Oral Communication Skills

We start communicating from the early days of our life; we do so by crying to let adults know that we are not satisfied or comfortable. We communicate in our everyday life, at school, at workplace and everywhere we interact with other people. As Buckey states, “[w]e listen to a book a day, we speak a book a week, read the equivalent of a book a month, and write the equivalent of a book a year” (qtd. in Emanuel 1). Hence, communication skills are fundamental for one’s personal, academic and professional achievement. We learn reading, writing and we learn speaking in elementary school, high school, and college. But are all these trainings sufficient? Based on the research done in twenty-three universities in the U.S, students and alumni stated

Besides school environments, people also need communication skills in social and everyday life in order to create and maintain interpersonal relationships. Kruse claims that people who have poor communication skills and lack the ability to express themselves are often perceived as less attractive, and as a result they have fewer friends (31). Moreover, Kruse adds that people who lack social and communication skills are often involved in violent and antisocial behaviors (34). Thus, a basic oral communication class would help people to create and maintain relationships and to resolve conflicts in a peaceful manner by being able to better communicate with the others. One of the main everyday-life benefits of communication skills is that people would have better chances to be happy in their marriages, as we mentioned in class that good communication keeps people together, happy and helps them reach and maintain a good marriage. Another social and everyday life benefit of a basic oral communication course would be that it helps people to better develop psychologically as they will be able to communicate more efficiently with others and as a result learn more for themselves. As Morreale states, “[i]n psychological terms, achieving self-actualization involves communication activities such as making contributions in groups, exerting influence over others, and using

After going through school a graduate student enters the world of adulthood and starts his/her own career. Yet communication will continue to be an essential skill that an adult must have, because almost every job out there has communication skills listed as one of the requirements. According to Gropello, employers list communication skills as one of the most important skill that a potential candidate should have (43). Moreover, Ellis supports that, labor market analysis show that one of the main skills required in the growing careers is communication skills (18). Besides satisfying the requirements for a job, communication skills will also serve students in their interviews and presentations. For example, when a graduate student wants to find a job, s/he will apply in several openings and some of those companies may call him/her for an interview. If that student is able to articulate well and be more convincing, that student will have a better chance of getting hired. As a result, we can understand that communication skills are essential and valuable in finding and maintaining a job. Thus, universities should focus on preparing their students and help them improve their communication skills. As Rubin states that, employers expect college students to be able to communicate verbally and non-verbally, to write and listen actively and to be able