your latest project is coming along. A local community group might wish to hear about your volunteer activities in New Orleans during spring break, or your classmates may want you to share your expertise on Mediterranean cooking. What all these examples have in common is the goal of imparting information to an audience.

Informative speaking is integrated into many different occupations. Physicians often lecture about their areas of expertise to medical students, other physicians, and patients. Teachers find themselves presenting to parents as well as to their students. Firefighters give demonstrations about how to effectively control a fire in the house. Informative speaking is a common part of numerous jobs and other everyday activities. As a result, learning how to speak effectively has become an essential skill in today’s world.

Persuasive Speaking

A second common reason for speaking to an audience is to persuade others. In our everyday lives, we are often called on to convince, motivate, or otherwise persuade others to change their beliefs, take an action, or reconsider a decision. Advocating for music education in your local school district, convincing clients to purchase your company’s products, or inspiring high school students to attend college all involve influencing other people through public speaking.

For some people, such as elected officials, giving persuasive speeches is a crucial part of attaining and continuing career success. Other people make careers out of speaking to groups of people who pay to listen to them. Motivational authors and speakers, such as Les Brown ( http://www.lesbrown.com ), make millions of dollars each year from people who want to be motivated to do better in their lives. Brian Tracy, another professional speaker and author, specializes in helping business leaders become more productive and effective in the workplace ( http://www.briantracy.com ).

Whether public speaking is something you do every day or just a few times a year, persuading others is a challenging task. If you develop the skill to persuade effectively, it can be personally and professionally rewarding.

Entertaining Speaking

Entertaining speaking involves an array of speaking occasions ranging from introductions to wedding toasts, to presenting and accepting awards, to delivering eulogies at funerals and memorial services in addition to after-dinner speeches and motivational speeches. Entertaining speaking has been important since the time of the ancient Greeks, when Aristotle identified epideictic speaking (speaking in a ceremonial context) as an important type of address. As with persuasive and informative speaking, there are professionals, from religious leaders to comedians, who make a living simply from delivering entertaining speeches. As anyone who has watched an awards show on television or has seen an incoherent best man deliver a wedding toast can attest, speaking to entertain is a task that requires preparation and practice to be effective.

Personal Benefits of Public Speaking

Oral communication skills were the number one skill that college graduates found useful in the business world, according to a study by sociologist Andrew Zekeri (Zekeri, 2004). That fact alone makes learning about public speaking worthwhile. However, there are many other benefits of communicating effectively for the hundreds of thousands of college students every year who take public speaking courses. Let’s take a look at some of the personal benefits you’ll get both from a course in public speaking and from giving public speeches.

Benefits of Public Speaking Courses

In addition to learning the process of creating and delivering an effective speech, students of public speaking leave the class with a number of other benefits as well. Some of these benefits include

• developing critical thinking skills,
• fine-tuning verbal and nonverbal skills,
• overcoming fear of public speaking.

Developing Critical Thinking Skills

One of the very first benefits you will gain from your public speaking course is an increased ability to think critically. Problem solving is one of many critical thinking skills you will engage in during this course. For example, when preparing a persuasive speech, you’ll have to think through real problems affecting your campus, community, or the world and provide possible solutions to those problems. You’ll also have to think about the positive and negative consequences of your solutions and then communicate your ideas to others. At first, it may seem easy to come up with solutions for a campus problem such as a shortage of parking spaces: just build more spaces. But after thinking and researching further you may find out that building costs, environmental impact from loss of green space, maintenance needs, or limited locations for additional spaces make this solution impractical. Being able to think through problems and analyze the potential costs and benefits of solutions is an essential part of critical thinking and of public speaking aimed at persuading others. These skills will help you not only in public speaking contexts but throughout your life as well. As we stated earlier, college graduates in Zekeri’s study rated oral communication skills as the most useful for success in the business world. The second most valuable skill they reported was problem-solving ability, so your public speaking course is doubly valuable!

Another benefit to public speaking is that it will enhance your ability to conduct and analyze research. Public speakers must provide credible evidence within their speeches if they are going to persuade various audiences. So your public speaking course will further refine your ability to find and utilize a range of sources.

Fine-Tuning Verbal and Nonverbal Skills

A second benefit of taking a public speaking course is that it will help you fine-tune your verbal and nonverbal communication skills. Whether you competed in public speaking in high school or this is your first time speaking in front of an audience, having the opportunity to actively practice communication skills and receive professional feedback will help you become a better overall communicator. Often, people don’t even realize that they twirl their hair or repeatedly mispronounce words while speaking in public settings until they receive feedback from a teacher during a public speaking course. People around the United States will often pay speech coaches over one hundred dollars per hour to help them enhance their speaking skills. You have a built-in speech coach right in your classroom, so it is to your advantage to use the opportunity to improve your verbal and nonverbal communication skills.

Overcoming Fear of Public Speaking

An additional benefit of taking a public speaking class is that it will help reduce your fear of public speaking. Whether they’ve spoken in public a lot or are just getting started, most people experience some anxiety when engaging in public speaking. Heidi Rose and Andrew Rancer evaluated students’ levels of public speaking anxiety during both the first and last weeks of their public speaking class and found that those levels decreased over the course of the semester (Rose & Rancer, 1993). One explanation is that people often have little exposure to public speaking. By taking a course in public speaking, students become better acquainted with the public speaking process, making them more confident and less apprehensive. In addition, you will learn specific strategies for overcoming the challenges of speech anxiety. We will discuss this topic in greater detail in Chapter 3 “Speaking Confidently” .

Benefits of Engaging in Public Speaking

Once you’ve learned the basic skills associated with public speaking, you’ll find that being able to effectively speak in public has profound benefits, including

• influencing the world around you,
• developing leadership skills,
• becoming a thought leader.

Influencing the World around You

If you don’t like something about your local government, then speak out about your issue! One of the best ways to get our society to change is through the power of speech. Common citizens in the United States and around the world, like you, are influencing the world in real ways through the power of speech. Just type the words “citizens speak out” in a search engine and you’ll find numerous examples of how common citizens use the power of speech to make real changes in the world—for example, by speaking out against “fracking” for natural gas (a process in which chemicals are injected into rocks in an attempt to open them up for fast flow of natural gas or oil) or in favor of retaining a popular local sheriff. One of the amazing parts of being a citizen in a democracy is the right to stand up and speak out, which is a luxury many people in the world do not have. So if you don’t like something, be the force of change you’re looking for through the power of speech.

Developing Leadership Skills

Have you ever thought about climbing the corporate ladder and eventually finding yourself in a management or other leadership position? If so, then public speaking skills are very important. Hackman and Johnson assert that effective public speaking skills are a necessity for all leaders (Hackman & Johnson, 2004). If you want people to follow you, you have to communicate effectively and clearly what followers should do. According to Bender, “Powerful leadership comes from knowing what matters to you. Powerful presentations come from expressing this effectively. It’s important to develop both” (Bender, 1998). One of the most important skills for leaders to develop is their public speaking skills, which is why executives spend millions of dollars every year going to public speaking workshops; hiring public speaking coaches; and buying public speaking books, CDs, and DVDs.

Becoming a Thought Leader

Even if you are not in an official leadership position, effective public speaking can help you become a “ thought leader .” Joel Kurtzman, editor of Strategy & Business , coined this term to call attention to individuals who contribute new ideas to the world of business. According to business consultant Ken Lizotte, “when your colleagues, prospects, and customers view you as one very smart guy or gal to know, then you’re a thought leader” (Lizotte, 2008). Typically, thought leaders engage in a range of behaviors, including enacting and conducting research on business practices. To achieve thought leader status, individuals must communicate their ideas to others through both writing and public speaking. Lizotte demonstrates how becoming a thought leader can be personally and financially rewarding at the same time: when others look to you as a thought leader, you will be more desired and make more money as a result. Business gurus often refer to “intellectual capital,” or the combination of your knowledge and ability to communicate that knowledge to others (Lizotte, 2008). Whether standing before a group of executives discussing the next great trend in business or delivering a webinar (a seminar over the web), thought leaders use public speaking every day to create the future that the rest of us live in.

Key Takeaways

• People have many reasons for engaging in public speaking, but the skills necessary for public speaking are applicable whether someone is speaking for informative, persuasive, or entertainment reasons.
• Taking a public speaking class will improve your speaking skills, help you be a more critical thinker, fine-tune your verbal and nonverbal communication skills, and help you overcome public speaking anxiety.
• Effective public speaking skills have many direct benefits for the individual speaker, including influencing the world around you, developing leadership skills, and becoming a go-to person for ideas and solutions.
• Talk to people who are currently working in the career you hope to pursue. Of the three types of public speaking discussed in the text, which do they use most commonly use in their work?
• Read one of the free speeches available at http://www.vsotd.com . What do you think the speaker was trying to accomplish? What was her or his reason for speaking?
• Which personal benefit are you most interested in receiving from a public speaking class? Why?

Bender, P. U. (1998). Stand, deliver and lead. Ivey Business Journal , 62 (3), 46–47.

Edmund, N. W. (2005). End the biggest educational and intellectual blunder in history: A $100,000 challenge to our top educational leaders . Ft. Lauderdale, FL: Scientific Method Publishing Co.

Hackman, M. Z., & Johnson, C. E. (2004). Leadership: A communication perspective (4th ed.). Long Grove, IL: Waveland.

Lizotte, K. (2008). The expert’s edge: Become the go-to authority people turn to every time [Kindle 2 version]. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Retrieved from Amazon.com (locations 72–78).

Rose, H. M., & Rancer, A. S. (1993). The impact of basic courses in oral interpretation and public speaking on communication apprehension. Communication Reports , 6 , 54–60.

Zekeri, A. A. (2004). College curriculum competencies and skills former students found essential to their careers. College Student Journal , 38 , 412–422.

Stand up, Speak out Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Why Communication Matters

We communicate to create, maintain, and change relationships and selves..

Posted July 15, 2021 | Reviewed by Vanessa Lancaster

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• How we communicate helps relationships get off on the right foot, navigate problems, and change over time.
• In communication, we develop, create, maintain, and alter our relationships.
• We communicate to work our way through family changes and challenges in verbal and non-verbal ways.

I remember seeing a poster on my junior high classroom wall: “Communication is the Beginning of Understanding.” This spoke to me at the time. Yet, like so many people, I had never really thought much about communication. I would have described communication as sending and receiving messages.

Communication Is More Than Sending and Receiving Messages

In reality, communication is often about transmitting information. We send and receive messages with people in our lives. Daily, much of our communication consists of coordinating schedules, “What time are you getting home for dinner?” and negotiating whose turn it is to do the dishes, pay the bills, or take dinner to a friend who is ill. We send messages like, “It is your turn to let the dog out” and receive messages like, “Don’t forget to get dog food at the store” (if you have not guessed, a lot of the messages in my house are about the dog).

We might also blame problems on communication, talking about “communication breakdowns” or on a “lack of communication.” If we think about communication in these ways, we have missed so much that is important about communication. We have neglected how and why communication matters.

Communication Matters to Creating and Changing Relationships

We become aware of how Communication Matters when

• We confront issues with work-life balance.
• We experience positive events like the birth of a baby or winning an award.
• We have a friend does who does not do or say what we expect.
• We have disagreements over religious beliefs or political values.

Both positive and challenging events affect, reflect, and change our identity and the identity of our personal and family relationships. What do I mean by this? How did these relationships come into being? Well, think about the last time you started a new friendship or had a new member join your family. Through what you and the other person said and did, what we’d call verbal and nonverbal communication , these relationships took shape.

Sometimes relationships develop easily and clearly. They are healthy and pleasant. Other times, relationships develop in stress and storm and may be healthy or not. How we communicate helps relationships get off on the right foot, navigate problems, and change over time.

What is important to understand is that relationships are talked into (and out of) being. In communication, we develop, create, maintain, and alter our relationships. As we communicate, we become and change who we are. Think about how you have grown and changed as you communicate at home, at work, with friends, and in your community.

Communication Matters to Relationship and Family Identity

As we communicate, we co-create relationships and our own identity. As you think about your close relationships and your family, you can likely recall important events, both positive and negative, that impacted how you understand your relationship and yourself as a person.

Consider this example: one of my college students described a childhood family ritual of going out on the front lawn on Christmas Eve. The family sang Christmas carols and threw carrots on the roof for Santa’s reindeers. The family still does this annual carrot-throwing ritual in adulthood. You can picture them bringing their sometimes confused new partners and spouses out in the snow to throw carrots onto the roof and sing.

Why does this family still throw carrots and sing? Through this seemingly silly ritual, the family celebrates who they are as a family and the togetherness that is important to them. The family creates space for new people to join the family. Through their words and actions, members of the family teach their new partners how to be family members through carrot throwing and other vital experiences.

I am sure you can point to experiences that have been central to creating your relationships and your identity.

Communication Matters as We Face Change and Challenges

We also communicate to work our way through family changes and challenges. Family members or others may have different expectations of what our family and personal identity or should be. This is especially true when a family does not fit dominant cultural models, such as single-parent families, multi-ethnic families, stepfamilies, LGBTQ families, or adoptive families.

For me, becoming a stepfamily was highly challenging. We became a stepfamily when I was 12 years old. My mother had recently died, and my Dad surprised us, kids, introducing us to the woman he wanted to marry. We no longer matched the other families in the neighborhood where we’d lived most of our lives. We certainly did not feel like a family overnight.

It took my stepfamily several years to create an understanding of what it meant to be a family. As we interacted, and with many mistakes and some successes, we slowly came to understand what we needed and expected from each other to be a family.

For all of us, relationship and family identity is constantly developing and changing. In my case, I remember my stepmom reminding me to wear a jacket when going out in the evening, even into my 40s, and giving me advice about my health. At some point, our roles changed, and now, as she moves toward her 80s, more often than not, I am in the role of asking about her health and helping her with significant decisions. What it means to be a mother or daughter and what we expect of each other and ourselves change as we interact.

Communication Matters . Whether we are negotiating whose turn it is to feed the dog, how to become a parent, how to interact with a difficult co-worker, or how to celebrate with a friend who won a major award, it is in communication that we learn what to do and say. This is what I will write about in this blog as I reflect on what I have learned as a professor and researcher of interpersonal and family communication. I invite you to go on this journey with me. I hope to give you insights into your communication.

Communication Matters. Communication is the Beginning of Understanding . It is an exciting and ever-changing journey.

Baxter, L. A. (2004). Relationships as dialogues. Personal Relationships, 11 , 1-22. doi: 10.1111/j.1475-6811.2004.00068.x

Braithwaite, D. O., Foster, E. A., & Bergen, K. M. (2018). Social construction theory: Communication co-creating families. In D. O. Braithwaite, E. A. Suter, & K. Floyd. (Eds.). Engaging theories in family communication: Multiple perspectives (2nd ed., pp. 267-278). Routledge.

Braithwaite, D. O., Waldron, V. R., Allen, J., Bergquist, G., Marsh, J., Oliver, B., Storck, K., Swords, N., & Tschampl-Diesing, C. (2018). “Feeling warmth and close to her”: Communication and resilience reflected in turning points in positive adult stepchild-stepparent relationships. Journal of Family Communication, 18 , 92-109. doi: 10.1080/15267431.2017.1415902

Dawn O. Braithwaite, Ph.D., a professor of communication at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, studies families and close relationships, especially step- and chosen families.

