General Information

Why Communications Skills Are So Important? 

The purpose of communication is to get your message across to others clearly and unambiguously.
Doing this involves effort from both the sender of the message and the receiver. And it's a process that can be fraught with error, with messages often misinterpreted by the recipient. When this isn't detected, it can cause tremendous confusion, wasted effort and missed opportunity.
In fact, communication is only successful when both the sender and the receiver understand the same information as a result of the communication.

By successfully getting your message across, you convey your thoughts and ideas effectively. When not successful, the thoughts and ideas that you convey do not necessarily reflect your own, causing a communications breakdown and creating roadblocks that stand in the way of your goals – both personally and professionally.

10 tips to improve the way you speak English 

1. Observe the mouth movements of those who speak English well and try to imitate them. 
2. Until you learn the correct intonation and rhythm of English, slow your speech down.
3. Listen to the 'music' of English.
4. Use the dictionary. 
5. Make a list of frequently used words that you find difficult to pronounce and ask someone who speaks the language well to pronounce them for you.
6. Buy books on tape. 
7. Pronounce the ending of each word. 
8. Read aloud in English for 15-20 minutes every day.
9. Record your own voice and listen for pronunciation mistakes. 
10. Be patient.

Let's play 

 

 

 

Game 1        Game 2        Game 3     Game 4 

 

Game 5        Game 6        Game 7     Game 8

Grammar Tips  

Commas and semi-colons. If the rules you learned about commas and semi-colons don't mean much to you, forget them and try this: Read one of your sentences aloud and see where you would naturally pause, where you would draw a breath. If it's a short pause, like that just was, you probably need a comma. If it's a longer pause, but not quite a full stop (for which you'd need a period), you probably need a semi-colon; remember that whatever follows a semi-colon must be able to stand on its own, as a full sentence, like this one.

Check your dashes and hyphens. When you're setting off a clause—this one is a good example—use the longer dash, called an m-dash. (You can indicate this dash with two hyphens—like this—if you don't have an m-dash function on your computer.) Be sure that the parts of the sentence that precede and follow the dashes would make sense even if you removed the dashes and the words they bracket. (In the example above, the sentence is readable with or without the clause inside the dashes.) 

Try to avoid split infinitives. This is no longer a hard and fast rule, and occasionally keeping an infinitive together in a sentence can introduce more awkwardness than the split, but usually the split is ungraceful.

Make sure all your referents are clear. When you say "This theory" or "that point" or, simply, "it," is it clear which theory or point you're referring to? When you use "he" or "she" or "these critics," will your reader have to pause to figure out who all these people are?

What is Grammar? 

Grammar is the system of a language. People sometimes describe grammar as the "rules" of a language; but in fact no language has rules*. If we use the word "rules", we suggest that somebody created the rules first and then spoke the language, like a new game. But languages did not start like that. Languages started by people making sounds which evolved into words, phrases and sentences. No commonly-spoken language is fixed. All languages change over time. What we call "grammar" is simply a reflection of a language at a particular time. 

Laugh With English  

SILVIA: Dad, can you write in the dark?FATHER: I think so. What do you want me to write?SYLVIA: Your name on this report card

TEACHER: George, go to the map and find North America.GEORGE : Here it is!TEACHER: Correct. Now, class, who discovered America?CLASS : George  

TEACHER: Willy, name one important thing we have today that we didn’t have ten years ago.WILLY : Me!  

TEACHER: Why are you late?WEBSTER: Because of the sign.TEACHER: What sign?WEBSTER: The one that says, “School Ahead, Go Slow  

Improve Your Written English 

• Write frequently, in a wide range of formal and informal situations.
• Get the most out of your dictionary by understanding how to use it correctly . You can use a good English dictionary to find words, for meaning, for pronunciation, to check your spelling and to understand explanations.
• Copy out short passages of English text from newspapers, magazines or books.
• Try dictation exercises. You can do this online or get friends to read out text for you to write and then check your writing - concentrate on spelling and punctuation.
• There are many forums on the net, find one about your interests or hobbies. Observe the niceties of forum use , and apologise if you think you have made any mistakes.
• Use a blog to create a diary about your life. Write it in English and if you have a thick skin, ask for feedback. Remember blogs are not private, so do not write anything there which you do not want the whole world to read. I recommend http://www.blogger.com , it is free and very easy to use.
• Be careful about using abbreviations when writing on forums and in chatrooms, they are fun and quick, but can cause bad habits to form.
• If you are using a computer, use an English spell checker (but don't rely on it). There are spell checkers built in for Google and Firefox browsers.
• Check what you've written. Even better, get someone else to proofread what you've written. Check for spelling, capitalisation and punctuation.