Receptive And Productive Skills And

Receptive And Productive Skills & Communication Implications

Report prepared on the instruction of: Esteemed Teacher and Instructor for the course: “Communication Skills” Report prepared by: Benzene Group – Bcsf06 (Section: afternoon) Student name Umair Ehsan Ghulam Mohyuddin Naseem Rafiq Abdullah Malik

Roll No. Bcsf06a018 Bcsf06a027 Bcsf06a028 Bcsf06a029

Executive summary In the modern age, the communication caries paramount significant. The importances of communication skills are relatively tremendous. These skills are awfully needed in each and every field of life for success, specially confronting the competitors. The communication skills comprise of two sorts of skills namely “Receptive skills and productive skills. Listening and Reading are receptive skills while Speaking and Writing are productive skills. It is worthmentioning that both receptive and productive skills do not take place simultaneously. Listening precedes speaking and reading precedes writing. Making the best use of receptive and productive skills depends upon the high magnitude of determination. These skills may go astray if we do not make the best use of them. In that event the success in life cannot be even thought of. The students become scholars by utilizing their receptive and productive skills. For the purpose, however, they should take benefit of the opportunities, now abundantly available around them. The written work of earlier generations can also be benefited. The ability to communicate information and ideas is a prerequisite for professional achievements the communication skills become even more critical as national affaires are transformed into the global affaires. The best way to develop the communication skills is through a fundamental approach that becomes sophisticated as the basis skills are mastered. The communication skills thus developed by working will be applicable to all communication contexts. All barriers before the communications can be removed with the development of communication skills.

Introduction: The communication competency comprises of Receptive and Productive skills. One can improve these skills if he knows one’s communication competency. The significance of Language, being the medium of communication is paramount. Learning a second language is not that different from learning the first. Reading, writing, Speaking and listening are necessary for the same. But all these factors cannot happen at the same time. Listening precedes speaking and reading precedes writing.

Receptive And Productive Skills & Communication Implications Receptive Skills: Listening and reading are the receptive skills. The students passively receive and process the information through these Skills.

Utilization Of Receptive skills: For adequate receptive skills, the habits of listening and reading are to be improved. A student should be a good listener. He should be a careful reader as well. Through a curiosity of high magnitude and a thirst of knowledge he may acquire maximum receptive skills. But his competence to produce something remains questionable until it attains perfection. A student may understand a wellwritten essay but still he may be unable to produce one till he becomes perfect through a constant hard practice. For an excellent output, an adequately strong input is necessary. Now input demands certain things like vigilance, absorption, concentration so far as listening is concerned. As far reading is concerned, it necessitates extensive study. The best selection of reading material, different opinions and viewpoints on the same subject, work of competent authors/writers. Writings of different styles such as based on romance, or reality, simple and complex writings. A considerably large receptive vocabulary and psychological approach on a certain topic are additional requirements of reading as receptive skill. The books on different subjects like, science, geography, history, geology, botany, zoology or biology etc have different touches of the same language. A vast circle of terminology is used therein. Hence the study of such subjects requires much more carefulness.

Imagination – The exercise of receptive Skills: Imagination is richly increased through listening and reading. This is due to the absence of visionary aspects. The mind has to be active enough to develop itself the image of what is being listened or read. The impact of this activity of the mind on the productive skills is tremendous. It widens the outlook a look a lot, creating the ability of output to the maximum extent.

Benefits Of receptive Skills: Being with competent personalities, listening them carefully and paying full attention upon their lectures would simply mean gaining the treasure of knowledge without any difficulty. This way, the inner self of a good listener is showered upon with proficient and witty expressions of such learned persons. Same is the case with reading. Pausing into mind the knowledge through studying well written material actually means benefiting the company of its written knowledge is transmitted from our mind to another by means of two receptive skills i.e. listening and reading and this goes on consecutively generation after generation. Libraries, educational organizations and lectures halls are the places for transmission of knowledge/information through listening and reading. A student becomes a scholar with the blessing of these two skills.

