10 Effective Communication Skills

University courses will be a different experience than high school. You will need to really concentrate in the classes as they are long. If you just think of them as boring, this can lead to your not focusing and missing the class material.

Active Listening to Learn

Active listening skills can give some tips on how to focus in class and not fall asleep. This leads to less stress around exams time and helps you to along with so well in your exams. Active Listening is hearing – with understanding – the intended ideas, information, and suggestions of others. Active listeners pay attention to verbal and non-verbal messages. The challenge is to listen closely (and set aside your own assumptions, biases, judgments, and emotions). Then to ask questions to get more information. You can use these techniques.

Paraphrasing

Paraphrasing is restating the content of a message in your own words. Typically, it does not include feelings. This gives the speaker an opportunity to consider what they are saying and to refine it if they like. When you get it right, the other person will communicate in some way that they feel understood. When you paraphrase what you have heard into your own words, you show your present understanding and thus enable the other person to add any clarification to the understanding or misunderstanding you have.

Clarifying

The desired outcome is a clear understanding between people. Clarifying is thinking about on the broader context of what you understand the speaker to be saying and often comes in the form of a question. You can request the other to clarify by asking, “What do you mean by…?” “Can you tell me more about…?” This gives the speaker an opportunity to fill in any missing pieces to the conversation. Clarifying is also checking understanding of a message by asking to hear it again. This encourages both of you to consider the meaning and impact of words or actions. Use clarifying when you want to understand what is being communicated in context.

Probing

Probing is a subset of clarifying. Probing is used to prompt a speaker to give more information or to explore a situation that is not clear to you as the listener. It creates a request to become more specific in situations that are often of an important, complex, sensitive, or problematic in nature.

Cautions

Regardless of which of the techniques you choose to use, you will need to listen not only for the words, but also for the feelings behind them. To truly comprehend the message a person is sending, you must try to understand the other person’s frame of reference, even if you do not agree with it. Using this strategy is an important first step in creating understanding with others.