Consider a firefighter. His job is to fight fires. Yet, the firefighter who hears a screaming voice in the midst of the fire, yet chooses to carry out his job of putting out the fire, has by default failed. Why? Because even though the role of the firefighter is to put out fires, his most fundamental purpose is to save lives. By ignoring the call to save a life, he is shown to have lost sight of the fundamental purpose of his job.
We can draw a parallel to communication. The most fundamental purpose of communication is to inform, to educate and to enlighten. People communicate so that their ideas and thoughts can be understood. Many think that professional communication involves using complex words which will awe the listener, and to somehow subconsciously convey the impression that one is competent (in whatever he does). This is not a problem, unless it comes to the point when his words prove to be so complex that they confound. In that situation, he has already made the mistake of putting out the fire at the expense of saving lives.
To me, effective communication is a necessity because my bread and butter depends on communication. As a to-be teacher, I see an evolving role of teachers. A competent teacher now no longer solely imparts knowledge. That's Wikipedia's job. He also has to impart the love of learning, and the only way that he is able to do so is through effective communication. To let the students know what is interesting about the topic they are learning, and to be able to illustrate complicated concepts in a simple way that they can understand and will therefore be interested in. This ES2007S curriculum which includes peer teaching, learning of 7Cs, interpersonal skills, communication skills will surely enhance and upgrade my abilities as a communicator, and ultimately, as a teacher. I hope that through the course, I will not lose sight of the initial reasons in which I have chosen ES2007S, but be fixated on the lives that are in the midst of the fire.
Of the 7Cs, I would say of this post that there is some room for improvement in the "Concreteness" aspect as the firefighter analogy is a little abstract and seems to digress somewhat. I like how it is linked back with the topic of why effective communication skills are important in the second and third paragraphs though.
ReplyDeleteEdwin discussed the relevance of effective communication skills to his personal life in the last paragraph. However, as the post is only three paragraphs long, and considering that that was supposed to be the main subject of this post, it would have been better if he had done so sooner and written more on it. By convention, the introduction usually should be done in one paragraph, not two. I would have recommended that the first and second paragraphs of his post be summarised into a single paragraph and the third paragraph expanded on and turned into two paragraphs.
haha do you really want to get 'E' for this module?
ReplyDeleteI like your firefighter analogy. Especially since I used to work along side them. One day I'll share with you how they really work. Maybe you'll have to rework your analogy...
But I get the idea though, and I completely agree. Communication is a means to achieve an end; Oftentimes it is not a person's job to communicate effectively, rather a person has to communicate effectively in order to do his job.
Especially so for a teacher I suppose. Although I would say it would be equally important that a student also understands that he or she is there to learn and not to solely to get a good grade. Many people, myself included, sometimes forgets that.
And thats probably why many of us gets burnt!
This is an interesting post, Edwin, in that you start with the firefighter analogy. The problem for me is that I'm not quite sure how well it works for furthering your discussion. For starters, that's mainly an issue of logic, I think. You are making an assumption that the firefighter would go on "fighting the fire" and ignore the screaming voice, but would that ever happen really? I doubt it. So there seems to be a slip here in what you are asserting, and that makes me question the legitimacy of your position and it puts into question the parallel with effective communication.
ReplyDeleteI tend to agree with Isaac. I like it better when you get right into the importance of effective communication for a teacher. That might have been a better way to explore this topic. In any case, I appreciate your effort and look forward to reading future posts.
Hi Edwin. It's really fun growing & maturing as teachers-to-be together in NUS. I am glad that we got to pick the right course and same tutorial. Now, let's get back to topic.
ReplyDeleteI am presently surprised by the ‘fireman’ analogy. The analogy really presented the mental picture of a teacher who just wants to rush through the syllabus and ignoring the needs of the students. That is the worst kind of teacher that a school can have as teachers are much more than book, notes or slides readers. I believe that a having a constant reminder on the essence of communication, like the 7 Cs, would help a teacher to better engage the students.
However, I think that the problem of a ‘deaf firefighter’ type of teacher is more than the matter of ineffective communication. I believe that the success of delivery depend very much on the state of the heart of the teacher. Things such as mood, career prospects, priority of the class and the self-conceived goals of education of the individual teacher would affect the quality of the teaching. A good handling of communication will help to bring out the passion of the teacher and help students to be engaged. Therefore, the success factors towards great teaching will include both effective communication and a heart with passion.
Hi Edwin, I like the use of analogies because it can first spur interest in the topic.
ReplyDeleteOnce, I had this church leader who was a very charismatic leader. It was not surprising that he was a lawyer in the corporate world. I have talked to him once and asked him how he does public speaking so well. He told me that it is all about varying anecdotes and actual substance within the presentations. Everytime you feel the audience drifting off, you will have to tell a joke or give an anecdote which they can relate to. That said, of course the joke/anecdote will have to be relevant to the topic. Another thing that we have to take note is that you can't have too many points. Humans can usually only remember 4 to 5 main points. So i guess these can be points to note about public speaking.
Hi everyone! Thank you so much for your comments! And thank you Jon for your invisible comment! haha.. Dun worry, even though it doesn't appear here, I can see your comments in my email inbox.
ReplyDeleteI indeed have much to learn about the 7Cs, and hopefully, by the end of the course, I'd be able to write something which can communicate at a different level from now. Of course, I'd start with working on Concreteness, which many of you have pointed out. =) Well, off to my next post. Again, thanks everyone, for the encouraging and critical comments!
Hi Ediwn =). As I was reading your post, I found that your point about how some people think that good communication requires the use of complex words, to be quite poignant. I remember one of the videos which I saw during a module called SP1202 "Communicating with the Academy", which featured a professor commenting that Singaporean students think that by using very complicated English, their reports would be considered to be of a high quality. However, he stated that that was incorrect as good communication can be achieved by using simple and clear English. Hence, I can see that one of the 7Cs of communication, clarity, is illustrated in your post here. Without being clear, even the best argument is useless.
ReplyDeleteP.S this was my invisible comment which did not appear when i first put it up. Chrome seems to have a problem with blogspot><.
You mentioned people have the mentality that using bombastic words will impress the listener. I can relate my experience in secondary school when I was taught to use uncommon and bombastic words. I agree that while the aim is not wrong (to improve one’s vocabulary), it may end up confusing people when the purpose of communication is to convey our ideas to others. We will have to be aware of what kind of words to use and when to use them.
ReplyDeleteThere is an incomplete idea, it seems. “To let the students know what is interesting about the topic they are learning, and to be able to illustrate complicated concepts in a simple way that they can understand and will therefore be interested in”. Perhaps you can phrase it as “effective communication is important in letting students know...” Moreover, the words “enhance” and “upgrade” mean the same. One of them would suffice.
Overall, I enjoyed reading the paragraph about your role as a teacher and how communication is essential to you in playing your role. Your analogy is also very creative.
Cheers!
Looking at the fireman example mentioned, I would be very surprised if such a fireman actually exist. I believe such a fireman would never graduate from his training. Like what you mentioned, the purpose of putting out the fire is to save the people whose lives are being threatened by the fire. So, by ignoring the screams while putting out the fire, it defeats the purpose. I would not want my life to depend on such a fireman.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, in the aspect of communication, we should not learn professional communication just for the sake of showing off to our future employer and colleagues, but rather, to convey our messages to other people more effectively.