COURSE HRD 2101: COMMUNICATION SKILLS

LECTURE NO. 2 TO ENGINEERING, AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES AND TECHNOLOGY STUDENTS, JKUAT

Given by Paul N. Njoroge

In my first Lecture, I promised to attempt an answer to the question, “What is communication?” with a view to giving a partial introduction to the enormous subject of communication. I still hope to give the first part of my Introductory Lectures on the subject of Communication—because one cannot possibly manage to give an adequate introduction in one lecture. But before I begin let me briefly revisit our review of what is actually taught in tertiary institutions of learning here and abroad. I think this is of great importance. It will help you appreciate the great relevance of this subject to your technical education. You will understand the importance given to communication studies in modern day post-secondary education.

The first thing one should note is that Communication Studies have as a target students of different disciplines. I have identified the following classes of disciplines.

1. SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL/TECHNICAL DISCIPLINES

Students of the major courses offered at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology would fall under this class of disciplines or courses of study. In institutions of higher learning elsewhere in the world Communications Studies targeted at this class of students carries an emphasis on what is called Scientific and Technical Communication. To understand what the concerns of this course are about let us consider the Scientific and Technical Communication course offered at Bowling Green State University in the State of Ohio in the United States. This University offers what is called a Master of Arts Degree in Scientific and Technical Communication. The course covers the following areas: (a) technical writing; (b) technical editing; and (c) research in technical writing. Visual communication and computer studies and programming are also introduced.

What is meant by technical writing and technical editing? In simple language, what is meant is putting in writing technical subjects either for a community of people involved in that technical area or for the benefit of lay persons interested in the subject. For example, the Internet is a technical subject. In the JKUAT library there is a wonderful book: Harley Hahn and Rick Stout, The Internet: Complete Reference (New York: Osborne McGraw-Hill, 1994). It is written in simple language, contains funny jokes, but enables the reader to access the internet and to advantageously use the computer. If you were a student of Horticulture and wrote a book on intensive cultivation of cabbages and peas, you would be involved in technical writing. Editing, of course, refers to the improvement of a piece of writing—changing words, simplifying and clarifying sentences—to make a piece of writing to communicate as effectively as possible with a given target reader or target audience.

2. BUSINESS/PROFESSIONAL DISCIPLINES AND COURSES

English skills—speaking and writing—are taught to people pursuing the career of secretary to help them write better letters, for example, or write better minutes of business meetings. Administrators may learn better report writing. Work-place success may be enhanced or increased by people taking communication and language courses. And not only middle-level employees (secretaries, administrators) want to take communication or English courses. Top level staff i.e. managers, in manufacturing (industry) trading or business and service firms and companies undergo communications skills training. They learn skills like:

·  techniques of public speaking;

·  writing clearly and concisely;

·  active and effective listening in order to creatively handle personnel problems.

In other words, communication effectiveness is seen as part and parcel of effectiveness as a manager. For a manager is concerned with bringing resources at his disposal—including personnel and workers with different skills and functions—together in order to achieve the objectives of his or her organization/firm. If the manager is the manager of production at Kenya Breweries his task is to ensure that all the equipment and ingredients are available and all technical workers are in place to produce enough good beers for the Kenyan and international markets!

So one very important area of Communication is Business Communication/ English.

I mentioned some of the professional bodies in Kenya offering Business English. I should also mention courses in this particular University’s Institute for Human Resources Development; Communication Business English is offered as a segment in the Bachelor of Business and Office Management degree course, as well as the Bachelor of Commerce and Business Administration course. And the British Council offers a Business Course which they advertise on the Internet as follows:

“Do you want to improve your business language skills? Our new Business Language course is a practical course for upper-intermediate students who wish to improve their language skills relevant to the workplace. Focusing on relevant international business situations it will help you enhance your competency in English and will teach the language necessary to succeed in business situations”.

In the UK, Business English is all the rage and is seen to contribute to good management of business, to the enhancement of all round productivity in the manufacturing and service industries, and indeed ultimately to the increase in national prosperity. If you read British books in Business Communication you will notice that they are not only concerned with language skills but dialogue skills between management, personnel at lower levels of a business organization and, indeed, trade unions and employee organizations.

For your general information, the following are British professional examining bodies awarding some kind of certificate in a course incorporating Business Communication:

1.  The Associated Examining Board (AEB) awards a certificate of Professional and Business Use of English Language.

2.  Association of Medical Secretaries awards a Diploma in Medical Reception.

3.  The London Chamber of Commerce awards: (a) Private Secretary’s Certificate; and (b) Private Secretary’s Diploma.

4.  The Pitman Examination Institute awards a certificate for Correspondence and Report Writing and English for Office Skills.

5.  The Royal Society of Arts awards: (a) Certificate in Road Passenger Transport; (b) Diploma for Personal Assistants; and (c) Royal Society of Arts certificates for English Language Stage II and stage III. For the award of (a) and (b) Language and Communication Skills are examined also.

6.  Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators gives certification to Chartered Public Secretaries (CPS).

7.  National Examinations Board in Supervisory Studies also awards a certificate in language studies.

8.  So does Civil Service Commission.

So highly rated is Business Education (with its Business Communication/Business English component) that there is in the UK a Business Education Council (BEC) to oversee its provision.

Why do I talk about this in some detail? Because there is some intersection between the concerns of technical communication and business communication. To begin with, both students pursuing technical subjects, like yourselves, and those pursuing business courses have to cover similar areas like writing correct sentences, writing compositions and summaries or making oral presentations about some subject. But there is also a fundamental intersection: business, technology and science are increasingly being mobilized in conjunction to further the purposes of enterprise, to increase resources, prosperity and profits. The student of science and technology today is the business man or woman of tomorrow, the entrepreneur of tomorrow who will be called upon to start science/technology based businesses which will increase productivity, increase availability of say, food, create employment for people, and generally alleviate poverty.