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Why Is Public Speaking Important? Because It’s Useful

Updated: December 29, 2023

Published: February 9, 2020

Why is public speaking important? The reason is that everyone encounters a situation where public speaking skills are necessary. It could be at work, school, or in your personal life. Whether you are looking for tips on conquering stage fright, looking to improve your public speaking skills, or trying to motivate others on the importance of public speaking, we have all the info you need here. Find out all the benefits of public speaking below.

Public Speaking Definition

According to Merriam-Webster , public speaking is “the act or process of making speeches in public,” or “the art of effective oral communication with others.”

Everyday Public Speaking

Public speaking for the everyday person is still extremely important. Public speaking has many benefits in everyday life and can be grouped into the following categories:

1. Informative Speaking:

This type of speaking is the most common and happens to most people daily. It involves speaking in order to inform others, or get information out. This can be academic or professional knowledge, but can also be to report your progress on a project, or tell someone how to use something.

2. Persuasive Speaking:

Public speaking will often be in order to persuade others. This can be in a debate or formal speech, but can also be minor persuasions such as going to a place you choose for lunch. Persuasive public speaking is a very valuable skill to have.

3. Entertaining Speaking:

Public speaking for entertainment is used for award ceremonies, wedding speeches, comedy sketches, poetry reading, and much more. The purpose of this type of public speaking is to entertain the audience, instead of merely informing.

Why is Public Speaking Important?

Photo from  pexels, 1. win over your crowd.

No matter the crowd in front of you — whether at a social gathering, business meeting or large audience at a conference — being able to speak publicly is a very important asset. With public speaking skills and experience, speakers are able to captivate the interest of their listeners and keep them interested in order to deliver the message.

2. Motivate Others

Public speakers motivate their listeners to make a change. It could be to stop or start something, try something new, or reach their goals. Public speaking is important because the speaker can motivate others to go in the direction they wish, and the speaker can motivate others to be their best selves.

3. Inform People

When you have information to share, you don’t want it to be portrayed in a boring way. You want people to listen! This is done with public speaking skills. Inform people about something that matters by using great public skills and they will be sure to listen and be more likely to understand the information.

Benefits of Public Speaking In Your Life

Photo by  christina morillo  from  pexels, career benefits.

If you’re currently working in sales, the benefits of public speaking are many. You can reach for higher sales goals, get more customers and make more sales with public speaking skills.

2. Career advancement:

When you are a good public speaker, you will be more comfortable in interviews , be better able to sway others in your favor, and convince your boss to give you a promotion.

3. Stand out in the workforce:

Most will avoid speaking up and putting themselves in the spotlight at work, but with public speaking skills you have the confidence to do so!

4. Bring people together:

Within your company or on your team, public speaking is a way to bring workers together. When many people feel confident in public speaking, workers will speak their mind and collaborate better together.

5. Become a thought leader:

A thought leader is someone that people go to for ideas, consult on problems, and more. Being a good public speaker makes you that person and will get you ahead in your job when people know they can come to you.

Make New Social Connections

1. Find supporters:

When you practice public speaking, you are championing for others or a cause, and you will find a tribe of supporters to surround yourself with. These will be people who are like-minded or who share your values.

2. Get comfortable in social settings:

Public speaking allows you to relax in a group situation or when the spotlight is on you. This will make you more comfortable around people and easier to make connections.

3. Increase your professional network :

As you speak in more public settings such as work events and conferences, you will undoubtedly meet other speakers in your field, as well as audience members who are interested in what you have to say.

Developing Leadership Skills

If you want to do well and get ahead in school or your career, leadership is part of the equation. As a leader, you will have many public speaking opportunities.

1. Good speaker = good leader:

Most of the great leaders in human history were also great public speakers.

2. Good leader = opportunities:

As a good leader, you will be given more opportunities in social settings, your career, and other aspects of life.

Personal Benefits of Public Speaking

Photo by  startup stock photos  from  pexels, 1. boost confidence.

Public speaking repeatedly is a great boost of self confidence. Every time you speak, you gain a bit more confidence as you see your ideas and yourself were well-received by your audience.

2. Personal Satisfaction

Being able to speak in front of a crowd is a huge accomplishment. The first time can be very nerve-wracking, but coming out on the other end of the speech is a huge win! After the first time, you will keep getting better and better at public speaking and will get great personal satisfaction from this skill.

3. Critical Thinking

When preparing and conducting a speech, you also increase your critical thinking skills by working through problems, imagining positive and negative consequences, and finding solutions.

4. Improve Communication Skills

When you practice public speaking, you are practicing both verbal and nonverbal skills — and both will improve. The more you speak out, the better you get at communication. Public speakers are better overall communicators in all facets of life.

5. Learn to Argue

Presenting an argument in a formal setting will help you in informal settings as well. Public speaking helps you form better arguments, and you can increase your arguing skills even more through public speaking by engaging in Q&A with your audience.

6. Be a Better Listener

Attending conferences as a speaker means you will also listen to other speakers. As you listen to other speakers, you will have a greater appreciation and understanding of their material and craft, as a speaker yourself.

Public Speaking Helps You Drive Change

Photo by  denniz futalan  from  pexels.

Public speaking is one of the most effective ways to get your message across. With public speaking, you can influence the world around you. If you see something that needs to change, use public speaking to change it!

• Make the difference:

Every public speaking opportunity you come across is a time to spread you influence for the greater good.

• Reach people fast:

Instead of waiting for your message to spread by word of mouth, social media , or print media, put it in front of a huge audience and you’ll instantly inspire many.

• Your message comes to life:

Written information is useful in some cases, but when you really want to make a difference in the world, you need to campaign for your cause and the best way to do so is to get it to come to life with public speaking.

How to Get Better at Public Speaking

Writing the speech.

1. Be prepared:

When you are comfortable, you are confident. Write a good speech that makes sense to you and that you are prepared to deliver.

2. Research the topic:

When you have thoroughly researched the topic, you will feel more confident when writing and delivering the speech.

3. Outline or write it out?

When you write out an entire speech, it will be easier to memorize as it can be stored word for word in your memory. The downside is that it could sound robotic and you risk reading it straight from the page. When you write an outline for a speech, it may sound more natural and you can glance at your outline as you. However, it is more difficult to rehearse and some people feel less confident with only an outline in front of them. It all depends on what you prefer.

Overcoming Your Stage Fright

Photo by  mentatdgt  from  pexels.

Fear of public speaking is a common one, but it can be overcome. Use these tips to help you overcome the fear:

1. Read your speech out loud:

Even if it’s just to yourself, reading it aloud will help you work out any hiccups and have you feeling confident with your voice.

2. Practice in front of a group:

Don’t just practice in the mirror or with a friend. To get over a fear of speaking in front of a crowd, try to practice in front of a small group first.

3. Should you picture the crowd in underwear?

The answer is, probably not. Even though this is common advice to get you to relax, it can be distracting. The best thing to do is to make eye contact, but if that starts to make you nervous, pretend the crowd is not there and just look straight ahead.

4. Pump yourself up:

Whatever gets you going before a test or a game, the same applies here. Listen to your favorite music on the way, or go for a run in the morning.

5. Use the power of knowledge:

When you know both your speech and your topic inside and out, completely by heart, you will have the confidence to focus on delivery and staying relaxed in front of others.

Things To Remember As You’re Giving The Speech

1. eye contact:.

Know your speech well so that you can maintain eye contact with the audience. This is important to engage them and make yourself more personable.

2. Move your view:

Make sure to move your eye contact around the room. Slightly shift your body or head at times towards a new direction if the crowd is large.

3. Talk, don’t read:

Try to talk to your audience as if you are inviting them into your thoughts. Do not read your speech word for word off the paper.

4. Your voice is a tool:

And people need to hear it! Make sure you are speaking loud enough so that you are heard.

5. Body language:

This is another important tool for public speakers. Try recording yourself so you are aware of your body language and fix any fidgets you find on the recording.

When you are good at it and practice often, the benefits of public speaking are many. Being an excellent public speaker is important for your career, social life, personal development , and for making a change in the world.

Each time you speak, you get better and better. So get out there and make your voice heard!

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Why are speech and language skills so important?

For learning:

Most teaching and learning for children takes place using spoken language, as adults communicate information and explanations verbally to support children’s learning. If children are having difficulty understanding what someone is saying to them, this will have a big impact on their ability to learn and make good progress. Children who have difficulty understanding language may struggle to follow instructions correctly to complete tasks and may have difficulty learning new words and concepts in order to fully understand what they are being taught.

For literacy skills:

As we saw in the last blog, literacy skills can be thought of as the cherry on top of the cake and children need to have a good foundation of speech and language skills in order to develop their literacy skills. If we think about reading, children need to be able to understand and learn words that they hear to then be able to understand them when they are written down. When thinking about writing, children need to be able to use words, phrases and sentences within their spoken language, before they will be able to write them down. If a child is having difficulty expressing themselves using their spoken language skills, these difficulties will transfer to their written work. Children with speech sound difficulties may have difficulty developing their ability to link sounds to letter shapes and may struggle to hear and produce the different sounds in words in order to write them correctly.

Within the classroom, a high proportion of teaching is completed through reading and writing, particularly as children become older. Children who have speech and language difficulties are at a huge disadvantage for developing their literacy skills, impacting on their ability to achieve their learning potential within school.

For behaviour:

If children are having difficulty understanding what other people are saying to them, and/or having difficulty expressing themselves successfully, this can be extremely frustrating and upsetting, and can lead to challenging behaviour. This could be unintentional, for example a child following an instruction in an incorrect way because they haven’t understood what you have said. Sometimes children can start to ‘zone out’ or stop listening to what an adult is saying because they know that they are not going to understand, and so they begin to ask themselves “what’s the point?” It is important to see behaviour as a form of communication, as it is likely to indicate that your child is having some difficulty.

For social skills:

We use our speech and language skills to build relationships and friendships with people, maintain those friendships and to manage conflicts when they arise. Children who are not skilled communicators can find it really difficult to make and maintain friendships; they may not understand information in a fast paced conversation in order to respond appropriately, or they may not be able to ‘read between the lines’ to understand what someone really means when they are talking. This includes being able to communicate successfully with a range of different people, for example understanding the different way we communicate when speaking to an important adult like our Head Teacher, rather than a friend. Relationships are a hugely important part of our lives and without strong relationships and friendships, children are at greater risk for poor self-esteem and mental health difficulties in later life.

We use our speech and language skills throughout our daily lives; to communicate with our family, friends and colleagues, to be able to read and write, to be able to make and maintain friends and communicate appropriately with a range of people that we encounter daily, to find a good job and to be successful and happy in life.

If you, like many other parents currently, are supporting your child’s learning at home, areas such as literacy, maths and science quickly spring to mind as important areas to support them with. Developing speech and language skills can be easily overlooked. It is important to take time to include activities for supporting these skills, particularly if you are concerned about your child’s speech and/or language skills, as they are so important for your child’s future success and wellbeing, and will in turn support them with literacy, maths, science, and all their learning.

You can find lots of games and activities on our Parent Portal that you can complete with your child, as well as advice on how to bring these strategies into everyday activities that you are already completing. Parents have a crucial role in supporting the development of speech and language skills so that your child can reach their best potential.

Verbal Communication: Understanding the Power of Words

Categories Social Psychology

As human beings, we rely on communication to express our thoughts, feelings, and intentions. Verbal communication, in particular, involves using words to convey a message to another person. It is a fundamental aspect of human interaction and is crucial in our daily lives and relationships.

In this article, we will explore the importance of verbal communication, the different types of verbal communication, and some tips on improving your verbal communication skills.

Table of Contents

Importance of Verbal Communication

Verbal communication is essential because it is the primary means of interacting with others. It lets us express our thoughts and feelings, convey information, and build relationships. It is a powerful tool for connecting with others and forming social bonds.

By communicating meaning verbally, others are able to understand your needs, interests, and beliefs.

Effective verbal communication is essential in many contexts, including personal relationships, social interactions, and professional settings. In personal relationships, it can help build trust, foster intimacy, and resolve conflicts. Lack of communication can lead to serious problems, including conflicts and the breakdown of relationships.

Social interactions can help establish common ground, build rapport, and create a sense of community. For example, discussions can help people with different needs understand one another and find ways to ensure each person achieves their goals.

In the workplace, it can help to convey ideas, influence others, and achieve goals.

Types of Verbal Communication

There are two main forms of verbal communication: spoken and written communication.

• Spoken Communication : Spoken communication is the most common form of verbal communication. It involves using words, tone of voice, and body language to convey a message. Spoken communication can take many different forms, including conversations, speeches, and presentations.
• Written Communication : Written communication is using written words to convey a message. It includes emails, letters, memos, and reports. Written communication is often used in professional settings to document information and convey messages to others.

There are four main types of verbal communication, each with its own unique characteristics and purposes:

• Intrapersonal communication : Intrapersonal communication is the process of talking to oneself, either out loud or internally. This type of communication is often used for self-reflection, problem-solving, and decision-making. Intrapersonal communication can help us better understand our own thoughts and feelings, and can be a valuable tool for personal growth and development.
• Interpersonal communication : Interpersonal communication is the process of communication between two or more people. This type of communication is often used for social interaction, relationship-building, and collaboration. Interpersonal communication can involve a range of verbal communication modes, such as face-to-face communication, telephone communication, and video conferencing.
• Small group communication : Small group communication involves communication between three to ten people, typically in a group setting such as a meeting or a discussion. This type of communication is often used for decision-making, problem-solving, and brainstorming. Small group communication requires effective listening and speaking skills, as well as the ability to work collaboratively with others.
• Public communication : Public communication is communicating to a large audience, typically through a speech or a presentation. This type of communication is often used for persuasive purposes, such as advocating for a cause or presenting information to an audience. Public communication requires effective public speaking skills, including the ability to engage and connect with the audience, use effective visual aids, and communicate ideas clearly and persuasively.

Other Types of Communication

In addition to verbal communication, other important forms of communication can convey meaning, including:

Nonverbal communication : Nonverbal communication is the use of body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice to convey a message. It can be used to emphasize a point, show emotion, or convey meaning. Nonverbal communication can be just as powerful as spoken communication and can often convey a message more effectively than words alone.

Visual communication : Visual communication is the use of images, charts, and graphs to convey a message. It is often used in professional settings to present data and information in a way that is easy to understand.

