Communication Barrier For Communicate And Convey Information

Discussion

Discuss about the Communication Barrier for Communicate and Convey Information.

Communication barrier hinders a person from acquiring and understanding the messages people use to communicate and convey information, opinions, and thoughts. These barriers may be related to the message, thought process of the receiver, feelings, and external obstacles. Students often face communication barriers in their life. There can be barriers regarding class teachers whose lectures are not being followed by the students. The restrictions can also prevent the students from having a fair conversation with their classmates. These situations often lead to frustration, inaction, misinterpretation, lack of knowledge, bad relationships in the classroom, etc. This in turn affects the concerned students’ personal lives. This creates a mentally unhealthy environment for the students. The future of these students becomes dark because of communication barriers. The reasons generating these barriers can be psychological or physical. There can be various other factors creating communication barriers which are discussed later.

Individuals are unique because of their “idiosyncrasies.” This is mainly because of differences in experiences, education, value, and personality. Intrapersonal barriers are caused when same information is conveyed in different ways as the thought process varies from person to person. These are a person’s inbuilt barriers. The causes behind this kind of barrier are incorrect assumptions, mixed judgments, differing background, false reasoning, and categorical logic (Weger Jr, 2014).

Some of these reasons can be clubbed together, and they are named “interpersonal barriers.” It occurs due to the improper transaction of words between two or more students.  Inefficiency in communication skills creates this kind of barrier. The reasons for this sort of barrier are restricted vocabulary, emotional outbreaks, communication selectivity, weak listening skills, noise, and cultural differences (Zanola, 2013).

“Semantic barriers” aka language barriers are those kinds of barriers which foreign exchange students often face. It can be divided into subparts like, lack of common language, poor vocabulary, poor knowledge of grammar and punctuations. Without a common language between two students or a group trying to communicate, a communication cannot happen. Lack of proper vocabulary often leads to fumbling and not being able to create a proper message. With adequate vocabulary a student also needs to know the grammar and punctuations of the language, otherwise his message will not make a sense (Conrad, & Newberry, 2012).

The first barrier a student faces is “physical barrier.” Physical barriers are those ones which already exist in the environment of the concerned place. This type of barrier can be divided further into sub-parts such as, “noise, time and distance, and defective communication process.” Noise acts as a barrier while a student communicates in the classroom or outside the classroom. Time and distance acts as barriers when the two persons intended to have a communication have a considerable distance between them and both of their allotted time for the conversation is not matching.  When two persons trying to communicate, use a defective mode of communication, it acts as a barrier (Shrivastava, 2012).  

Minimizing Communication Barriers Among Students

Another type of barrier is called “psychological barrier.” It includes attitude, emotions, sentiment and moods of people. A same message can be interpreted differently when the two students engaged in a conversation are emotionally not connected. Lack of self confidence is another form of psychological barrier. Distrust between the sender and the receiver often creates lack of self confidence in the student who is acting as a sender.  Often students do not convey their messages formally due to lack of responsibility or some other factors. “Selective perception” is another form of psychological barrier, where a student only listens to that part of the communication which attracts her instead of the whole communication (Bhatia, & Bremner, 2012).

The result of communication barrier on a student is crucial as his whole life is waiting for him. These barriers make a student weak to face future challenges in life by lowering his confidence level. Social skills of a person develop in his or her early years, which is the same time the person is a student. Due to the communication barrier a potential student can lose a bright future. A student’s life, which is facing communication barrier thus gets complicated both at the present and the future.  This will later affect his job life and personal life in a negative way. It causes a lot of trouble and conflict in the class environment creating low morale and cohesion, less classroom productivity ad bad behavior. Frustration may be developed among the students due to these barriers. Without open and effective communication students may feel left out causing bad feelings which make students become irresponsible in future (Onuoha, Ferdinand, & Onuoha, 2015).  

These reasons show the necessity of minimizing communication barrier among the students. The key roles can be played by the teachers, parents, and classmates to reduce the communication barrier. The teachers have to be vocal in their classes to bring out the problems that create communication barriers. The teacher has to teach the students about communication barrier and its harmful effects on students’ life (Barker, Hibbins, & Woods, 2013). The weightage of the matter has to be discussed in the classroom. They also have to communicate with the parents of the students who are being affected by the barriers. The parents have to boost up the students’ morale which will in turn have a positive effect in his future. The classmates also play a crucial part in a student’s life. Their empathy towards their classmates will help the concerned students to get out of the communication barrier. Empathy is one’s ability to be careful about other person’s feelings and looking from that person’s point of view. According to some behavioral researcher, showing empathy works better than showing sympathy. Putting oneself in other person’s shoes develops emotional intelligence (Eunson, 2012).

