English Communication Guide

Communication is more important compared to your technical skills. Most companies give importance to how you approach a problem or how you present your ideas rather than how much you know.

Developing better communication is a process. This can be achieved through understanding what you know and what you should know. If you have a better understanding of how to improve your communication skills, it is possible to achieve this in three months of time. Am I joking? No. Then why are there so many people with Masters' Degree without communication skills? It could be due to either one of the following three reasons:

• They didn´t give importance to communication development.
• They might have thought that it is difficult to practice unless they get a chance to talk to some one in English or they might be shy to speak in English.
• They do not know the process of developing communication skills.

It is simple, when you are able to succeed in around 30 technical papers for your undergraduate degree, just think that developing communication is another paper for you to pass. Technical papers will help you to get the Degree, but this paper will help you to get a better job and a better life.

• Get any simple spoken English book.
• If possible, try to attend a spoken English class. Sometimes spoken English classes are conducted with money motives, like any other tuition class.

If you know of any professor/school teacher who takes such classes, it is advisable to attend them rather than taking classes from nonprofessionals. I personally know some people will make things complicated by teaching advanced English grammar/vocabulary on the first day.

If you decide to attend spoken English class, choose the right person and pay the fees for one month to try whether they teach well. If not, don´t hesitate to change the person. If you continue with that person, you may lose your self-confidence.

Understand simple grammar (usage of present tense, past tense, future tense, usage of small and simple sentences). Don´t think about adopting any accent like US accent/UK accent. Truly speaking, you don´t need any accent. If you can speak without any accent, people can understand. Americans don´t expect us to speak in their accent. Instead of talking in their accent, you can try to understand their accent. That will be enough. Many Indians try to change their accent and it finally becomes artificial and forced, while they lose their natural accent.

Spend some time to read English newspapers (`The Hindu´ is a good option). If you prefer to read English novels, you can choose that too. While choosing novels, try to go through it quickly before deciding to buy. This is because some novels again have more uncommon usage of words and grammar, which may not really serve your purpose.

Try to understand sentence constructions and usage of words. Observe people who speak English well. Take note of new sentences that you may come across everyday and try to use them yourself a couple of times. It is a better idea to collect those small sentences and review them periodically (weekly/ monthly).

Maintain a notebook to record all the new words/sentences that you come across. Recall these words/sentences on a weekly/monthly basis until they get stored in your memory.

Even people who know correct grammar and possess a good vocabulary are not able to speak well most of the time. This is because they may not be able to effectively combine their knowledge of grammar and vocabulary to form correct sentences. For this, practice is essential. One way to practice is, for example, to try to start thinking in English, instead of your mother tongue or native regional language. For example,try to think in English those sentences that you observe in your life, such as, "I am reading", "My mother is preparing breakfast", "The tree is very green", "My friend Ragu is coming at 8 o' clock to play cricket etc". Whatever you see and think, try to convert them into English sentences and speak out. Speaking out is important. Because if you haven't spoken and are not familiar with a sentence, using it for the first time with friends or in a public gathering will inhibit you from talking.

Try to watch English movies. We will not suggest that you watch any Indian English news channels, as some of them may make your communication complicated. If you don´t understand their speech, don´t worry, keep listening.

Schedule your time to spend at least 1 hour a day for developing your communication. (For example, focus on grammar - 5 words a day, simple sentence formation, etc.).

Take a conversation topic and write the conversation on the paper and correct the grammar mistakes and read it yourself.

Take a conversation topic and speak loudly in front of the mirror. Don´t hesitate about what others may think.

People who learn English with Tamil or any other language as mother tongue:

The following process takes place when you speak English.

Translation of thoughts from mother tongue to English

• Think the sentence in your mother tongue
• Pick the corresponding English words
• Identify the grammar (present/past etc)
• Form the sentence (arranging the words, subject, verb etc.)
• Deliver with proper pronunciation