A good international example of business enterprise married to science and technology and to innovations in communication is Bill Gates, the billionaire owner of Microsoft Corporation which produces software for millions of computers worldwide.

3. COMMUNICATION AND ENGLISH IN THE HUMANITIES OR ARTS

Communication and English is also, of course, taught to students following Humanities/Arts courses. Here language and communication may actually be part and parcel of the student’s area of study. For example, a student of literature (fiction, poetry, and drama) will study language as the essential medium of these artistic expressions. (Just as a painter will have to study the use of charcoal, pencils for drawing sketches, paints and colours and brush work.) Again a student of the performance arts—theatre, cinema and video shows—will pay special attention to language communication and body communication. A dancer will study especially non-language body communication. A radio/television announcer will study proper language diction (that is style or manner of speaking) and oral delivery (including correct pronunciation and clarity of delivery). And a print-media journalist (newspaper reporter) will learn to write stories in simple direct language; he will have to write correctly working to strict deadlines.

The temptation may be to say, without giving it extra attention, that the concerns of Humanities/Arts students with regard to communication have little to do with the concerns of Science/Technology or Business Education students. But this is a risky and hasty conclusion. Consider a Holticulture agricultural extension officer talking to a group of farmers in Nyandarua about vegetable growing. Or a food-processing company manager giving a presentation on future plans to expand production to his Board of Directors. Aren’t these scientist and business people involved in some kind of ‘performance’ with kinship to theatre performance or radio-announcer roles?

The safest and most positive and rewarding approach is to see the concerns of all types of communication as relevant to you. Subject of course to limitations of study time and available resources, make it your concern to learn as much as possible about communication.

Just in case you want to develop into a communication nerd—that is American colloquial English for expert, for ‘being in’, as they say—apply to study at the university I mentioned in my first lecture, namely, the University of Southern Indiana. They have about 21 courses under Communication Studies, including Introduction to Public Speaking; Introduction to Interpersonal Communication; Introduction to Performance Studies (including things like oral rendering of poetry or drama); Business and Professional Speech; Organizational Communication (that is how communication is carried out in organizations bringing together different departments under whose umbrella many individuals work). And so on and so forth.

I hope I am not boring you with this Course review or pre-view. Keep this information on your file or in your portfolio. You may be surprised in the future when it comes in handy. For now I’ll say nothing more on this subject, but in a subsequent lecture I mean to say something about the Requirements Placed on Students at University Level—about attendance in class, about individual application and hard work, and about building great expectations, etc. But let us now begin talking seriously about communication.

WHAT IS COMMUNICATION?

The English word to ‘communicate’ derives from a borrowing from the Latin word communicare, meaning “to make common, to share, to impart, to transmit’’. Communication is, therefore, the exchange or sharing of meanings between individuals or between groups of people, using a common pool of symbols. Communication, as we shall show, is achieved through the use of a common system of symbols. A symbol, defined very generally and in a simplified way, is a sign that carries some meaning. For example, the beating of a drum at extended intervals among the Ibo people of South-Eastern Nigeria could mean the announcement of the death of a prominent person. Words themselves are symbols. People who speak the same language are able to share meanings as diverse as the expression of feelings in a statement like: “Take comfort, brother. We are with you in your hour of loss”, or in passing on practical information in a statement like: “Go to Kijabe Street in Nairobi and visit the Simlaw Seeds Company. Ask for hybrid maize seed, variety 513. Make sure you plant it in deeply dug soil. Plant two seeds in holes dug in rows one metre apart. Each hole should take a tablespoonful of DAP fertilizer.’’

According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica (Macropaedia, Knowledge in Depth, Vol. 16), a very good definition of communication was given by I. A. Richards as a scholar of literature. According to I. A. Richards:

Communication takes place when one mind so acts upon its environment that another mind is influenced, and in that other mind an experience occurs which is like the experience of the first mind, and is caused in part by that experience.

What Richards is actually saying is that communication is a meeting of minds. We can see what he means: when you read an exciting novel or a verse of the Biblical Psalms your very mind is stirred and affected. But one must comment that we are here speaking of aspects of the highest forms of human communication, the achievement of thousands of years of human development. I do think it is a good idea to go back further into the past in order to understand the phenomenon of communication more deeply and to see how communication has evolved.

Communication and the Ancestors of Man

An English writer of great imagination, H.G Wells, wrote a book entitled A Short History of the World. (He also wrote many other books including some we used to read, in simplified Abridged versions, in our youth: The Time Machine [about travelling into the past, millions of years back when monster dinosaurs were living] or The War of the Worlds, about an attack on England by creatures from Mars.) There is a very interesting claim in this fascinating book. The claim is that communication comes into the world with the evolution of warm-blooded mammals and birds. Archaeologists tell us that the first Mammals made their first appearance on earth 200 million years ago—having evolved from land-living reptilian life.

According to H. G. Wells a great revolution in animal mental life took place when Mammals replaced Reptiles as the lords of the earth. Let us hear Wells out:

With very few exceptions the reptile abandons its eggs to hatch alone. The young reptile has no knowledge whatever of its parents; its mental life, such as it is, begins and ends with its own experiences. It may tolerate the existence of its fellows, but it has no communication with them; it never imitates, never learns from them, is incapable of concerted action with them. Its life is that of an isolated individual. But with the suckling and cherishing of young which was distinctive of the new mammalian and avian strains arose the possibility of learning by imitation, of communication by warning cries and other concerted actions, of mutual control and instruction. A teachable type of life had come into the world.