Islamic view point about receptive Skills: The revelation of Holy Quran was started with emphasis on reading (Iqra). Then for learning was impressed upon. The Holy Prophet (PBUH) was advised just to listen instead of repeating the verses of Quran during the course of revelation. Thus the two receptive skills of the most capable personality i.e. the Holy Prophet (PBUH) transformed the world in a very short period of 23 years. Afterwards, till the present moment mankind including us has been benefiting the auspicious product of Holy Prophet’s listening and studying the Holy book Quran in the form of Islam, the perpetual code of life.

Receptive skills – The shower of blessings: All the inventions have been made so far, and all the achievements mankind has on its credit are the miracles of receptive skills. In other words all these wonderful outputs could become possible only due to the excellent inputs through listening and reading, which can be termed as the keys of success in every field of life.

Realization of the value of receptive Skills: We see that deaf and blind persons are special persons who are generally deprived of the successful life. So we being endowed with the faculties of hearing and seeing should always remain thankful to Almighty Allah. Our receptive skills are insect and we can make the best use of them.

Non-utilization of receptive Skills: If we do not make the best use of our receptive skills they would go astray and consequently we would lose the blessing of life and some time life itself too. Keeping ears and eyes for them best utilization is an urge of nature. If we do not respond this urge we can be considered as deaf despite having the faculty of hearing and we can be taken as blind despite possessing the faculty of seeing. For instance both a blind man and an illiterate person cannot be acquainted with the number of the wagon or bus of their route. Similarly, both a deaf person and one who is not intentionally listening piece of advice are equally away from their benefit.

Benefits of receptive Skills for a student: A hard and tough competition always goes on among the students and scholars for the achievement of ultimate success. The student, who are vigilant, curious and having thirst of knowledge make the best use of their receptive skills. They are good listener and untiring readers they are fond of being with learned personalities for listening their lectures and they like to spent their maximum time in reading books, so as to enrich their mind with more and more knowledge, till the could be able to produce wonderful things at their own.

The Role of Receptive Skills in Enhancing Second Language Acquisition: Language acquisition takes place when the learners realize how meaning is expressed accurately. Acquisition is possible even without production practice. There is a high correlation between listening and general language development. One of the rarely found non-North American listening-based study was carried out by Damhuis (1993) in Netherlands. The results strengthened the view that comprehension-based activities along with communicative oriented ones facilitates second language acquisition.

Listening-based studies: Asher, Kusudo and Torre (1983) compared the efficacy of TPR over traditional college foreign language instruction. The subjects taking listeningbased TPR instruction were between the ages of 30 and 60. The treatment lasted for only 32 hours. At the end, they were compared to younger, adolescent college students who were assumed to be better acquirers. Then, the control group underwent 75 hours of systematic instruction in reading and writing. Although the listening group had not received any such instruction, the results showed that in terms of grammar knowledge and reading performance, they scored as high as the other despite of the differences in the length of instruction and age range. The results clearly showed that listening experience positively affected the development of reading ability. The same researchers replicated the research for Spanish learners and found similar results.

Illustration for reading-based studies: Elley and Mangubhai (1983) studied the effects of pleasure reading activities at some Fijian Primary schools. While the experimental group was exposed to book floods, the control group underwent a formal second language instruction. At the end of the first year, the reading group improved considerably in terms of receptive skills. At the end of the second year, the experimental group outperformed the other even in writing and speaking. Almost every study designed to investigate the effects of comprehensionbased instruction on second language proficiency development has arrived at positive results.

Productive Skills: Speaking and writing are productive skills. The students possessing efficient productive skills are able to produce something. Their product can be an essay, a book, a research paper or a speech.

Speaking Skills: Speaking skill needs a strong input, a vast out look and refined ideas. Moreeven, it requires psychological order of expression as well. All these things are necessary to give the speaker a confidence to express what he is going to communicate. The foremost purpose of communication is to convince the listeners for the viewpoint of the speaker. So the speaker should himself very much clear about his views point. No ambiguity of any kind and on any point should be there

in his mind. He should be well-versed with the magnetic impect of the wording and its meaning. He should select appropriate words keeping in view the ability of the listeners. Farther, he can make his speech more effective with suitable illustration, proverbs and quotations. Truthfulness should be the axel of his speech. For the solid and for reaching impact he should avoid emotionalism as far as he can. Realities on ground have their own emotional aspect. He should keep his speech restricted to the ground realities.