Components of Verbal Communication

Verbal communication is a complex process that involves not only the words we use, but also how we say them. Tone of voice, inflection, and other vocal cues can greatly impact the meaning of our message. Here are some important aspects of verbal communication and how they convey meaning:

• Tone of voice : Tone of voice refers to the way we use our voice to convey meaning. It can be described as the emotional quality of our voice. For example, a sarcastic tone of voice can convey that the speaker is not being sincere, while a warm and friendly tone can convey that the speaker is approachable and trustworthy.
• Inflection : Inflection refers to the rise and fall of our voice as we speak. It can convey emphasis and emotion. For example, a rising inflection at the end of a sentence can indicate a question, while a falling inflection can indicate a statement.
• Volume : Volume refers to how loudly or softly we speak. It can convey confidence, authority, and assertiveness. For example, speaking loudly can convey confidence and authority, while speaking softly can convey intimacy and vulnerability.
• Pace : Pace refers to the speed at which we speak. It can convey excitement, urgency, and impatience. For example, speaking quickly can convey excitement and urgency, while speaking slowly can convey thoughtfulness and deliberation.
• Intensity : Intensity refers to the level of emotional energy that we put into our words. It can convey passion, enthusiasm, and conviction. For example, speaking with intensity can convey a strong belief in something, while speaking with low intensity can convey ambivalence or lack of interest.
• Pitch : Pitch refers to the highness or lowness of our voice. It can convey age, gender, and emotion. For example, a high-pitched voice can convey youthfulness or excitement, while a low-pitched voice can convey authority or seriousness.

It’s important to note that these aspects of verbal communication can vary greatly depending on context, culture, and personal preference. What may be considered a confident tone of voice in one culture may be perceived as aggressive in another. 

Understanding these nuances is essential for effective verbal communication. By paying attention to these aspects of verbal communication, we can convey our message more effectively and avoid misunderstandings.

Modes of Verbal Communication

Verbal communication can occur through different modes, each with their own unique features and advantages. Here are some of the different ways verbal communication may occur:

Face-to-Face Verbal Communication

Face-to-face communication occurs when two or more people are in the same physical space and communicate verbally. This mode of communication allows for the use of nonverbal cues, such as facial expressions and body language, which can help convey meaning and emotion. It also allows for immediate feedback and clarification of misunderstandings.

Telephone Communication

Telephone communication occurs when two or more people communicate verbally over a telephone line. This mode of communication allows for immediate verbal communication over long distances but does not allow for the use of nonverbal cues, which can sometimes make it difficult to convey meaning and emotion.

Video Conferencing

Video conferencing occurs when two or more people communicate verbally over a video conferencing platform, such as Zoom or Skype. This mode of communication combines the benefits of face-to-face and telephone communication, allowing for the use of nonverbal cues and immediate verbal communication over long distances.

Public Speaking

Public speaking occurs when one person communicates verbally to a large audience. This mode of communication requires careful planning and preparation, as well as the ability to engage and connect with the audience through the use of tone of voice, inflection, and other vocal cues.

Group Discussion

Group discussion occurs when a group of people communicate verbally to exchange ideas, solve problems, or make decisions. This mode of communication requires active listening skills and the ability to work collaboratively with others to achieve a common goal.

Written Communication

Written communication occurs when ideas, thoughts, and information are conveyed through written words, such as emails, letters, or memos. This mode of communication allows for careful consideration and editing of the message, but can sometimes lack the immediacy and personal connection of verbal communication.

It’s important to note that each mode of verbal communication has its own strengths and weaknesses. Some modes may be more appropriate for certain contexts than others. 

For example, face-to-face communication may be more effective for resolving conflicts, while written communication may be more appropriate for conveying complex information or instructions.

Tips for Improving Verbal Communication Skills

Effective verbal communication requires more than just speaking clearly and articulately. It involves listening actively, empathizing with others, and adapting your communication style to different situations. Here are some tips for improving your verbal communication skills:

• Listen actively : Effective communication requires active listening. This means paying attention to what the other person is saying, asking questions, and clarifying misunderstandings.
• Use appropriate body language : Your body language can convey as much meaning as your words. Use appropriate gestures and facial expressions to emphasize your message and convey your emotions.
• Speak clearly and confidently : Speak clearly and confidently to ensure that your message is understood.
• Empathize with others : Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. It is an important communication skill because it helps build trust and understanding.
• Be adaptable : Adapt your communication style to different situations and audiences. Use appropriate language for the context and audience, and be mindful of cultural differences.

3.1 The Importance of Delivery

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” -Will Durant

Some surveys indicate that many people claim to fear public speaking more than death, but this finding is somewhat misleading. No one is afraid of writing their speech or conducting the research. Instead, people generally only fear the delivery aspect of the speech, which, compared to the amount of time you will put into writing the speech (days, hopefully), will be the shortest part of the speech giving process (5-8 minutes, generally, for classroom speeches). The irony, of course, is that delivery, being the thing people fear the most, is simultaneously the aspect of public speaking that will require the least amount of time.

Consider this scenario about two students, Bob and Chris. Bob spends weeks doing research and crafting a beautifully designed speech that, on the day he gets in front of the class, he messes up a little because of nerves. While he may view it as a complete failure, his audience will have gotten a lot of good information and most likely written off his mistakes due to nerves, since they would be nervous in the same situation!

Chris, on the other hand, does almost no preparation for his speech, but, being charming and comfortable in front of a crowd, smiles a lot while providing virtually nothing of substance. The audience takeaway from Chris’s speech is, “I have no idea what he was talking about” and other feelings ranging from “He’s good in front of an audience” to “I don’t trust him.” So the moral here is that a well-prepared speech that is delivered poorly is still a well-prepared speech, whereas a poorly written speech delivered superbly is still a poorly written speech.

Despite this irony, we realize that delivery is what you are probably most concerned about when it comes to giving speeches, so this chapter is designed to help you achieve the best delivery possible and eliminate some of the nervousness you might be feeling. To do that, we should first dismiss the myth that public speaking is just reading and talking at the same time. You already know how to read, and you already know how to talk, which is why you’re taking a class called “public speaking” and not one called “public talking” or “public reading.”

Speaking in public has more formality than talking. During a speech, you should present yourself professionally. This doesn’t necessarily mean you must wear a suit or “dress up” unless your instructor asks you to. However, it does mean making yourself presentable by being well-groomed and wearing clean, appropriate clothes. It also means being prepared to use language correctly and appropriately for the audience and the topic, to make eye contact with your audience, and to look like you know your topic very well.

While speaking has more formality than talking, it has less formality than reading. Speaking allows for flexibility, meaningful pauses, eye contact, small changes in word order, and vocal emphasis. Reading is a more or less exact replication of words on paper without the use of any nonverbal interpretation. Speaking, as you will realize if you think about excellent speakers you have seen and heard, provides a more animated message.

As the day of his public speaking engagement drew near, Pistol Pete found himself grappling with a common concern that many speakers face – what to do with his hands during his speech. As the spirited mascot of Oklahoma State University, Pete was well-versed in captivating audiences with his energetic presence on the field, but standing behind a podium in a formal setting felt entirely different.

With each passing day, his anxiety grew. During his practice sessions, Pete would awkwardly fidget with his hands, unsure of where to place them or how to use them effectively. He worried that his usual animated gestures might be too distracting or inappropriate for a formal speech.

Late one evening, Pete confided in a close friend, expressing his nervousness and concern about his upcoming speech. His friend, a seasoned public speaker, offered some reassuring advice. They encouraged Pete to focus on being natural and genuine, advising him to use his hands to emphasize important points and to express his passion for the topic.

Taking the advice to heart, Pete decided to rehearse his speech once more. This time, he consciously let go of his worries about his hand movements and embraced a more relaxed approach. He discovered that by using his hands to complement his words, he felt more connected to the audience and his message.

On the day of his speech, as Pete stood before the audience, he took a deep breath and reminded himself of the advice he had received. As he began to speak, he felt a newfound confidence in his gestures. He allowed his hands to express his enthusiasm, creating a natural flow that resonated with the crowd.

As the speech progressed, Pete’s worries about his hands faded away. Instead, he focused on sharing the captivating story of Frank Eaton and his legacy, letting his gestures amplify the emotions and importance of his words. In that moment, Pistol Pete realized that sometimes, the best thing to do with his hands was to let them be an extension of his authentic self, creating a genuine connection with the audience and leaving a lasting impression. How comfortable are you with using your hands effectively during a presentation?

* Pistol Pete scenarios are all based on hypothetical events and were written with the use of Chatgpt and careful editing by Speech Communication faculty. 

Introduction to Speech Communication Copyright © 2021 by Individual authors retain copyright of their work. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Voice Communication Between Humans and Machines (1994)

Chapter: speech communication -- an overview, speech communication— an overview.

James L. Flanagan

Advances in digital speech processing are now supporting application and deployment of a variety of speech technologies for human/machine communication. In fact, new businesses are rapidly forming about these technologies. But these capabilities are of little use unless society can afford them. Happily, explosive advances in microelectronics over the past two decades have assured affordable access to this sophistication as well as to the underlying computing technology.

The research challenges in speech processing remain in the traditionally identified areas of recognition, synthesis, and coding. These three areas have typically been addressed individually, often with significant isolation among the efforts. But they are all facets of the same fundamental issue—how to represent and quantify the information in the speech signal. This implies deeper understanding of the physics of speech production, the constraints that the conventions of language impose, and the mechanism for information processing in the auditory system. In ongoing research, therefore, we seek more accurate models of speech generation, better computational formulations of language, and realistic perceptual guides for speech processing—along with ways to coalesce the fundamental issues of recognition, synthesis, and coding. Successful solution will yield the

long-sought dictation machine, high-quality synthesis from text, and the ultimate in low bit-rate transmission of speech. It will also open the door to language-translating telephony, where the synthetic foreign translation can be in the voice of the originating talker.

INTRODUCTION

Speech is a preferred means for communication among humans. It is beginning to be a preferred means for communication between machines and humans. Increasingly, for well-delimited tasks, machines are able to emulate many of the capabilities of conversational exchange. The power of complex computers can therefore be harnessed to societal needs without burdening the user beyond knowledge of natural spoken language.

Because humans are designed to live in an air atmosphere, it was inevitable that they learn to convey information in the form of longitudinal waves supported by displacement of air molecules. But of the myriad types of acoustic information signals, speech is a very special kind. It is constrained in three important ways:

• by the physics of sound generation in the vocal system, • by the properties of human hearing and perception, and • by the conventions of language.

These constraints have been central to research in speech and remain of paramount importance today.

This paper proposes to comment on the field of speech communication in three veins:

• first, in drawing a brief perspective on the science; • second, in suggesting critical directions of research; and • third, in hazarding some technology projections.

FOUNDATIONS OF SPEECH TECHNOLOGY

Speech processing, as a science, might be considered to have been born from the evolution of electrical communication. Invention of the telephone, and the beginning of telecommunications as a business to serve society, stimulated work in network theory, transducer research, filter design, spectral analysis, psychoacoustics, modulation methods, and radio and cable transmission techniques. Early on, the acoustics and physiology of speech generation were identified as critical issues for understanding. They remain so today, even though much knowledge has been acquired. Alexander Graham Bell was among those

who probed the principles of speech generation in experiments with mechanical speaking machines. (He even attempted to teach his Skye terrier to articulate while sustaining a growl!) Also, it was recognized early that properties of audition and perception needed to be quantified, in that human hearing typically provides the fidelity criterion for receiving speech information. Psychoacoustic behavior for thresholds of hearing, dynamic range, loudness, pitch, and spectral distribution of speech were quantified and used in the design of early telecommunication systems. But only recently, with advances in computing power, have efforts been made to incorporate other subtleties of hearing—such as masking in time and frequency—into speech-processing algorithms. Also, only recently has adequate attention been turned to analytical modeling of language, and this has become increasingly important as the techniques for text-to-speech synthesis and automatic recognition of continuous speech have advanced.

About the middle of this century, sampled-data theory and digital computation simultaneously emerged, opening new vistas for high-quality long-distance communication and for simulating the engineering design of complex systems rapidly and economically. But computing technology soon grew beyond data sorting for business and algorithm simulation for science. Inexpensive arithmetic and economical storage, along with expanding knowledge of information signals, permitted computers to take on functions more related to decision making—understanding subtle intents of the user and initiating ways to meet user needs. Speech processing—which gives machines conversational capability—has been central to this development. Image processing and, more recently, tactile interaction have received similar emphases. But all these capabilities are of little use unless society can afford them. Explosive advances in microelectronics over the past two decades have assured affordable access to this sophistication as well as to the underlying computing technology. All indications are that computing advances will continue and that economical computation to support speech technology will be in place when it is needed.

INCENTIVES IN SPEECH RESEARCH

Ancient experimentation with speech was often fueled by the desire to amaze, amuse, or awe. Talking statues and gods were favored by early Greeks and Romans. But sometimes fundamental curiosity was the drive (the Czar awarded Kratzenstein a prize for his design of acoustic resonators which when excited from a vibrating reed, simulated vowel timbres). And sometimes the efforts were not given scientific credence (von Kemplen's talking machine was largely ig-

FIGURE 1 Ancients used talking statues to amaze, amuse, and awe.

FIGURE 2 Kratzenstein's prize-winning implementation of resonators to simulate human vowel sounds (1779). The resonators were activated by vibrating reeds analogous to the vocal cords. The disparity with natural articulatory shapes points up the nonuniqueness between sound spectrum and resonator shape (i.e., job security for the ventriloquist).

FIGURE 3 Reconstruction of von Kempelen's talking machine (1791), attributed to Sir Charles Wheatstone (1879). Typically, one arm and hand laid across the main bellows and output resonator to produce voiced sounds, while the other hand operated the auxiliary bellows and ports for voiceless sounds.

nored because of his chess-playing ''automaton" that contained a concealed human!) (Dudley and Tarnoczy, 1950).

Acoustic waves spread spherically and do not propagate well over distances. But communication over distances has long been a need in human society. As understanding of electrical phenomena progressed, the electrical telegraph emerged in the mid-nineteenth century. Following this success with dots and dashes, much attention

turned to the prospect of sending voice signals over electrical wires. Invention of the telephone is history.

In the early part of the twentieth century, the incentive remained voice communication over still greater distances. Amplification of analog signals, which attenuate with distance and accumulate noise, was needed. In 1915 transcontinental telephone was achieved with marginal fidelity by electromechanical "repeaters." Transatlantic telegraph cables could not support the bandwidth needed for voice, and research efforts turned to "vocoders" for bandwidth compression. In 1927, as electronics technology emerged, transatlantic radio telephone became a reality. Understanding of bandwidth compression was then applied to privacy and encryption. Transatlantic voice on wire cable had to await the development of reliable submersible amplifiers in 1956. With these expensive high-quality voice circuits, the interest in bandwidth conservation again arose and stimulated new developments, such as Time Assignment Speech Interpolation, which provided nearly a three-fold increase in cable capacity.

From the mid-twentieth century, understanding emerged in sampled-data techniques, digital computing, and microelectronics. Stimulated by these advances, a strong interest developed in human/machine communication and interaction. The desire for ease of use in complex machines that serve human needs focused interest on spoken language communication (Flanagan et al., 1970; Rabiner et al., 1989). Significant advances in speech recognition and synthesis resulted. Bandwidth conservation and low bit-rate coding received emphasis as much for economy of storage (in applications such as voice mail) as for savings in transmission capacity. The more recent developments of mobile cellular, personal, and cordless telecommunications have brought renewed interest in bandwidth conservation and, concomitantly, a heightened incentive for privacy and encryption.