Things to Remember While Communicating

Analysis of audience is also another measure that can be taken to reduce communication barriers among students. If a student is aware of the audience he can manage to avoid saying something which an hurt the feeling of another student. Determining the communication tactics needs the understanding and being respectful to others’ religion, political beliefs and being supportive about others’ physical and semantic barriers. In case of semantic barriers, repetition of the messages in the communication often yields positive results by minimizing communication barriers. Students have to be taught about producing effective delivery system of a message in a communication (Levy, 2015).  

Studying the dynamics of a group before speaking will help the students. Getting feedback from the receiver if possible will help the students to go beyond the barriers they face while communicating. While communicating individually with a person a student should have the communication face to face. This will allow the student to see other person’s body language and it will work as feedbacks. Using a language which can be understood by the majority of a group or an individual who is at the receiver end of the communication will yield less communication barriers (Sharma, 2015). Communication channel and integrity of the speaker also affect the communication quality. Students should know that having an easy communication style will help them to convey a message with ease. The teachers and the parents have to create group projects which will bring the students close. Being in a group helps a student to understand the dynamics of groups and it will teach him social skills. Proper media selection, elimination of noise levels, active listening exercises are other options for creating a communication friendly environment (Dogan, 2016).   

Other things one has to remember while communicating are clear idea about the subject of the communication; communicate according to the receivers need, being aware of the tone and content of the message, consistency of the message being conveyed, following up communications, etc. Having a clear idea of the content will lead to a fluent and smooth communication. If the student speaking keeps in mind the need of the receiver he can manage undivided attention from the receiver. An improper tone can throw off a listener from the conversation, thus it has to be kept under control (Langacker, Oxoford, & Oxford, 2014).

Conclusion:

A student can face many problems regarding having a communication, some of which are already present in the society, some comes with time. Teachers, parents, and classmates initiatives can save that student from a frustrating experience. There are many reasons because of which a communication barrier can grow. One has to identify the reasons present and use communication barrier minimizing methods to get out of the situation, otherwise this might lead to distressful life for the student. The four primary barriers a student can face are intrapersonal, interpersonal, semantic and physical. These barriers can be again divided into many sub parts. A student has to be aware of all these in order to avoid communication barrier.

References:

Barker, M. C., Hibbins, R. T., & Woods, P. R. (2013). Bringing forth the graduate as a global citizen: an exploratory study study of masters-level business students in Australia.

Bhatia, V. K., & Bremner, S. (2012). English for business communication. Language Teaching, 45(04), 410-445.

Conrad, D., & Newberry, R. (2012). Identification and instruction of important business communication skills for graduate business education. Journal of Education for Business, 87(2), 112-120.

Dogan, S. (2016). The Analysis of Classroom Teachers’ Application Frequency of Twelve Communication Barriers. ANTHROPOLOGIST, 23(1-2), 280-290.

Eunson, B. (2012). Communicating in the 21st Century, Google eBook. John Wiley & Sons.

Langacker, R. W., Oxoford, U. K., & Oxford, U. P. (2014). Burgoon, JK, Berger, CR, & Waldron, VR (2000). Mindfulness and Interpersonal Communication. Journal of Social Issues, 56, 105-127. Croft, W., & Cruse, AD (2004). Cognitive linguistics. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press. DeVito, JA (1994). Human communication: the basic course

Levy, J. C. (2015). Adaptive Learning and the Human Condition. Routledge.

Onuoha, C. A., Ferdinand, D. A., & Onuoha, P. C. (2015). Evaluation of a government ICT programme for secondary schools: A case study of teachers’ perception of Caribbean Boys’ High School.  

Sharma, P. R. (2015). Organizational Communication: Perceptions of Staff Members’ Level of Communication Satisfaction and Job Satisfaction.

Shrivastava, S. (2012). Identifying the major components of business communication and their relevance: A conceptual framework. IUP Journal of Soft Skills, 6(4), 51.

Weger Jr, 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.  

Zanola, A. (2013). Public speaking and workplace skills. A new domain for global business communication.