Writing skills: For communication point of view the writing should be implicit, clear and in functional language. Un-necessary details should always be avoided. Sometimes a certain point or sub topic gets expands and expands and the core or main topic is over-sighted. Consequently the effectiveness of communication is affected adversely. Clarity is the fundamental requirement of a written work. The writer should be very much clear with what he wants to communicate. Each and every point should be explained explicitly, so as to ensure effectiveness of his communication. The functional language is an other basic need of writing skill. Relevant terms for the respective field should be used as and when required For having a firm grip on writing skill study of the work of competent, able and proficient writers is indispensable. An other important factor of an excellent writing skill is to develop stamina for carrying out reading and writing for a long time at a stretch. A writer should be a good analyst as well. He should posses a fast power of conclusion for making speedy decisions. Summing up the whole written work and making a summary of it is the beauty of writing skill. A student is always in need of improving his writing skills. Libraries can also help him a lot. However, he should be careful in selecting the books and other written material for study in order to get his faculties of heart and mind enlightened. Through extensive reading he can be a good writer in the times to come.

Commonly perceived differences between speaking and writing: -

Speaking

Writing

Characterised by hesitations, interrupts, selfcorrections, re-starts, fillers → →redundancies

Relatively concise

Characterized by stress, pitch, accent, intonation

Characterized by spelling and punctuation conventions

Relies on gesture and paralanguage Concrete, fragmented, (mainly / often) Informal, context-dependent

It has less modal modifications Elaborate, complex, abstract, formal

Characterized by turn-taking

Characterized by monologue

There is a mutuality of exchanges

The relationship between the sentences operates at several levels, which gives a thematic unity to texts. This thematic unity is built up from logical progression and grammatical linkage

It is less organized or structured, Organised and structured. There are more Syntactically simple, characterized by short subordinations and passives used. or coordinated sentences Sentences are longer.

It has a lower degree of lexical density and a lower ratio of structure (function) words

It has a higher degree of lexical density and a higher ratio of structure (function) words

(Based on Harris, J. 1993. Introducing Writing. Harmondsworth: Penguin English. and Hyland, K. 2002. Teaching and Researching Writing. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.)

Differences between speakers and writers: Speakers

Writers

Can refer to people, objects and so on in the shared environment by pointing with gestures or by using pointing words

Do not share an immediate environment with their readers and have to make explicit references to people and objects

Can check whether they are being understood by looking at the listener’s expression, by asking or by being directly prompted

Have limited means of knowing once the text is finished whether the reader will understand the message – need to anticipate the potential misunderstandings and appropriate levels of shared knowledge

In conversation they are encouraged by ‘listener markers’ such as ‘mm’ and ‘yes’ and - in live conversations – by gestures

Have to find ways of motivating themselves to continue creating a text

Can backtrack and fill in information that may have been omitted – precise sequence is not a prerequisite of effective communication

Have to have a plan in order to achieve both a sequence and a selection that will lead to effective communication

(From Harris 1993:4)

COMUNICATION IMPLICATION: Beside receptive and productive skill communication also implies certain other things, which are required to be taken ease of. These are ethics, common communication barriers, the communication process and mutual understanding. An effective communication skill leads to personal and professional success. Communication must conduct critical analysis in preparing messages for communication contexts. These include information management, critical thinking

and goal setting. There are certain communication barriers. Communication must remains aware of them. Communication also implies relationship between its different parts, which need to be strengthen for removal of the barriers/problems come across the way of communication.

Developing communication skills: An often-cited study conducted by Robert Half International surveyed executives at one thousand of the largest Corporations and determined that interpersonal, written, and oral skills were the most difficult to find in job applicants. Another survey identified communication skills among the most important managerial competencies. Although communication skills are critical, they seem to be lacking in many employees. In general, American corporations are quite critical of their employees’ lack of communication skills. For example, although many professionals spend from 21 percent to 40 percent of there time writing, 34 percent of letters, memos, and reports are poorly written. The text focuses on those communication skills that executives consider most critical for business professionals. We based our conclusions on data from research conducted among business executives. Most respondents report that, like technical skills (accounting, marketing, MIS, and management), communication practices are best learned while in college. College training provides you with an excellent opportunity to use evaluation and feedback to build skills in various communication situations. If you develop fundamental communication skills early in your college career, you can apply them later in advanced courses, in internships, and on the job. Furthermore, the better you r communication skills the more earning potential you will have in life – up to three times more then those with poor communication skills. Why are CEOs, executives, and managers so concerned about communications skills? What experiences do you have to support these surveys? Can you identify someone who has succeeded in business largely due to his or her communication skills? Do you personally know people who give specific reasons for the importance of communication skills?

