As a chemistry student, I often have to work with different people as we cooperate in pairs or groups during lab experiments. I also aspire to be a chemist in future, in which research work is done by a group rather than individually. Thus communicating efficiently amongst group members is important so as to minimize confusion and optimize our findings during the experiment. Being able to convey our ideas correctly in written lab reports also allows readers to have better understanding of the subject.
Also, I have many friends of different religions and cultures. It is vital that I learn the various nonverbal languages that different cultures adopt. This heightens my level of awareness and sensitivity so I would not offend them unintentionally.
Hence effective communication is important for me.
Hello Wanqi! (: Good to have included a personal touch of effective communication in your blog post.
ReplyDeleteBeing an applied chemistry major myself, I have gone through labs too. It is really important that we can communicate effectively with our lab partners so that experiments can be done accurately and efficiently. And with such long and tedious lab reports that we have to submit, we need to be able to write clearly and concisely as lab reports show the T.A.s our experimental results as well as that we know the concepts behind these experiments.
Not only can we apply effective communication skills in labs, even in our everyday life effective communication is essential. We need good communication skills to minimize any misunderstandings that may be caused by the lack of communication.
Hi Wanqi,
ReplyDeletePerhaps we can explore forms of effective communication across text messaging as well? I personally find that a lot of people do not understand my slang and shorthand writing so I've been trying to text in proper sentences. Especially useful when you have unlimited text messages in your mobile plan :P
Hello Wanqi!
ReplyDeleteI liked how you shared your personal experience in your post. Makes it easier for me to understand why effective communication is important to you.
Your point on you being a more visual rather than an auditory(based on hearing) person reminded me of this course I attended many years ago in secondary school on learning styles. Basically, there are 3 main kinds of learners - visual(by seeing), auditory (by hearing) and tactile (by doing/touching) learners. A person may be a combination of these 3, but there will be a dominant mode of learning. So, to effectively communicate to a visual learner, you’ll say something like “Can you see the point that I’m trying to prove?”. As for an auditory learner, it may go along the lines of “Does this point sound logical to you?”.
What you said got me thinking of whether understanding the audience (which in this case would be what their dominant learning styles are) and to have your message “tailor-made” for them (in terms of the gestures and non visual cues to use) contributes to effective communication. I think it does, and it's at a higher level too since the message can get across more smoothly. What do you think?
Hello Wanqi,
ReplyDeleteI had a chance attached to a lab during the long vacation, it is a wonderful experience to me. I feel that a lab group is just like a big family. Communication is important to follow up each other research progress and also to present the results to our “boss”. While presenting, we need to include gestures, facial expression, tone and other aspects. I feel that having a conversation face-to-face is a profound knowledge, what do you thing?
|To Charmian| Yes! Most often they restrict our lab reports to a maximum number of pages, so we really have to select relevant information and write them concisely so we can keep to the limited number of pages! And I agree too that one of the most important reasons for effective communication is to minimise misunderstandings (:
ReplyDelete|To Rina| Haha yeah, I think messaging in proper sentences is the most assured way of getting our message across accurately. There was once my friend text me, "So we fix a date to meet on first ok?" I actually thought my friend just meant we agree on one day to meet first.. but actually my friend meant we meet on the first of September haha
|To Hui Juen| I think you have elaborated well on my post! I have learnt about the 3 types of learning styles in secondary school too. (Are we from the same secondary school? haha) And yes, I agree that communication can be greatly improved when we cater to the dominant learning style of our audience (= They will be more receptive to what we are saying. Hence, I think when we are presenting to a group of people, it is best we try to include all 3 methods of conveying our message, as different people have different dominant learning styles. Good point made!
|To JingYuan| Thanks for sharing with me how your lab attachment is like =) Yes, face-to-face conversations are more sensitive because before we realise it, we are already sending out information with our body language, and we can also directly see the nonverbal cues from others. Most often, there is no time for us to decide what kind of nonverbal cues we should give out. Whereas for other modes of conversation, we have time to set the tone, add in smiley faces or not. So I feel it is particularly important to have emotional intelligence during face-to-face conversations :)
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ReplyDeleteHi Wanqi, thanks for the quick work on the post! You shared a few reasons why effective communication is important to you, and I can tell that you'd strike a chord with your classmates as your post generated some good and interesting feedback.
ReplyDeleteI noticed a few language problems in this post - can you spot them?
I look forward to your second blog post! Thanks for the effort!