As we approach the threshold of the twenty-first century, fledging systems are being demonstrated for translating telephony. These systems require automatic recognition of large fluent vocabularies in one language by a great variety of talkers; transmission of the inherent speech information; and natural-quality synthesis in a foreign language—preferably with the exact voice quality of the original talker. At the present time, only "phrase book" type of translation is accomplished, with limited grammars and modest vocabularies, and the synthesized voice does not duplicate the quality of individual talkers. Translating telephony and dictation machines require major advances in computational models of language that can accommodate natural conversational grammars and large vocabularies. Recognition systems using models for subword units of speech are envi-

FIGURE 4a Concept demonstration of translating telephony by NEC Corporation at Telecom 1983, Geneva. The application scenario was conversation between a railway stationmaster in Japan and a British tourist who had lost her luggage. Real-time, connected speech, translated between Japanese and English, used a delimited vocabulary and "phrase book" grammar.

sioned, with linguistic rules forming (a) acceptable word candidates from the estimated strings of phonetic units, (b) sentence candidates from the word strings, and (c) semantic candidates from the sentences. Casual informal conversational speech, with all its vagaries and nongrammatical structure, poses special challenges in devising tractable models of grammar, syntax, and semantics.

TECHNOLOGY STATUS

A fundamental challenge in speech processing is how to represent, quantify, and interpret information in the speech signal. Traditionally, research focuses on the sectors of coding, speech and speaker recognition, and synthesis.

High-quality digital speech coding has been used for many years in telecommunications in the form of Pulse Code Modulation (PCM), using a typical transmission rate of 64k bits/second. In recent years, capacity-expanding Adaptive Differential PCM (ADPCM) at 32k bits/second has served in the telephone plant, particularly for

FIGURE 4b An international joint experiment on interpreting telephony was held in January 1993, linking ATR Laboratories (Japan), Carnegie-Mellon University (United States), Siemens A. G. (Germany), and Karlsruhe University (Germany). Spoken sentences were first recognized and translated by a computer into written text, which was sent by modem over a telephone line. A voice synthesizer at the receiving end then spoke the translated words. The system demonstrated was restricted to the task of registering participants for an international conference. (Photograph courtesy of ATR Laboratories, Japan.)

private lines. Economical systems for voice mail have derived from compression algorithms for 16k bits/second Sub-Band Coding and low-delay Code Excited Linear Prediction (CELP), and this technology—implemented for 8k bits/second—is currently being tested in digital mobile cellular telephones.

Signal quality typically diminishes with coding rate, with a notable "knee" at about 8k bits/second. Nevertheless, vocoder rates of 4k and 2k bits/second are finding use for digital encryption over voice bandwidth channels. The challenge in coding is to elevate quality at low transmission rates. Progress is being made through incorporation of perceptual factors and through improved representation of spectral and excitation parameters (Jayant et al., 1990).

There are experimental reasons to believe that high quality can be achieved at rates down to the range of 2000 bits/second. Improve-

FIGURE 5 Influence of coding rate on the quality of telephone bandwidth speech. Increasingly complex algorithms are used as coding rate diminishes. The research effort focuses on improving quality and immunity to interference at coding rates of 8 kbps and lower.

ments at these rates may come from two directions: (i) dynamic adaptation of perceptual criteria in coding, and (ii) articulatory modeling of the speech signal.

In coding wideband audio signals the overt use of auditory perception factors within the coding algorithm ("hearing-specific" coders) has been remarkably successful, allowing wideband signal representation with an average of less than two bits per sample. The implication of this is that FM stereo broadcast quality can be transmitted over the public switched digital telephone channels provided by the basic-rate ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network). Alternatively, one can store up to eight times more signal on a high-fidelity compact disc recording than is conventionally done.

For stereo coding, the left-plus-right and left-minus-right signals are transform-coded separately (typically by 2048-point FFTs). For each spectrum  at each moment, a masking threshold is computed, based on the distribution of spectral energy and on critical-band masking in the ear. Any signal components having spectral amplitudes less than this threshold will not be heard at that moment in the presence of stronger neighbors; hence, these components need not be allocated any bits for transmission. Similarly, if bits are assigned to the stronger components so that the quantizing noise spectrum is maintained below this masking threshold, the quantizing noise will not be au-

FIGURE 6 Influence of digital representation on audio signal quality. Increasingly complex algorithms are used as representation bits per sample diminish. Hearing-specific coders incorporate human perceptual factors, such as masking in frequency.

dible. The computation to accomplish the coding, while substantial, is not inordinate in terms of presently available DSP chips.

This and related techniques are strongly influencing international standards for speech and music coding. And it appears that continued economies can be won through perceptual factors such as masking in the time dimension. (See subsequent discussion of temporal masking.)

Recognition and synthesis.

Unhappily, advances in recognition and in synthesis, particularly in text-to-speech synthesis, have not been strongly coupled and have not significantly cross-nurtured one another. This seems to be largely because recognition has taken a pattern-matching direction, with the immensely successful hidden Markov models (HMMs), while synthesis has relied heavily on acoustic phonetics, with formant models and fractional-syllable libraries contributing to the success. Nevertheless, the techniques are destined to be used hand in hand in voice-interactive systems. Both can benefit from improved computational models of language.

Present capabilities for machine dialogue permit intelligent fluent interaction by a wide variety of talkers provided the vocabulary is limited and the application domain is rigorously constrained (Flanagan, 1992). Typically, a finite-state grammar is used to provide enough coverage for useful conversational exchange. Vocabularies of a couple hundred words and a grammar that permits billions of sentences about a specific task—say, obtaining airline flight information—are

FIGURE 7 Recognition and synthesis systems permit task-specific conversational interaction. Expansions of vocabulary size, talker independence, and language models that more nearly approach natural spoken language, together with high-quality synthesis, are research targets (Flanagan, 1992).

typical. Word recognition accuracy is above 90 percent for vocabularies of several hundred words spoken in connected form by a wide variety of talkers. For smaller vocabularies, such as the digits, recognition accuracies are also in the high 90s for digit strings (e.g., seven-digit telephone numbers) spoken in connected form. With currently available signal processor chips the hardware to support connected-digit recognition is relatively modest.

Again, a significant frontier is in developing computational models of language that span more natural language and permit unfettered interaction. Computational linguistics can make strong contributions in this sector.

Talker verification.

Using cepstrum, delta cepstrum, and HMM techniques, the ability to authenticate "enrolled" talkers over clean channels is relatively well established (Soong and Rosenberg, 1988). The computation needed is easily supported, but not much commercial deployment has yet been seen. This results not so much from any lack of desire to have and use the capability but to an apparently low willingness to pay for it. Because speech recognition and talker verification share common processes, combining the features in an interface is natural. The investment in recognition can thereby provide verification for a minimal increment in cost. New applications of this type are emerging in the banking sector where personal verification is needed for services such as cash-dispensing automatic teller machines.

Autodirective microphone arrays.

In many speech communication environments, particularly in teleconferencing and in the use of voice-

FIGURE 8a Beam-forming, signal-seeking microphone arrays permit natural communication without hand-held or body-worn microphones.

interactive terminals, it is more natural to communicate without handheld or body-worn microphones. The freedom  to move about the work place, without tether or encumbrance, and to speak as in face-to-face conversation is frequently an advantage. Autodirective microphone arrays, especially beam-forming systems, permit good-quality sound pickup and mitigate the effects of room reverberation and interfering acoustic noise (Flanagan et al., 1991).

High-performance, low-cost electret microphones, in combination with economical distributed signal processors, make large speech-seeking arrays practical. Each sensor can have a dedicated processor to implement beam forming and steering. A host controller issues appropriate beam-forming and beam-pointing values to each sensor while supporting algorithms for sound source location and speech/ nonspeech identification. The array is typically used with multiple beams in a "track-while-scan" mode. New research on three-dimensional arrays and multiple beam forming is leading to high-quality signal capture from designated spatial volumes.

CRITICAL DIRECTIONS IN SPEECH RESEARCH

Physics of speech generation; fluid-dynamic principles.

The aforementioned lack of naturalness in speech generated from compact specifications stems possibly from two sources. One is the synthesizer's crude approximation to the acoustic properties of the

FIGURE 8b Large two-dimensional array of 408 electret microphones. Each microphone has a dedicated chip for beamforming.

vocal system. The other is the shortcomings in control data that do not adequately reflect natural articulation and prosody. Both of these aspects affect speech quality and certainly affect the ability to duplicate individual voice characteristics.

Traditional synthesis takes as its point of departure a source-filter approximation to the vocal system, wherein source and filter do not interact. Typically, the filter function is approximated in terms of

FIGURE 8c One-dimensional track-while-scan beam former for small conference rooms.

a hard-walled tube, supporting only linear one-dimensional wave propagation. Neither is realistic.

Advances in parallel computation open the possibility for implementing speech synthesis from first principles of fluid dynamics. Given the three-dimensional, time-varying, soft-walled vocal tract, excited by periodically valved flow at the vocal cords and by turbulent flow at constrictions, the Navier-Stokes equation can be solved numerically on a fine space-time grid to produce a remarkably realistic description of radiated sound pressure. Nonlinearities of excitation, generation of turbulence, cross-modes of the system, and acoustic interaction between sources and resonators are taken into account. The formula-

FIGURE 9a Traditional representation of sound generation and propagation in the vocal tract. One-dimensional approximation of sound propagation permits computation of pressure and velocity distributions along tract and at radiating ports. Turbulent excitation is computed from the Reynolds number at each location along the tract. Vocal cord simulation permits source-filter interaction.

tion requires enormous computation, but the current initiatives in high-performance computing promise the necessary capability.

Computational Models of Language

Already mentioned is the criticality of language models for fluent, large-vocabulary speech recognition. Tractable models that account for grammatical behavior (in spoken language), syntax, and

FIGURE 9b Sound generation in the vocal tract computed from fluid-dynamic principles. The magnitude and direction of the velocity vector at each point in two dimensions, in response to a step of axial velocity at the vocal cords, are calculated on a supercomputer (after Don Davis, General Dynamics). Warm color highlights regions of high-velocity amplitude. The plot shows flow separation downstream of the tongue constriction and nonplanar wavefronts.

semantics are needed for synthesis from text as urgently as for recognition. Statistical constraints in spoken language are as powerful as those in text and can be used to complement substantially the traditional approaches to parsing and determining parts of speech.

Information Processing in the Auditory System; Auditory Behavior

Mechanics and operation of the peripheral ear are relatively well understood. Psychoacoustic behavior is extensively quantified. Details of neural processing, and the mechanism for interpreting neural

FIGURE 10a Illustrative probabilities for selected text trigrams across several languages (10 in total). While the number of possible trigrams is on the order of 20,000, the number of trigrams that actually occur in the language is typically fewer by an order of magnitude—constituting great leverage in estimating allowed symbol sequences within a language and providing a tool for estimating etymology from the individual probabilities.

FIGURE 10b Examples of etymology estimates for proper names. The estimate is based on the likelihood ratio (ratio of the probability that the name string belongs to language j, to the average probability of the name string across all languages). The languages included are English, French, German, Japanese, Greek, Russian, Swedish, Spanish, Italian, and Latin. (Data from K. Church, AT&T Bell Laboratories.)

FIGURE  la Masking in time. A loud sound either before or after a weaker one can raise the threshold of detectability of the latter.

FIGURE l1b  Masking in frequency. A loud tone (at 1200 Hz here) can elevate the threshold of detectability of an adjacent tone, particularly one higher in frequency.

FIGURE 11c Illustration of the time-frequency region surrounding intense, punctuate signals where masking in both time and frequency is effective.

information, are not well established. But this does not preclude beneficially utilizing behavioral factors in speech processing. Over the past, telecommunications and audio technology have exploited major aspects of human hearing such as ranges of frequency, amplitude, and signal-to-noise ratio. But now, with inexpensive computation, additional subtleties can be incorporated into the representation of audio signals. Already high-fidelity audio coding incorporates some constraints of simultaneous masking in frequency. Masking in time is an obvious target of opportunity. Relatively untouched, so far, is the esoteric behavior of binaural release from masking, wherein interaural phase markedly controls perceptibility.

Coalescing Speech Coding, Synthesis, and Recognition

The issues of coding, recognition, and synthesis are not disjoint—they are facets of the same underlying process of speech and hearing. We might strive therefore for research that unifies the issues from the different sectors. Better still, we might seek an approach that coalesces the problems into a common understanding. One such effort is the ''voice mimic."

FIGURE 12 Computer voice mimic system. Natural continuous input speech is approximated by a computed synthetic estimate. Spectral differences between real and synthetic signals are perceptually weighted and used in a closed loop to adjust iteratively the parameters of the synthesis, driving the difference to a minimum.

The voice mimic attempts to generate a synthetic speech signal that, within perceptual accuracy, duplicates an input of arbitrary natural speech. Central to the effort is a computer model of the vocal cords and vocal tract (to provide the acoustic synthesis), a dynamic model of articulation described by nearly orthogonal vocal-tract shape parameters (to generate the cross-sectional area function), and, ideally, a discrete phonetic symbol-to-shape mapping. A perceptually weighted error, measured in the spectral domain for natural and synthetic signals, drives the synthesis parameters so as to minimize the mimicking error, moment by moment. Open-loop analysis of the input natural speech is useful in steering the closed-loop optimization.

FIGURE 13a Three-dimensional microphone array arranged as a "chandelier" in a reverberant room. Multiple beams are formed and directed to the sound source and its significant images.

FIGURE 13b Signal-to-noise ratios measured on two octaves of speech for a 7 x 7 x 7 rectangular microphone array positioned at the ceiling center in a computer-simulated hard-walled room of dimensions 7 x  5 x  3 meters. Source images through third order are computed, and multiple beams are steered to the source and its images.

Ideally, one would like to close the loop at the text level, in which case the problems of recognition, coding, and synthesis coalesce and are simultaneously solved—the result producing as one, a voice typewriter, the ultimate low bit-rate coder, and high-quality text synthesis. Present realities are removed from this, but good success is being achieved on connected input speech at the level of articulatory parameter adjustment.

Lest enthusiasm run too high, it should be quickly mentioned that the required computation is enormous—about 1000 times real time on a parallel computer. Or, for real-time operation, about 100 billion floating-point operations are required per second (100 Gflops). This amount of computation is not as intimidating or deterring as it once was. Through highly parallel architectures, one can now foresee teraflop capability (though it is less clear how to organize algorithms and software to utilize this power).

"Robust" Techniques for Speech Analysis

Most algorithms for coding and recognition can be made to perform well with "clean" input; that is, with high-quality signal having negligible interference or distortion. Performance diminishes significantly with degraded input. And machine performance diminishes more precipitously than human performance. For example, given a specific level of recognition accuracy, the human listener can typically achieve this level with input signal-to-noise ratios that are 10 to 15 dB lower than that required by typical automatic systems.

A part of this problem appears to be the linear analysis used for most processing. Linear predictive coding, to estimate short-time spectra, is representative. Sizeable durations of the signal contribute to computation of covariance values, so that extensive amounts of noise-contaminated samples are averaged into the analysis. One alternate procedure of interest at present is to eliminate the worst noise-contaminated samples and reconstitute the discarded samples by a nonlinear interpolation algorithm. Another is the use of auditory models of basilar membrane filtering and neural transduction for characterizing signal features.