Communication skills are critical for successful career: As an ambitious person, you want to be as successful as your intelligence, talents, and college training will allow. Yet your potential for a successful career is

limited if you cannot communicate effectively. Four related consequences of effective business communication directly affect the success of your career.

Improved self-presentation skills: Effective communication skills enhance your ability to make a positive impression on your superiors and co-workers. You will appear more valuable when others easily understand your ideas, goals, and plans. For example, Jill Apodaca considered herself naturally shy and reticent. Jill took several communication courses in college in which she worked hard to develop her presentational abilities. After learning basic communication skills and applying them in her other courses, ill rapidly built the confidence she needed for approaching the job market. Jill’s first job interview was with regional cotton wholesaler in the southwest. The interviews were so impressed with Jill’s ability to express ideas and thoughts that she was hired for the job on the spot.

Opportunities for Promotion: The old adage that “you have to demonstrate skills at the next level before you can advance” might be even more true today, given the high level of competition for attractive positions. Most supervisor and managerial positions require organization and leadership’s skills. These skills are demonstrated through oral, nonverbal, and written communication activities. An oil company executive makes this case rather dramatically:” Effective communication will be even more important in the smaller, faster moving corporations of tomorrow. As communicators, we have a wonderful opportunity to show our stuff. If not, they will find some one who will.

Responsibilities Operation planning Coordinating Decision making Team building Creativity/innovation Motivating employees

Required communication skills Writing reports and memos; planning and conducting meetings; goal setting Planning and conducting meetings; developing interpersonal relations; writing proposals Interpersonal communication; writing memos; critical thinking Group communication; listening; interpersonal skills Critical thinking; goal setting; persuasive messages

Hiring employees Managing information Budgeting Promoting goods and services

Nonverbal communication; listening; interpersonal communication; making presentations Interviewing skills; listening; interpersonal communication Mastering communication technology; reading skills Conducting research; writing reports; defending proposals Persuasive messages; designing communications/advertising campaigns

If you cannot effectively express yourself through letters, reports, memos, interviews, business conversations, presentations, and negotiations, you may be passed over for those better, higher level jobs. The above-mentioned table illustrates some, of the communication skills that meet the responsibilities of business professionals. The responsibilities listed in the table correspond to higher-level skills on the job.

Challenges before communicators: Communication skills enliven our personal and professional lives. The dynamic nature of information, cultural diversity, globalization, technology, and ethics all require a great focus on communication effectiveness.

Information Management: Survival in today’s world requires effective information management. The explosion of information in the last several years is only a sign of things to come in our new millennium. William Ruch, a noted author and futurist, apply demonstrated the impact of information on businesses by comparing the information age of today with the industrial age recently concluded. • In the industrial age, human knowledge doubled every ten years; now knowledge doubles every years. • In the industrial age, each nation maintained a separate economy; in the information age, a global economy exists. • In the industrial age, employees were involved in communication only when necessary in the information age; employees must constantly communicate in order to handle the influx of information.

• The industrial age was successful because workers followed orders; organizations in the information age can survive only by employing people who take on responsibility and use all of their skills effectively.

