Oral Communication Skills

• Oral communication encompasses strategies to express ideas and opinions coherently and assertively.
• Being prepared for public speaking is increasingly crucial.
• Communication skills are an added value that should be constantly developed.

The Fear of Public Speaking

• Most people fear public speaking due to reasons like fear of failure, anxiety, ignorance of the topic, negative reactions from the audience, and fear of losing prestige.
• This fear is largely irrational.

Skills for Oral Communication

• It relies on innate and learned capabilities.
• A skill is a disposition showing an individual's capacity to perform tasks or solve problems in specific areas, relying on perception of external stimuli and active response.
• Achieving communication competence requires developing the ability to adapt to varied situations and act in a way approved by others and oneself.

Skills you are born with:

• Physical build and harmony
• Sympathy.
• Sonorous voice

Skills you can learn:

• Expressing gestures
• Direction of looks/eye contact
• Fluency when you speak

The V-V-V Formula

• Effective communication involves 3 elements: visuals, vocals, and verbals.
• Visual elements relate to the physical image perceived by others during communication, like gestures, posture, and appearance.

The importance of visual elements

• Visual elements are personal physical factors and are stimuli sent to the audience, creating a favorable impact on communication

Vocal elements refer to voice modulations

• Vocal elements include intonation and rhythm
• Voice tone and quality can determine a communicator's effectiveness and credibility.
• To improve voice quality, it is important to follow expert recommendations

Improving your voice

• Voice functions in relation to the message
• The vocal characteristics add significance to spoken words.
• Verbal elements include all words and linguistic methods used in speaking from structuring ideas to language choice and content.

Importance of consistency

• Ensure a desired communication effect by maintaining consistency and balance between visual, vocal, and verbal elements.
• Emotions in the voice should align with body language and facial expressions, ensuring congruency between the message and delivery

Key Elements of Communications

• Visual elements make up 55% of communication
• Vocal factors contribute to 38%
• Verbal content accounts for 7%

Non-Verbal Communication Skills

• Non-verbal communication transmits meaning through body movements, voice, objects, time, and distance, excluding spoken words.
• Related auxillary sciences or disciplines consist of: kinesics, proxemics, artefactual communication, and paralinguistics.

Kinesics

• Kinesics studies body language, including eye contact, posture, movements, gestures, and facial expressions.

Significance of eye contact

• Eye contact is direct connection with someone while speaking or listening and signifies engagement as verbal messages are being processed.

Errors in Eye Contact to Avoid

• Focusing visual contact on one spot.
• Letting the eye wander
• Blinking slowly
• Looking at cameras instead of people
• Maintaining minimal eye contact for under 5 seconds.

Importance of good posture

• Posture refers to the physical position of the body.
• Adopted postures relate to mental states.

Recommendations for posture and movements

• Stand straight with naturalness.
• Pay attention to your lower half of your body
• Ensure no exaggerated movements are made
• Ensure meaning and congruence to your movements
• Use your own signature style of movement
• Observe how you move

Actions to make with gestures and facial expressions

• Facial expressions should show enthusiasm, naturalness, and spontaneity.
• Have vitality and show energy
• Gestures should not come off too nervous. Gestures should be sincere

Types of personal space for interactions

• Intimate distance: Extreme closeness and physical touch.
• Personal distance: Occurs between family, friends, and companions.
• Social distance: Allows certain privacy in public spaces. Public distance: Limited by the capacity of the communicator's voice.

Paraliguistics

• Paraliguistics studies the sound characteristics of the voice volume, intonation, speed, rhythm and stress
• Vocal elements are crucial in developing strong voice skills for oral communication.

Voice is for more than just speaking

• Voice also helps denote our personality, which is important when we speak in the world
• Voice helps communicate sentiments, attitudes and emotion
• To transport messages
• To generate images
• To express ourselves

Characteristics of the voice for speaking properly.

• Speech articulates with sounds to serve as building blocks for different vocally individual attributes generated through the speaking mechanism.
• Correct pronounciation requires: Tone, volume, speed, pause, emphasis.

Verbal Communication Skills

• Verbal communication skills originate from thinking to ideate, choose, and organize language for meaningful, coherent messages.
• Key Components: Effective communication has preparation, knowledge, intelligence, and conviction.

Key Features of Effective Communication

Preparation: Investigate, observe, read. Knowledge: Investigate evidence; interpret Intelligence: Serves to understanding of matters and problems. Conviction: Believe in what you are going to say to convince the other personal or audice

Communication quote to remember

• "The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said." Peter Drucker

Explore oral communication strategies for expressing ideas assertively. Understand the common fears associated with public speaking and learn to overcome them. Discover the innate and learned skills necessary for effective communication and achieving competence in varied situations.