Three Dimensional Sound Capture and Projection

High-quality, low-cost electret microphones and economical digital signal processors permit the use of large microphone arrays for hands-free sound capture in hostile acoustic environments. Moreover, three-dimensional arrays with beam steering to the sound source and

FIGURE 14 (Top) Force feedback applique for a VPL data glove at the CAIP Center. Using the force feedback glove, the wearer can compute a virtual object, and sense tactily the relative position of the object and its programmed compliance. Alternatively, the force feedback device can be programmed for force output sequences for medical rehabilitation and exercise of injured hands.

(Bottom)Through the force feedback glove, a user creates and senses plastic deformation of a virtual soft-drink can. (Photograph courtesy of the CAIP Center, Human/Machine Interface Laboratory.)

FIGURE 15a  Experimental video/audio conferencing system at the CAIP Center, Rutgers University. The system incorporates a number of as-yet imperfect technologies for image, voice, and tactile interaction. The system includes an autodirective beam-steering microphone array, speech recognizer control of call setup and video conferencing display, text-to-speech voice response, image compression for digital transmission, and an interface to the AT&T Bell Laboratories experimental high-speed packet data network, XUNET (Fraser et al., 1992).

FIGURE 15b Large-screen video projection lends presence for group conferencing and instruction. Auto-directive microphone arrays permit hands-free sound pickup. System features are controlled by automatic recognition of spoken commands. Access to privileged data can be controlled by face and voice recognition for authorized individuals.

multiple significant images in a reverberant enclosure provide significant improvements in pickup quality. Spatial selectivity in three dimensions is a by-product. Computer simulations are providing designs that are being digitally implemented and tested in real environments.

Design of receiving arrays is similar to that for transmitting (or projecting) sound—though the costs of transducers for receiving and transmitting differ greatly. Increased spatial realism in sound projection will result from this new understanding.

Integration of Sensory Modalities for Sight, Sound, and Touch

The human's ability to assimilate information, perceive it, and react is typically more limited in rate than the transmission capacities that convey information to the user terminal. The evolution of global end-to-end digital transport will heighten this disparity and will emphasize the need to seek optimal ways to match information displays to human processing capacity.

Simultaneous displays for multiple sensory modalities provide benefits if they can be appropriately orchestrated. The sensory modalities of immediate interest are sight, sound, and touch. Our understanding of the first two is more advanced than for the latter, but new methods for force feedback transducers on data gloves and "smart skin" implementations aspire to advance tactile technology (Flanagan, in press).

Ease of use is directly correlated with successful integration of multiple sensory channels. On the speech technology side, this means integration into the information system of the piece parts for speech recognition, synthesis, verification, low bit-rate coding, and hands-free sound pickup. Initial efforts in this direction are designed for conferencing over digital telephone channels (Berkley and Flanagan, 1990). The speech features allow call setup, information retrieval, speaker verification, and conferencing—all totally under voice control. Additionally, low bit-rate coding of color images enables high-quality video transmission over modest capacity.

SPEECH TECHNOLOGY PROJECTIONS—2000

How good are we at forecasting technology? In my experience, not so good. But not so bad either. I recently got out a set of vugraphs on coding, synthesis, recognition, and audio conferencing that I prepared in 1980. These were made for 5-year and 10-year forecasts as part of a planning exercise. To my surprise about half of the projections were accurate. Notable were subband coding for initial voicemail products (called AUDIX) and 32-kbps ADPCM for transmission economies on private line. But there were some stellar oversights. My 1980 vugraphs of course did not predict CELP, though I was in intimate contact with the fundamental work that led to it.

Despite the intense hazard in anticipating events, several advances seem likely by the year 2000:

• Signal representation of good perceptual quality at < 0.5 bits/sample. This will depend on continued advances in microelectronics, especially the incorporation of psychoacoustic factors into coding algorithms.

• Multilingual text-to-speech synthesis with generic voice qualities. Multilingual systems are emerging now. The outlook for duplication of individual voice characteristics by rule is not yet supported by fundamental understanding. But generic qualities, such as voice characteristics for man, woman, and child, will be possible.

• Large-vocabulary (100K-word) conversational interaction with ma-

chines, with task-specific models of language. Recognition of unrestricted vocabulary, by any talker on any subject, will still be on the far horizon. But task-specific systems will function reliably and be deployed broadly. A strong emphasis will continue on computational models that approximate natural language.

• Expanded task-specific language translation. Systems that go substantially beyond the "phrase-book" category are possible, but still with the task-specific limitation and generic qualities of voice synthesis.

• Automated signal enhlancemen t, approaching perceptual aculity. This is among the more problematic estimates, but improved models of hearing and nonlinear signal processing for automatic recognition will narrow the gap between human and machine performance on noisy signals. Comparable recognition performance by human and machine seems achievable for limited vocabularies and noisy inputs. Interference-susceptible communications, such as air-to-ground and personal cellular radio, will benefit.

• Three-dimensional sound capture and projection. Inexpensive high-quality electret transducers, along with economical single-chip processors, open possibilities for combatting multipath distortion (room reverberation) to obtain high-quality sound capture from designated spatial volumes. Spatial realism in projection and natural hands-free communication are added benefits. Current research suggests that these advances are supportable.

• Synergistic integration of image, voice, and tactile modalities. Although the constituent technologies for sight, sound, and touch will have imperfect aspects for the foreseeable time, proper design of application scenarios will enable productive use of these modalities in interactive workstations. Human factors engineering is central to success. Expanded utility of tactile displays depends on new transducer developments—for example, the design of transducer arrays capable of representing texture in its many subtleties.

• Requisite economical computing. Indications are that microelectronic advances will continue. Presently deployed on a wide basis is 0.9- m m technology that provides computations on the order of 50 Mflops on a single chip and costs less than a dollar per Mflop. By 2000, the expectation is for wide deployment of 0.35- m m (and smaller) technology, with commensurate gate densities. Computation on the order of 1 Gflop will be available on a single chip. This availability of computing will continually challenge speech researchers to devise algorithms of enormous sophistication. If the challenge is in fact met, the year 2001 may actually see a HAL-like conversational machine.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In addition to current university research, this paper draws liberally from material familiar to me over a number of years while at AT&T Bell Laboratories, for whom I continue as a consultant. I am indebted to Bell Labs for use of the material and for kind assistance in preparing this paper. I am further indebted to the Eighteenth Marconi International Fellowship for generous support of this and related technical writings.

Berkley, D. A., and J. L. Flanagan, "HuMaNet: An experimental human/machine communication network based on ISDN," AT&T Tech. J., 69, 87-98 (Sept./Oct. 1990).

Dudley, H. O., and T. H. Tarnoczy, "The speaking machine of Wolfgang von Kempelen," J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 22, 151-166 (1950).

Flanagan, J. L., "Speech technology and computing: A unique partnership," IEEE Commun., 30(5), 84-89 (May 1992).

Flanagan, J. L., "Technologies for multimedia communications," Proc. IEEE, Special Issue (in press).

Flanagan, J. L., C. H. Coker, L. R. Rabiner, R. W. Schafer, and N. Umeda, "Synthetic voices for computers," IEEE Spectrum, 22-45 (Oct. 1970).

Flanagan, J. L., D. A. Berkley, G. W. Elko, J. E. West, and M. M. Sondhi, "Autodirective microphone systems," Acustica, 73, 58-71 (Feb. 1991).

Fraser, A. G., C. R. Kalmanek, A. E. Kaplan, W. T. Marshall, and R. C. Restrick, "XUNET 2: A nationwide testbed in high-speed networking," Proc. INFOCOM  '92, Florence, Italy, May 1992.

Jayant, N. S., V. B. Lawrence, and D. P. Prezas, "Coding of speech and wideband audio," AT&T Tech. J., 69(5), 25-41 (Sept./Oct. 1990).

Rabiner, L. R., B. S. Atal, and J. L. Flanagan, "Current methods for digital speech processing," pp. 112-132 in Selected Topics in Signal Processing, S. Haykin (ed.), Prentice-Hall, New York (1989).

Soong, F. K., and A. E. Rosenberg, "On the use of instantaneous and transitional spectral information in speaker recognition," IEEE Trans. Acoust., Speech, Signal Process., ASSP-36, 871-879 (June 1988).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fant, G., Acoustic Theory of Speech Production, Mouton and Co., s'Gravenhage, Netherlands, 1960.

Flanagan, J. L., Speech Analysis, Synthesis and Perception, Springer Verlag, New York, 1972.

Furui, S., and Sondhi, M., eds., Advances in Speech Signal Processing, Marcel Dekker, New York, 1992.

Furui, S., Digital Speech Processing, Synthesis, and Recognition, Marcel Dekker, New York, 1989.

Ince, A. N., ed., Digital Speech Processing, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, 1992.

Jayant, N. S., and P. Noll, Digital Coding of Waveforms, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1984.

Lee, E. A., and D. G. Messerschmitt, Digital Communication, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, 1988.

Olive, J. P., A. Greenwood, and J. Coleman, Acoustics of American English Speech—A Dynamic Approach, Springer Verlag, New York, 1993.

O'Shaughnessy, D., Speech Communication; Human and Machine, Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., New York, 1987.

Rabiner, L. R., and B-H. Juang, Fundamentals of Speech Recognition, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1993.

Rabiner, L. R., and R. W. Schafer, Digital Processing of Speech Signals, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1978.

Science fiction has long been populated with conversational computers and robots. Now, speech synthesis and recognition have matured to where a wide range of real-world applications—from serving people with disabilities to boosting the nation's competitiveness—are within our grasp.

Voice Communication Between Humans and Machines takes the first interdisciplinary look at what we know about voice processing, where our technologies stand, and what the future may hold for this fascinating field. The volume integrates theoretical, technical, and practical views from world-class experts at leading research centers around the world, reporting on the scientific bases behind human-machine voice communication, the state of the art in computerization, and progress in user friendliness. It offers an up-to-date treatment of technological progress in key areas: speech synthesis, speech recognition, and natural language understanding.

The book also explores the emergence of the voice processing industry and specific opportunities in telecommunications and other businesses, in military and government operations, and in assistance for the disabled. It outlines, as well, practical issues and research questions that must be resolved if machines are to become fellow problem-solvers along with humans.

Voice Communication Between Humans and Machines provides a comprehensive understanding of the field of voice processing for engineers, researchers, and business executives, as well as speech and hearing specialists, advocates for people with disabilities, faculty and students, and interested individuals.

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Speaking, writing and reading are integral to everyday life, where language is the primary tool for expression and communication. Studying how people use language – what words and phrases they unconsciously choose and combine – can help us better understand ourselves and why we behave the way we do.

Linguistics scholars seek to determine what is unique and universal about the language we use, how it is acquired and the ways it changes over time. They consider language as a cultural, social and psychological phenomenon.

“Understanding why and how languages differ tells about the range of what is human,” said Dan Jurafsky , the Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor in Humanities and chair of the Department of Linguistics in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford . “Discovering what’s universal about languages can help us understand the core of our humanity.”

The stories below represent some of the ways linguists have investigated many aspects of language, including its semantics and syntax, phonetics and phonology, and its social, psychological and computational aspects.

Understanding stereotypes

Stanford linguists and psychologists study how language is interpreted by people. Even the slightest differences in language use can correspond with biased beliefs of the speakers, according to research.

One study showed that a relatively harmless sentence, such as “girls are as good as boys at math,” can subtly perpetuate sexist stereotypes. Because of the statement’s grammatical structure, it implies that being good at math is more common or natural for boys than girls, the researchers said.

Language can play a big role in how we and others perceive the world, and linguists work to discover what words and phrases can influence us, unknowingly.

How well-meaning statements can spread stereotypes unintentionally

New Stanford research shows that sentences that frame one gender as the standard for the other can unintentionally perpetuate biases.

Algorithms reveal changes in stereotypes

New Stanford research shows that, over the past century, linguistic changes in gender and ethnic stereotypes correlated with major social movements and demographic changes in the U.S. Census data.

Exploring what an interruption is in conversation

Stanford doctoral candidate Katherine Hilton found that people perceive interruptions in conversation differently, and those perceptions differ depending on the listener’s own conversational style as well as gender.

Cops speak less respectfully to black community members

Professors Jennifer Eberhardt and Dan Jurafsky, along with other Stanford researchers, detected racial disparities in police officers’ speech after analyzing more than 100 hours of body camera footage from Oakland Police.

How other languages inform our own

People speak roughly 7,000 languages worldwide. Although there is a lot in common among languages, each one is unique, both in its structure and in the way it reflects the culture of the people who speak it.

Jurafsky said it’s important to study languages other than our own and how they develop over time because it can help scholars understand what lies at the foundation of humans’ unique way of communicating with one another.

“All this research can help us discover what it means to be human,” Jurafsky said.

Stanford PhD student documents indigenous language of Papua New Guinea

Fifth-year PhD student Kate Lindsey recently returned to the United States after a year of documenting an obscure language indigenous to the South Pacific nation.

Students explore Esperanto across Europe

In a research project spanning eight countries, two Stanford students search for Esperanto, a constructed language, against the backdrop of European populism.

Chris Manning: How computers are learning to understand language​

A computer scientist discusses the evolution of computational linguistics and where it’s headed next.

Stanford research explores novel perspectives on the evolution of Spanish

Using digital tools and literature to explore the evolution of the Spanish language, Stanford researcher Cuauhtémoc García-García reveals a new historical perspective on linguistic changes in Latin America and Spain.

Language as a lens into behavior

Linguists analyze how certain speech patterns correspond to particular behaviors, including how language can impact people’s buying decisions or influence their social media use.

For example, in one research paper, a group of Stanford researchers examined the differences in how Republicans and Democrats express themselves online to better understand how a polarization of beliefs can occur on social media.

“We live in a very polarized time,” Jurafsky said. “Understanding what different groups of people say and why is the first step in determining how we can help bring people together.”

Analyzing the tweets of Republicans and Democrats

New research by Dora Demszky and colleagues examined how Republicans and Democrats express themselves online in an attempt to understand how polarization of beliefs occurs on social media.

Examining bilingual behavior of children at Texas preschool

A Stanford senior studied a group of bilingual children at a Spanish immersion preschool in Texas to understand how they distinguished between their two languages.

Predicting sales of online products from advertising language

Stanford linguist Dan Jurafsky and colleagues have found that products in Japan sell better if their advertising includes polite language and words that invoke cultural traditions or authority.

Language can help the elderly cope with the challenges of aging, says Stanford professor

By examining conversations of elderly Japanese women, linguist Yoshiko Matsumoto uncovers language techniques that help people move past traumatic events and regain a sense of normalcy.

Body Language and Nonverbal Communication

Improving emotional intelligence (eq), conflict resolution skills.

• Empathy: How to Feel and Respond to the Emotions of Others

Anger Management: Help for Anger Issues

Managing conflict with humor.

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• Meet Our Team

What is effective communication?