Ethics: Surveys of each company as Pitney Bowes and Uniroyal indicated that over half of their managers feel pressure to compromise their ethical standards in order to get the job don. Many organizations have made ethics their number one priority. Would you cheat on a test, buy a term paper, or reuse a report in another class? College and university surveys show that students deal with these ethical challenges every day. Even business student report that they expect to be pressured into using less then ethical practices when they enter the business world. Why do so many business professionals even consider the use of unethical business practices? Numerous reasons are cited for unethical communication practices, but some of the more common ones include the following: • • • • • •

Pressure to produce results. Misunderstanding the difference between ethical and unethical behavior. Bending to situations or people pushing unethical acts. Observing and imitating poor role models. Ignoring ethical behavior in the interest of profits. Believing that “everybody does it,” “they’ll never know,” or “this is my right”;

In spite of the prevalent attitudes condoning unethical communication, we will demonstrate that ethical communication is not only morally correct, but also highly profitable. Almost all professionals want to work for and do business with ethical organizations. Furthermore, ethical behavior does not require much more effort, and creates more advantages then do unethical practices.

Common communication barriers: Organizational communication consultants estimate that 10 percent of all business failures result from ineffective communication. Each year, thousands of hours are lost in the workplace because of repeated orders, misunderstandings, errors, and repetitive tasks. If left to chance, many messages will fail to do the job intended or, worse, backfire on the senders of the messages. Finnish business consultant Oslo Wilio shares this pessimistic outlook for business communication. If any thing go wrong, it will!” consider Wilio’s approach to communication and think about experiences of your own.

Many of the barriers that hamper effective communication today are discussed in the following sections.

Mismanaged information: Wilio’s law addresses the issue of information overload, or the problem of receiving too much information at one time. Poor-quality information also surfaces due to disorganized, erroneous, or misdirected messages. Communicators are often unaware that their information is of poor quality.

Inadequate communication skills: Poor communication skills result in material that is poorly organized, overwritten, and full of grammatical, stylistic, and spelling errors. Poor communication skills affect oral presentations as well. Inarticulate speakers make mistakes, lose their place, fail to use appropriate gestures, and speak in monotones. They have trouble putting their ideas into words. Poor listeners act information incorrectly. Communications with inadequate skills pose many problems for organizations.

Inadequate Feedback: Feedback is the response that a receiver of communication makes to the sender. Feedback is a critical component of the communication process. Only through feedback can communicators know that their messages were received and understood. A lack of feedback can be serious barrier to effective communication. A lack of feedback can occur for several reasons. Some communicators feel they do not have enough time to respond. At other times, feedback is withheld due to friction between the communicators. One person may fail to respond to a memo in retaliation for misdeed or mistake. A lack of feedback may cause the sender to communicate still another message, wasting valuable time.

Communication Anxiety: Individuals also experience anxiety and fear when faced with tasks such as conducting performance appraisal, leading task force groups, reprimanding employees, delegating tasks to subordinates, and making small talk with stranger at a business function.

The communication process: Communication is usually described as a flow of messages from a sender to receiver using a channel. Receivers may or may not respond with a message. At any point in the process, noise-anything that disrupts the process can occur and limit communication effectiveness.

Analysis: Careful analysis is necessary to transform ideas into messages. The time takes to analyze an opportunity to communicate can vary from fractions a second to years of deliberation.

Step 1: Information Management: Information management is the first step in the analysis stage. This helps to “get to the heart of the matter” rather quickly. Good communicators can separate meaningful information from superficial or supportive information.

Step 2: Critical Thinking: After you evaluate your information, you can engage critical thinking processes. Critical thinking is a process composed of several related operations. Thinking critically involves a creativity process designed to promote unique and complex problems and innovative ways of looking at issues or solving problems. Critical thinking also includes clarification and interpretation. The ability to clarify information, ideas, concepts, and issues is important to the communication process.

Step 3: Goal Setting: Goal setting is indispensable to communication. A goal represents what a communicator is attempting to accomplish. It is best to have specific objectives in mind when you formulate goals. Goals allow understanding, monitoring, and gauging the specific requirements of communication.

Developing Message: -

After your analysis is complete, you are ready to develop your message. Developing the right messages requires a five-step process: Decision making, context analysis, message design, media selection, and evaluation. Message development is the final step before you actually produce and send your messages to other communicators.

Analysis of message received: It involves two interrelated processes: interpretation and evaluation. When you interpret a message, you take the information that you have decoded and try to make sense of it. Next, you evaluate the message and place value on it. How you evaluate a message is determined, to a large extent, by the particular response that you as receiver will make to that message.