Tips for improving your communication skills.

• Tip 1: Understand the barriers to effective communication

Tip 2: Become an engaged listener

Tip 3: pay attention to nonverbal signals, tip 4: keep stress in check, tip 5: assert yourself, effective communication improving your interpersonal skills.

Want better communication skills? These tips will help you avoid misunderstandings, grasp the real meaning of what’s being communicated, and greatly improve your work and personal relationships.

Effective communication is about more than just exchanging information. It’s about understanding the emotion and intentions behind the information. As well as being able to clearly convey a message, you need to also listen in a way that gains the full meaning of what’s being said and makes the other person feel heard and understood.

Effective communication sounds like it should be instinctive. But all too often, when we try to communicate with others something goes astray. We say one thing, the other person hears something else, and misunderstandings, frustration, and conflicts ensue. This can cause problems in your home, school, and work relationships.

But by learning effective communication skills, you can deepen your connections to others, build greater trust and respect, and improve teamwork, problem solving, and your overall social and emotional health

Whether you’re trying to improve communication with your romantic partner, kids, boss, or coworkers, learning the following communication skills can help strengthen your interpersonal relationships.

Tip 1: Understand what’s stopping you from communicating well

Common barriers to effective communication include:

Stress and out-of-control emotion.  When you’re stressed or emotionally overwhelmed, you’re more likely to misread other people, send confusing or off-putting nonverbal signals, and lapse into unhealthy knee-jerk patterns of behavior. To avoid conflict and misunderstandings, you can learn how to quickly calm down before continuing a conversation.

Lack of focus.  You can’t communicate effectively when you’re multitasking. If you’re checking your phone , planning what you’re going to say next, or daydreaming, you’re almost certain to miss nonverbal cues in the conversation. To communicate effectively, you need to avoid distractions and stay focused.

Inconsistent body language.  Nonverbal communication should reinforce what is being said, not contradict it. If you say one thing, but your body language says something else, your listener will likely feel that you’re being dishonest. For example, you can’t say “yes” while shaking your head no.

[Read: Nonverbal Communication and Body Language]

Negative body language.  If you disagree with or dislike what’s being said, you might use negative body language to rebuff the other person’s message, such as crossing your arms, avoiding eye contact, or tapping your feet. You don’t have to agree with, or even like what’s being said, but to communicate effectively and not put the other person on the defensive, it’s important to avoid sending negative signals.

When communicating with others, we often focus on what we should say. However, effective communication is less about talking and more about listening. Listening well means not just understanding the words or the information being communicated, but also understanding the emotions the speaker is trying to convey.

There’s a big difference between engaged listening and simply hearing. When you really listen—when you’re engaged with what’s being said—you’ll hear the subtle intonations in someone’s voice that tell you how that person is feeling and the emotions they’re trying to communicate. When you’re an engaged listener, not only will you better understand the other person, you’ll also make that person feel heard and understood, which can help build a stronger, deeper connection between you.

By communicating in this way, you’ll also experience a process that  lowers stress and supports physical and emotional well-being. If the person you’re talking to is calm, for example, listening in an engaged way will help to calm you, too. Similarly, if the person is agitated, you can help calm them by listening in an attentive way and making the person feel understood.

If your goal is to fully understand and connect with the other person, listening in an engaged way will often come naturally. If it doesn’t, try the following tips. The more you practice them, the more satisfying and rewarding your interactions with others will become.

Tips for becoming an engaged listener

Focus fully on the speaker.  You can’t listen in an engaged way if you’re  constantly checking your phone or thinking about something else. You need to stay focused on the moment-to-moment experience in order to pick up the subtle nuances and important nonverbal cues in a conversation. If you find it hard to concentrate on some speakers, try repeating their words over in your head—it’ll reinforce their message and help you stay focused.

Favor your right ear.  As strange as it sounds, the left side of the brain contains the primary processing centers for both speech comprehension and emotions. Since the left side of the brain is connected to the right side of the body, favoring your right ear can help you better detect the emotional nuances of what someone is saying.

Avoid interrupting or trying to redirect the conversation to your concerns.  By saying something like, “If you think that’s bad, let me tell you what happened to me.” Listening is not the same as waiting for your turn to talk. You can’t concentrate on what someone’s saying if you’re forming what you’re going to say next. Often, the speaker can read your facial expressions and know that your mind’s elsewhere.

Show your interest in what’s being said.  Nod occasionally, smile at the person, and make sure your posture is open and inviting. Encourage the speaker to continue with small verbal comments like “yes” or “uh huh.”

Try to set aside judgment.  In order to communicate effectively with someone, you don’t have to like them or agree with their ideas, values, or opinions. However, you do need to set aside your judgment and withhold blame and criticism in order to fully understand them. The most difficult communication, when successfully executed, can often lead to an unlikely connection with someone.

[Read: Improving Emotional Intelligence (EQ)]

Provide feedback. If there seems to be a disconnect, reflect what has been said by paraphrasing. “What I’m hearing is,” or “Sounds like you are saying,” are great ways to reflect back. Don’t simply repeat what the speaker has said verbatim, though—you’ll sound insincere or unintelligent. Instead, express what the speaker’s words mean to you. Ask questions to clarify certain points: “What do you mean when you say…” or “Is this what you mean?”

Hear the emotion behind the words . It’s the higher frequencies of human speech that impart emotion. You can become more attuned to these frequencies—and thus better able to understand what others are really saying—by exercising the tiny muscles of your middle ear (the smallest in the body). You can do this by singing, playing a wind instrument, or listening to certain types of high-frequency music (a Mozart symphony or violin concerto, for example, rather than low-frequency rock, pop, or hip-hop).

The way you look, listen, move, and react to another person tells them more about how you’re feeling than words alone ever can. Nonverbal communication, or body language, includes facial expressions, body movement and gestures, eye contact, posture, the tone of your voice, and even your muscle tension and breathing.

Developing the ability to understand and use nonverbal communication can help you connect with others, express what you really mean, navigate challenging situations, and build better relationships at home and work.

• You can enhance effective communication by using open body language—arms uncrossed, standing with an open stance or sitting on the edge of your seat, and maintaining eye contact with the person you’re talking to.
• You can also use body language to emphasize or enhance your verbal message—patting a friend on the back while complimenting him on his success, for example, or pounding your fists to underline your message.

Improve how you  read nonverbal communication

Be aware of individual differences. People from different countries and cultures tend to use different nonverbal communication gestures, so it’s important to take age, culture, religion, gender, and emotional state into account when reading body language signals. An American teen, a grieving widow, and an Asian businessman, for example, are likely to use nonverbal signals differently.

Look at nonverbal communication signals as a group. Don’t read too much into a single gesture or nonverbal cue. Consider all of the nonverbal signals you receive, from eye contact to tone of voice to body language. Anyone can slip up occasionally and let eye contact go, for example, or briefly cross their arms without meaning to. Consider the signals as a whole to get a better “read” on a person.

Improve how you  deliver nonverbal communication

Use nonverbal signals that match up with your words rather than contradict them. If you say one thing, but your body language says something else, your listener will feel confused or suspect that you’re being dishonest. For example, sitting with your arms crossed and shaking your head doesn’t match words telling the other person that you agree with what they’re saying.

Adjust your nonverbal signals according to the context. The tone of your voice, for example, should be different when you’re addressing a child than when you’re addressing a group of adults. Similarly, take into account the emotional state and cultural background of the person you’re interacting with.

Avoid negative body language. Instead, use body language to convey positive feelings, even when you’re not actually experiencing them. If you’re nervous about a situation—a job interview, important presentation, or first date, for example—you can use positive body language to signal confidence, even though you’re not feeling it. Instead of tentatively entering a room with your head down, eyes averted, and sliding into a chair, try standing tall with your shoulders back, smiling and maintaining eye contact, and delivering a firm handshake. It will make you feel more self-confident and help to put the other person at ease.

How many times have you felt stressed during a disagreement with your spouse, kids, boss, friends, or coworkers and then said or done something you later regretted? If you can quickly relieve stress and return to a calm state, you’ll not only avoid such regrets, but in many cases you’ll also help to calm the other person as well. It’s only when you’re in a calm, relaxed state that you’ll be able to know whether the situation requires a response, or whether the other person’s signals indicate it would be better to remain silent.

In situations such as a job interview, business presentation, high-pressure meeting, or introduction to a loved one’s family, for example, it’s important to manage your emotions, think on your feet, and effectively communicate under pressure.

Communicate effectively by staying calm under pressure

Use stalling tactics to give yourself time to think. Ask for a question to be repeated or for clarification of a statement before you respond.

Pause to collect your thoughts. Silence isn’t necessarily a bad thing—pausing can make you seem more in control than rushing your response.

Make one point and provide an example or supporting piece of information. If your response is too long or you waffle about a number of points, you risk losing the listener’s interest. Follow one point with an example and then gauge the listener’s reaction to tell if you should make a second point.

Deliver your words clearly. In many cases, how you say something can be as important as what you say. Speak clearly, maintain an even tone, and make eye contact. Keep your body language relaxed and open.

Wrap up with a summary and then stop. Summarize your response and then stop talking, even if it leaves a silence in the room. You don’t have to fill the silence by continuing to talk.

Quick stress relief for effective communication

When a conversation starts to get heated, you need something quick and immediate to bring down the emotional intensity. By learning to quickly reduce stress in the moment, you can safely take stock of any strong emotions you’re experiencing, regulate your feelings, and behave appropriately.

Recognize when you’re becoming stressed. Your body will let you know if you’re stressed as you communicate. Are your muscles or stomach tight? Are your hands clenched? Is your breath shallow? Are you “forgetting” to breathe?

Take a moment to calm down before deciding to continue a conversation or postpone it.

Bring your senses to the rescue. The best way to rapidly and reliably relieve stress is through the senses—sight, sound, touch, taste, smell—or movement. For example, you could pop a peppermint in your mouth, squeeze a stress ball in your pocket, take a few deep breaths, clench and relax your muscles, or simply recall a soothing, sensory-rich image. Each person responds differently to sensory input, so you need to find a coping mechanism that is soothing to you.

[Read: Quick Stress Relief]

Look for humor in the situation. When used appropriately, humor is a great way to relieve stress when communicating . When you or those around you start taking things too seriously, find a way to lighten the mood by sharing a joke or an amusing story.

Be willing to compromise. Sometimes, if you can both bend a little, you’ll be able to find a happy middle ground that reduces the stress levels for everyone concerned. If you realize that the other person cares much more about an issue than you do, compromise may be easier for you and a good investment for the future of the relationship.

Agree to disagree, if necessary, and take time away from the situation so everyone can calm down. Go for a stroll outside if possible, or spend a few minutes meditating. Physical movement or finding a quiet place to regain your balance can quickly reduce stress.

Find your space for healing and growth

Regain is an online couples counseling service. Whether you’re facing problems with communication, intimacy, or trust, Regain’s licensed, accredited therapists can help you improve your relationship.

Direct, assertive expression makes for clear communication and can help boost your self-esteem and decision-making skills. Being assertive means expressing your thoughts, feelings, and needs in an open and honest way, while standing up for yourself and respecting others. It does NOT mean being hostile, aggressive, or demanding. Effective communication is always about understanding the other person, not about winning an argument or forcing your opinions on others.

To improve your assertiveness

Value yourself and your options. They are as important as anyone else’s.

Know your needs and wants. Learn to express them without infringing on the rights of others.

Express negative thoughts in a positive way. It’s  okay to be angry , but you must remain respectful as well.

Receive feedback positively. Accept compliments graciously, learn from your mistakes, ask for help when needed.

Learn to say “no.” Know your limits and don’t let others take advantage of you. Look for alternatives so everyone feels good about the outcome.

Developing assertive communication techniques

Empathetic assertion conveys sensitivity to the other person. First, recognize the other person’s situation or feelings, then state your needs or opinion. “I know you’ve been very busy at work, but I want you to make time for us as well.”

Escalating assertion can be employed when your first attempts are not successful. You become increasingly firm as time progresses, which may include outlining consequences if your needs are not met. For example, “If you don’t abide by the contract, I’ll be forced to pursue legal action.”

Practice assertiveness in lower risk situations to help build up your confidence. Or ask friends or family if you can practice assertiveness techniques on them first.

More Information

• Effective Communication: Improving Your Social Skills - Communicate more effectively, improve your conversation skills, and become more assertive. (AnxietyCanada)
• Core Listening Skills - How to be a better listener. (SucceedSocially.com)
• Effective Communication - How to communicate in groups using nonverbal communication and active listening techniques. (University of Maine)
• Some Common Communication Mistakes - And how to avoid them. (SucceedSocially.com)
• 3aPPa3 – When cognitive demand increases, does the right ear have an advantage? – Danielle Sacchinell | Acoustics.org . (n.d.). Retrieved May 22, 2022, from Link
• How to Behave More Assertively . (n.d.). 10. Weger, H., Castle Bell, G., Minei, E. M., & Robinson, M. C. (2014). The Relative Effectiveness of Active Listening in Initial Interactions.  International Journal of Listening , 28(1), 13–31. Link

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Speech and Language Developmental Milestones

On this page:

How do speech and language develop?

What are the milestones for speech and language development, what is the difference between a speech disorder and a language disorder, what should i do if my child’s speech or language appears to be delayed, what research is being conducted on developmental speech and language problems.

• Your baby's hearing and communicative development checklist

Where can I find additional information about speech and language developmental milestones?

The first 3 years of life, when the brain is developing and maturing, is the most intensive period for acquiring speech and language skills. These skills develop best in a world that is rich with sounds, sights, and consistent exposure to the speech and language of others.

There appear to be critical periods for speech and language development in infants and young children when the brain is best able to absorb language. If these critical periods are allowed to pass without exposure to language, it will be more difficult to learn.

The first signs of communication occur when an infant learns that a cry will bring food, comfort, and companionship. Newborns also begin to recognize important sounds in their environment, such as the voice of their mother or primary caretaker. As they grow, babies begin to sort out the speech sounds that compose the words of their language. By 6 months of age, most babies recognize the basic sounds of their native language.

Children vary in their development of speech and language skills. However, they follow a natural progression or timetable for mastering the skills of language. A checklist of milestones for the normal development of speech and language skills in children from birth to 5 years of age is included below. These milestones help doctors and other health professionals determine if a child is on track or if he or she may need extra help. Sometimes a delay may be caused by hearing loss, while other times it may be due to a speech or language disorder.

Children who have trouble understanding what others say (receptive language) or difficulty sharing their thoughts (expressive language) may have a language disorder. Developmental language disorder  (DLD) is a language disorder that delays the mastery of language skills. Some children with DLD may not begin to talk until their third or fourth year.

Children who have trouble producing speech sounds correctly or who hesitate or stutter when talking may have a speech disorder. Apraxia of speech is a speech disorder that makes it difficult to put sounds and syllables together in the correct order to form words.

Talk to your child’s doctor if you have any concerns. Your doctor may refer you to a speech-language pathologist, who is a health professional trained to evaluate and treat people with speech or language disorders. The speech-language pathologist will talk to you about your child’s communication and general development. He or she will also use special spoken tests to evaluate your child. A hearing test is often included in the evaluation because a hearing problem can affect speech and language development. Depending on the result of the evaluation, the speech-language pathologist may suggest activities you can do at home to stimulate your child’s development. They might also recommend group or individual therapy or suggest further evaluation by an audiologist (a health care professional trained to identify and measure hearing loss), or a developmental psychologist (a health care professional with special expertise in the psychological development of infants and children).

The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) sponsors a broad range of research to better understand the development of speech and language disorders, improve diagnostic capabilities, and fine-tune more effective treatments. An ongoing area of study is the search for better ways to diagnose and differentiate among the various types of speech delay. A large study following approximately 4,000 children is gathering data as the children grow to establish reliable signs and symptoms for specific speech disorders, which can then be used to develop accurate diagnostic tests. Additional genetic studies are looking for matches between different genetic variations and specific speech deficits.

Researchers sponsored by the NIDCD have discovered one genetic variant, in particular, that is linked to developmental language disorder (DLD), a disorder that delays children’s use of words and slows their mastery of language skills throughout their school years. The finding is the first to tie the presence of a distinct genetic mutation to any kind of inherited language impairment. Further research is exploring the role this genetic variant may also play in dyslexia, autism, and speech-sound disorders.

A long-term study looking at how deafness impacts the brain is exploring how the brain “rewires” itself to accommodate deafness. So far, the research has shown that adults who are deaf react faster and more accurately than hearing adults when they observe objects in motion. This ongoing research continues to explore the concept of “brain plasticity”—the ways in which the brain is influenced by health conditions or life experiences—and how it can be used to develop learning strategies that encourage healthy language and speech development in early childhood.

A recent workshop convened by the NIDCD drew together a group of experts to explore issues related to a subgroup of children with autism spectrum disorders who do not have functional verbal language by the age of 5. Because these children are so different from one another, with no set of defining characteristics or patterns of cognitive strengths or weaknesses, development of standard assessment tests or effective treatments has been difficult. The workshop featured a series of presentations to familiarize participants with the challenges facing these children and helped them to identify a number of research gaps and opportunities that could be addressed in future research studies.

What are voice, speech, and language?

Voice, speech, and language are the tools we use to communicate with each other.

Voice is the sound we make as air from our lungs is pushed between vocal folds in our larynx, causing them to vibrate.

Speech is talking, which is one way to express language. It involves the precisely coordinated muscle actions of the tongue, lips, jaw, and vocal tract to produce the recognizable sounds that make up language.

Language is a set of shared rules that allow people to express their ideas in a meaningful way. Language may be expressed verbally or by writing, signing, or making other gestures, such as eye blinking or mouth movements.

Your baby’s hearing and communicative development checklist

Birth to 3 months, 4 to 6 months, 7 months to 1 year, 1 to 2 years, 2 to 3 years, 3 to 4 years, 4 to 5 years.

This checklist is based upon How Does Your Child Hear and Talk ?, courtesy of the American Speech–Language–Hearing Association.

The NIDCD maintains a directory of organizations that provide information on the normal and disordered processes of hearing, balance, taste, smell, voice, speech, and language.

Use the following keywords to help you find organizations that can answer questions and provide information on speech and language development:

• Early identification of hearing loss in children
• Speech-language pathologists

For more information, contact us at:

NIDCD Information Clearinghouse 1 Communication Avenue Bethesda, MD 20892-3456 Toll-free voice: (800) 241-1044 Toll-free TTY: (800) 241-1055 Email: [email protected]

NIH Publication No. 00-4781 September 2010

*Note: PDF files require a viewer such as the free Adobe Reader .

Kamila Sukhov Explores The Benefits of Early Intervention in Speech Therapy for Children

Published by down beach author on may 17, 2024.

Speech and language development is a critical aspect of a child’s overall growth. It lays the foundation for communication, learning, and social interaction. Early intervention in speech therapy plays a pivotal role in addressing and mitigating speech and language disorders in children. Kamila Sukhov explains that by identifying and addressing these issues early, children are better equipped to develop essential communication skills, which significantly impact their academic performance, social relationships, and overall quality of life.

Understanding Speech and Language Disorders

Speech disorders refer to difficulties in producing sounds correctly, which can include articulation disorders (difficulty in making certain sounds), fluency disorders (such as stuttering), and voice disorders (problems with pitch, volume, or quality of voice). Language disorders, on the other hand, encompass difficulties in understanding and using spoken or written language. These can be expressive (difficulty in expressing thoughts) or receptive (difficulty in understanding language). Kamila Sukhov understands that these disorders can stem from various causes, including hearing impairments, developmental delays, neurological disorders, and genetic conditions. Early signs of speech and language issues may include limited vocabulary for the child’s age, difficulty following simple directions, trouble with pronunciation, and challenges in forming sentences.

The Importance of Early Intervention

• Enhanced Developmental Outcomes Early intervention is crucial because it capitalizes on the brain’s plasticity during the early years. The first few years of a child’s life are a period of rapid brain development. Speech therapy during this time can leverage this plasticity, making it easier to develop and improve communication skills. Children who receive early intervention often show significant improvements in speech, language, and cognitive development compared to those who start therapy later. • Prevention of Academic Challenges Speech and language skills are foundational for literacy and academic success. Children with untreated speech and language disorders are at a higher risk of experiencing difficulties in reading, writing, and other academic areas. Early intervention helps to mitigate these risks by providing children with the tools they need to develop effective communication skills, which are critical for learning and academic achievement. • Improved Social Skills Communication is a vital component of social interaction. Children with speech and language disorders may struggle with social skills, leading to feelings of frustration and social isolation. Early speech therapy can help children develop the ability to express themselves clearly and understand others, thereby enhancing their ability to form and maintain relationships. Improved social skills contribute to better emotional and psychological well-being. • Increased Confidence and Self-Esteem Speech and language disorders can significantly impact a child’s self-esteem. Difficulties in communication can lead to embarrassment, frustration, and a lack of confidence. Kamila Sukhov explains that through early intervention, children can develop effective communication skills, which boost their confidence and self-esteem. Being able to communicate successfully allows children to participate more fully in social and educational settings, fostering a positive self-image. • Parental Involvement and Support Early intervention programs often involve parents and caregivers, providing them with strategies and techniques to support their child’s development. Parental involvement is crucial as it reinforces the skills learned in therapy and provides a supportive environment for the child. Educating parents about speech and language development also helps them to identify potential issues early and seek appropriate intervention.

Key Components of Early Intervention

• Individualized Therapy Plans Each child’s speech and language needs are unique, and early intervention programs are tailored to meet these specific needs. Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) assess the child’s abilities and design individualized therapy plans that focus on the areas requiring improvement. These plans are flexible and can be adjusted as the child progresses. • Play-Based Therapy For young children, therapy often incorporates play-based activities. Play is a natural and engaging way for children to learn and practice new skills. Through games, stories, and interactive activities, children can develop their speech and language skills in a fun and supportive environment. • Use of Technology Advancements in technology have provided new tools for speech therapy. Interactive apps, online games, and other digital resources can supplement traditional therapy methods. Kamila Sukhov understands that these tools can make therapy more engaging and accessible, especially for children who may benefit from additional practice at home. • Multidisciplinary Approach Early intervention often involves a multidisciplinary team, including SLPs, pediatricians, psychologists, and educators. This collaborative approach ensures that all aspects of the child’s development are addressed. Working together, these professionals can provide comprehensive care and support tailored to the child’s needs.

Early intervention in speech therapy is a proactive approach that can significantly improve the outcomes for children with speech and language disorders. Kamila Sukhov emphasizes that by addressing these issues early, children are better prepared to succeed academically, socially, and emotionally. The benefits of early intervention extend beyond speech and language development, contributing to the overall well-being and future success of the child. Parents and caregivers play a crucial role in this process, and their involvement and support are essential for the child’s progress. As awareness of the importance of early intervention grows, more children can receive the help they need to thrive.

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Speech On Communication [1,2,3 Minutes]

Communication is an important aspect of human life. It helps us convey our thoughts and feelings to others. However, communication can solve giant issues, sometimes wrong communication can lead you many controversies.

In this article, we are sharing some examples of “ speech on communication ” of different word lengths and delivery duration. These are written in easy-to-understand and simple English language.

Speech On Communication for 1 Minute

Good morning and welcome all of you gathered here. I am here to present a speech on communication.

Communication has the purpose of transferring thoughts, ideas, and information to others. But it is very important to convey the information in the correct form otherwise people interpret it the wrong way.

Hence, communication is not only firing loads of words towards others but we need to make quality conversations with the help of enhanced communication skills. First of all, good communication skills involve the choice of words, gestures, silence, expressions etc.

Apart from that, we need to understand the other person’s perspective by listening to him carefully. This will give us an idea of how to communicate with a specific person.

Furthermore, you can choose your words wisely to create a positive influence on people. For example: if you drive a person to wait for you, you can say to him “ thank you for sparing me your valuable time ” instead of saying “ sorry, I got late for this reason “.

At last, I want to say; From the first ray of the sun to the last minute of the day, we communicate with a number of people. Good communication skills can help us grow in each aspect of life. So, we should keep improving our communication skills. Thank you!

2-Minute Speech On Communication

Welcome honourable principal, respected teacher, loved parents and dear friends. Today, we are gathered here for this special occasion of… I am here to speak a few words about communication skills.

We use a number of tools to make our life easy. One of these tools is communication. Fundamentally, the purpose of communication is to convey our message to other people. But if the other person interprets your words in the wrong way, the purpose of communication will not get satisfied.

It means we need to use this tool very carefully otherwise it can create problems for us rather than solving one. So, there is a need to improve our communication skills in order to convey the correct message. First of all, we should understand that communication is an art more than a science.

Once we master the art of communication, we can win the hearts of people and convince them. Now, communication can help you progress in every sphere of life be it your personal life or your professional life. This is the reason that most companies employ people with good communication skills.

Most importantly, good communication skills do not focus only on the choices of words, there are many other elements that make a conversation healthy and sound good. These elements involve gestures, signs, symbols, pauses, silence, body language and expressions.

One can easily improve communication skills through various means such as by enrolling in a course, following good communicators, and reading books on good communication skills. But this is not enough, you need to practice once you understand the basics of good communication.

To sum it up, scaling up communication skills is the need for each one of us so that we can build good relationships with others. Thank you!

3 Minute Speech On The Importance Of Communication

First of all, good morning to the honourable principal, respected teachers and loving friends and all of you present here today. In your special presence, I would like to say a few words about communication and its importance.

We live in two different worlds. One is the internal world of desires, thoughts, feelings, fear and emotions etc. The second is the external world we are surrounded with. In order to bridge the gap between the internal and external worlds, we need a device. This device is called “communication”.

Human life has always been and is full of communication. In earlier times when no language was developed, Humans conversed with each other using hand gestures, signs and expressions. Today, we have various means of communication such as social media , instant messaging, video calls, phone calls, emails etc.

Whether you are a student or a working professional, you need to communicate with people for a number of reasons. Communication helps us convey our thoughts and feelings to others. However, communication can solve giant issues, sometimes wrong communication can lead you many controversies.

Hence, it is essential for everyone to communicate well because people understand each other with the help of communication. On the one hand, healthy communication can help you build good relationships. On the other hand, poor communication can destroy healthy relationships.

First of all, one needs to understand the basics of communication in order to develop good communication skills. Communication involves many elements one needs to pay attention to. These elements involve gestures, signs, symbols, pauses, silence, body language and expressions.

Apart from this, you can choose your words wisely to create a positive influence on people. For example: if you drive a person to wait for you, you can say to him “ thank you for sparing me your valuable time ” instead of saying “ sorry, I got late for this reason “.

A person with good communication skills is respected and loved by all. This is because he knows how to win people’s hearts and convince them. This quality can lead you to the path of progress in all walks of life be it personal or professional.

Most notably, good communication skills open many doors for employment as companies prefer hiring people with good communication skills. So, everyone should start improving his communication skills. This will not only make a splash on your personality, but also you get recognition in society.

To sum it up, communication skills play a crucial role in our daily lives. We must strive to improve them continuously. This is all I wanted to share with you. Thank you!

Other Speeches

Importance of time management speech [1,2,3 minutes], speech on ethics and etiquette [1,2,3 minutes], speech about mahatma gandhi jayanti 2023.

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The Importance of Identifying the Purpose of a Speech

Understanding key factors in speech planning and delivery for success..

When preparing a speech, it is crucial to consider several important aspects in order to effectively convey your message to the audience. One of the first things to take into account is the cultural context in which the speech will be delivered. Different cultures have varying norms, values, and communication styles, so it is essential to tailor your speech accordingly to ensure it is well received.

Expert opinion is another crucial factor to consider when identifying the purpose of a speech. Consulting with subject matter experts can provide valuable insights and help you establish credibility with your audience. Experts can offer unique perspectives and contribute to the central ideas of your speech, enhancing its overall impact.

Speaking of central ideas, having a clear understanding of the main points you want to convey is essential in crafting a coherent and persuasive speech. Your central ideas should be well-defined and supported by evidence and examples to effectively communicate your message to the audience.

Language is another important consideration when identifying the purpose of a speech. The language you use should be appropriate for your audience and convey your message clearly and effectively. Avoid using jargon or complex terminology that may confuse or alienate your listeners.

Furthermore, the audience plays a critical role in shaping the purpose of your speech. Consider the demographics, interests, and knowledge levels of your audience when planning your speech. Tailoring your message to resonate with your audience will help you achieve your communication goals and make a lasting impact.

Generative AI can enhance productivity but may also lead to the replacement of human employees. Teaching, learning, and academic research will experience significant changes as AI technology continues to advance. It is important to consider these advancements in the context of speech planning and delivery.

Many experts fear that uncivil and manipulative behaviors on the internet will persist – and may even get worse. As technology continues to evolve, it is crucial to address these concerns and ensure that communication remains respectful and constructive.

Other questions posed to the experts in this canvassing invited their views on the hopeful things that will occur in the next decade and beyond. By considering the positive developments and advancements in various fields, speakers can inspire and motivate their audience towards a brighter future.

In conclusion, when identifying the purpose of a speech, it is important to consider the cultural context, expert opinion, central ideas, language, and audience. By taking these factors into account, speakers can effectively communicate their message and achieve their communication goals.

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Speeches about communication [1,2,3,5 minutes], 1 minute speech about communication.

Communication is the process of sharing information and ideas between two or more people.

Communication is a process that involves exchanging ideas, thoughts, and feelings. It can be done verbally or non-verbally. The intention of communication is to achieve understanding between two or more people by using a shared language.

This introduction provides an overview of what communication is and how it works.

Communication is one of the most important aspects of our lives. It is a means of understanding and sharing ideas with others.

Although communication can be a difficult task, it is important to know how to communicate effectively in order to achieve your goals.

Knowing how to communicate effectively can help you in many ways such as developing stronger relationships, promoting yourself and your brand, and increasing your chances of success.

Communication is a two-way process that helps in achieving personal and professional goals. It can be used to build trust, foster collaboration, and improve the quality of life.

Communication is a two-way process that helps in achieving personal and professional goals. It can be used to build trust, foster collaboration, and improve the quality of life. It has many advantages such as improved productivity, reduced stress levels, improved relationships with others and increased empathy.

Quotes for Speech about Communication

• “The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.” – Peter Drucker
• “Communication is the solvent of all problems and is the foundation for personal development.” – Peter Shepherd
• “The art of communication is the language of leadership.” – James Humes
• “To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.” – Tony Robbins
• “Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.” – Anne Morrow Lindbergh
• “Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing.” – Rollo May
• “The two words ‘information’ and ‘communication’ are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out; communication is getting through.” – Sydney J. Harris
• “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” – George Bernard Shaw
• “Communication is a skill that you can learn. It’s like riding a bicycle or typing. If you’re willing to work at it, you can rapidly improve the quality of every part of your life.” – Brian Tracy
• “Communication – the human connection – is the key to personal and career success.” – Paul J. Meyer
• “The most powerful tool we have as a society is communication.” – Jeremy Piven
• “Effective communication is 20% what you know and 80% how you feel about what you know.” – Jim Rohn
• “Communication is not just words. It’s how those words are said, the facial expressions and body language that accompany them.” – Anonymous
• “Communication is the bridge between confusion and clarity.” – Nat Turner
• “Words are singularly the most powerful force available to humanity. We can choose to use this force constructively with words of encouragement, or destructively using words of despair. Words have energy and power with the ability to help, to heal, to hinder, to hurt, to harm, to humiliate, and to humble.” – Yehuda Berg

2 Minutes Speech about Communication

Communication is the process of exchanging information through speech, signs, gestures, writing, or other mediums.

The word communication comes from Latin communi-care, meaning “to share”. Communication can be defined as the passing on of information from one entity to another.

Communication is a process of exchanging information, thoughts, and feelings between humans. It is the way we share our experiences with others and the way we understand each other.

Communication is an important part of human life. It helps us to build relationships with others and it also helps us to understand ourselves better. Communication can be done in many ways – verbal, written, or non-verbal.

Communication is the key to a successful relationship. It is what makes us human and keeps us connected with one another. It is also what helps us to understand, relate and connect with others.

The importance of communication can be seen in many aspects of our life – from the ability to express ourselves, to understanding others, and even achieving success in our careers.

Communication skills are essential for anyone who wants to succeed in their career or personal life.

Communication is the backbone of our society. It helps us to interact with each other and make sure that we are not isolated from the world. It also helps us to understand each other better, which is one of the main advantages of communication.

Communication is a key element in our lives that help us to connect with each other, understand one another, and build relationships. Communication can be used for various purposes like personal or professional interactions.

Sources of communication are all the channels that can be used to communicate. They include various mediums such as print, TV, radio, social media and digital platforms.

Sources of communication are changing with the time and moving towards digital platforms. With the increase in usage of digital platforms like blogs, podcasts and social media channels, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for advertisers to reach out to their target audience.

3 Minutes Speech about Communication

Communication is one of the most important aspects of life. Communication can be defined as a process in which people send and receive messages. It is a way to get information from one person to another person or group of people.

Communication can be done in different ways such as verbal, written, nonverbal, etc. One common form of communication is face-to-face conversation, while other forms are email, text message and phone call.

Communication is a process by which information is transmitted from one person to another. One of the most important aspects of communication is the message.

What is communication?

– Communication can be defined as a process by which information is transmitted from one person to another.

– One of the most important aspects of communication is the message.

Communication is a key factor in human development and it has many benefits. It is the most important tool for personal and business growth.

There are many advantages of communication that we can’t even imagine without it. Communication helps us to build relationships with people, share information, learn from others, create awareness about social issues, etc.

Communication is a key factor in any relationship. It helps to build trust and understanding between people. There are many sources of communication, such as verbal and non-verbal cues.

There are three main types of communication:

1. Verbal Communication – includes spoken, written, or signed language;

2. Non-Verbal Communication – includes gestures and facial expressions;

3. Physical Communication – includes body language

5 Minutes Speech about Communication

Communication is a process of sharing information and ideas from one person to another in order to achieve a goal.

Communication is a process of sharing information and ideas from one person to another in order to achieve a goal. Communication can be through verbal, nonverbal, or written means.

The following are some examples of communication:

– Talking on the phone

– Sending an email

– Writing an article

Communication is a fundamental part of human life. It is essential for our survival and it also helps us to build relationships with other people.

We are increasingly using communication technologies to stay connected with people we love and care about, but we should not forget the importance of communication in our lives.

Communication is a key aspect of everyday life. It helps us to understand and be understood by others. Communication is also important in the workplace, where it helps us to build relationships and reach our goal of creating sales or increasing customer satisfaction.

Communication has many advantages, but the most important one is that it allows people to understand each other better, which in turn leads to more effective collaboration, more productive teamwork and more efficient business processes.

The benefits of communication are numerous for both individuals and organizations:

Sources of communication are the ways through which people communicate. There are many different sources of communication in the world, including text, voice, and pictures.

Text: Text is an essential part of our society and it’s a great way to communicate with each other. It’s also an easy way to share information online that can be easily shared with others in a quick manner.

Voice: Voice is another important source of communication as it allows people to express themselves without having to type out long messages or sentences. Voice is also used when people are not physically close to one another but still want to connect with one another.

Pictures: Pictures are a great source of communication because they allow us to share our emotions without having to type out long messages or sentences.

Examples of sentences that can be used in starting of this speech

Examples of sentences that can be used in closing of this speech, speeches in english.

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How to Highlight Communication Skills on Your Resume

June 14, 2023

Communication skills are an essential asset in today’s job market, and you need to know how to highlight them on your resume. Employers value professionals who can effectively convey their ideas, collaborate with others, and build strong relationships. Therefore, showcasing your communication skills on your resume is crucial to stand out from the competition and increase your chances of landing your dream job. In this blog post, we will explore various strategies to highlight your communication skills effectively. Additionally, we will introduce Yoodli , an AI speech and communication coach, which can help you improve your communication skills and quantify your progress over time.

The Importance of Communication Skills on a Resume

Before diving into the specifics of highlighting communication skills, it’s essential to understand why they are highly valued by employers. Effective communication is the foundation of successful teamwork, client relationships, and leadership. Regardless of your field or industry, strong communication skills can make you a valuable asset to any organization.

When hiring, employers often look for candidates who can:

• Express ideas clearly : The ability to articulate your thoughts concisely and effectively is vital in any role. Employers seek individuals who can communicate complex concepts in a simple and understandable manner.
• Listen actively : Communication is a two-way street. Employers value candidates who actively listen, understand different perspectives, and respond thoughtfully. Active listening promotes collaboration and fosters a positive work environment.
• Adapt communication style : Tailoring your communication style to different audiences is a valuable skill. Being able to adjust your approach based on the recipient’s knowledge level, background, or position showcases your versatility as a communicator.
• Resolve conflicts : Conflict resolution is an inevitable part of any professional environment. Employers value candidates who can navigate challenging situations with empathy and diplomacy, promoting effective resolution and maintaining healthy working relationships.

Now that we understand the significance of communication skills, let’s explore how to effectively highlight them on your resume.

Showcasing Communication Skills on Your Resume

• Incorporate a dedicated skills section : Create a separate section on your resume to emphasize your communication skills. Use bullet points to list relevant skills such as verbal and written communication, active listening, negotiation, and presentation skills.
• Provide concrete examples : To demonstrate your communication skills, highlight relevant experiences where you effectively communicated in a professional setting. Include specific examples of successful collaboration, client interactions, or presentations. Quantify your achievements whenever possible to showcase the impact of your communication skills.
• Highlight relevant training or certifications : If you have completed any communication-related courses or earned certifications, mention them on your resume. This shows your commitment to improving your communication skills and highlights your dedication to professional development.
• Utilize action verbs : When describing your work experience, use action verbs that showcase your communication abilities. For example, instead of simply stating “communicated with clients,” use more descriptive phrases like “crafted persuasive client presentations” or “facilitated effective cross-departmental communication.”
• Include language proficiency : If you are bilingual or have fluency in multiple languages, make sure to mention it on your resume. Being proficient in additional languages demonstrates your adaptability and cultural awareness, which are highly sought-after skills in today’s global job market.

Introducing Yoodli: Your AI Speech and Communication Coach

Improving communication skills is an ongoing process that requires practice and feedback. You can benefit from the help of a communication coach ; however, in-person coaches can come at a cost that just isn’t affordable for many. That’s where Yoodli , a free AI speech and communication coach, can be incredibly helpful. Yoodli combines cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology with proven communication techniques to provide personalized coaching and feedback.

How Yoodli Works

Simply upload or record a video, and Yoodli will provide real-time feedback on aspects of your speech such as clarity, tone, pace, and word choice. Whether you’re preparing for a presentation, an important meeting, or simply aiming to enhance your overall communication skills, Yoodli can assist you.

Quantifying Communication Progress Over Time

One of Yoodli’s standout features is its ability to quantify your communication progress over time. Through its comprehensive analytics dashboard, Yoodli tracks your performance, highlights areas for improvement, and provides actionable insights. This data-driven approach allows you to objectively measure your progress and set achievable goals for enhancing your communication skills.

Tailored Communication Exercises

Yoodli offers an innovative mock interview feature that you can use as an innovative communication practice exercise. As you speak, Yoodli gives you tailored follow-up questions in real time based on what you say. Whether you need to work on your public speaking, active listening, or conflict resolution abilities, Yoodli provides targeted exercises and practice scenarios to sharpen your skills.

Examples of Communication Skills to Refine and Develop for Your Resume

When highlighting communication skills on your resume, it’s essential to include specific skills that are relevant to the job you’re applying for. Here are some examples of communication skills you can refine and develop to showcase on your resume:

Verbal Communication

The ability to articulate ideas clearly and confidently through spoken words. Example: Delivering engaging presentations to diverse audiences, effectively conveying complex information in a simple and understandable manner.

Written Communication

The skill to express ideas, information, and messages effectively through written documents. Example: Crafting concise and persuasive emails, reports, and proposals that demonstrate clarity, organization, and attention to detail.

Active Listening

The ability to attentively listen to others, understand their perspectives, and respond thoughtfully. Example: Demonstrating active listening skills during team meetings and client interactions, summarizing key points, and asking relevant questions to ensure understanding.

Nonverbal Communication

The aptitude to convey messages and emotions through facial expressions, body language, and gestures. Example: Using appropriate nonverbal cues to project confidence and engagement during presentations, interviews, and networking events.

Interpersonal Skills

The capacity to build and maintain positive relationships with colleagues, clients, and stakeholders. Example: Collaborating effectively within cross-functional teams, fostering a supportive and inclusive work environment, and resolving conflicts with diplomacy.

Negotiation and Persuasion

The skill to influence others, reach agreements, and achieve mutually beneficial outcomes. Example: Successfully negotiating contracts, resolving disputes, and persuading stakeholders to adopt new strategies or initiatives.

Presentation Skills

The ability to deliver engaging and impactful presentations to both small and large audiences. Example: Designing and delivering visually appealing and informative presentations that effectively communicate key messages and engage the audience.

Emotional Intelligence

The capacity to understand and manage emotions, both your own and others’, in professional settings. Example: Demonstrating empathy and emotional intelligence when providing feedback, resolving conflicts, or managing challenging situations.

Cross-Cultural Communication

The ability to communicate effectively with individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds. Example: Adapting communication styles and approaches to effectively engage with colleagues, clients, and stakeholders from different cultures.

Public Speaking

The skill to confidently and effectively address large audiences. Example: Delivering dynamic and compelling speeches at conferences, seminars, or industry events, engaging the audience and conveying key messages.

Remember, when incorporating these skills into your resume, use specific examples and quantify your achievements whenever possible. By showcasing these refined communication skills, you will demonstrate to potential employers your ability to effectively communicate and collaborate in various professional situations.

In today’s competitive job market, highlighting your communication skills on your resume is essential. By incorporating a dedicated skills section, providing concrete examples, and showcasing relevant training, you can effectively demonstrate your ability to communicate effectively. Additionally, leveraging Yoodli , your AI speech and communication coach, can further enhance your communication skills and provide quantifiable progress over time. Remember, effective communication is a valuable asset that can set you apart from other candidates and open doors to exciting career opportunities.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. why are communication skills important to put on my resume.

Communication skills are highly valued by employers because they are essential for effective collaboration, problem-solving, and building strong relationships. Strong communication skills demonstrate your ability to express ideas clearly, listen actively, and adapt to different audiences. These skills are crucial in almost every job role and industry, making them highly desirable for employers.

2. How can I improve my communication skills?

Improving communication skills requires practice and dedication. Here are some strategies to enhance your communication abilities:

• Seek feedback: Ask for feedback from colleagues, mentors, or supervisors to identify areas for improvement and work on specific communication challenges.
• Take courses or workshops: Enroll in communication courses or workshops that focus on public speaking, active listening, or other relevant areas to gain new techniques and insights.
• Practice active listening: Focus on being fully present and engaged when listening to others, asking clarifying questions and summarizing key points to ensure understanding.
• Join public speaking clubs or groups: Participating in organizations like Toastmasters can provide a supportive environment to practice and enhance your public speaking skills.
• Utilize technology tools: Explore AI speech and communication coaching tools like Yoodli, which provide personalized feedback and guidance to help you refine your skills.

3. How can Yoodli help improve my communication skills?

Yoodli is an AI speech and communication coach that utilizes advanced technology to help you improve your communication skills. It offers real-time feedback on aspects such as clarity, tone, pace, and word choice, helping you become more aware of your strengths and areas for improvement. With its comprehensive analytics dashboard, you can track your progress over time and set achievable goals to continually improve your communication abilities.

4. Can I quantify my communication progress with Yoodli?

Yes, one of the key features of Yoodli is its ability to quantify your communication progress over time. By analyzing your performance and providing data-driven insights, Yoodli allows you to objectively measure your improvement. The analytics dashboard provides valuable information on areas where you excel and areas that require further development. This quantifiable feedback enables you to track your growth and set realistic goals to continue advancing your communication skills.

5. How can I incorporate my improved communication skills on my resume?

To highlight your improved communication skills on your resume:

• Create a dedicated skills section and include relevant communication skills such as verbal and written communication, active listening, negotiation, and presentation skills.
• Provide concrete examples of how you have effectively utilized your communication skills in previous roles or experiences. Quantify your achievements whenever possible to showcase the impact of your communication abilities.
• Mention any communication-related training, certifications, or workshops you have completed to demonstrate your commitment to enhancing your skills.
• Tailor your language and use action verbs when describing your work experience to showcase your effective communication abilities in various professional situations.

Remember to review and update your resume regularly to ensure it accurately reflects your current and refined communication skills.

Improving and highlighting your communication skills on your resume will undoubtedly make you a more competitive candidate in today’s job market. By utilizing resources like Yoodli and actively working on enhancing your abilities, you can showcase your strong communication skills and increase your chances of success in your professional endeavors.

Start practicing with Yoodli.

Getting better at speaking is getting easier. Record or upload a speech and let our AI Speech Coach analyze your speaking and give you feedback.