COMMUNICATION AND COMMUNICATION PROCESS

WHAT IS COMMUNICATION?

 Communication takes an important role in our daily activities. Right from our
waking hours until the end of the day, we communicate in different ways such as
talking, smiling, teaching, and all forms of socializing happening at home, school,
society-wide, and even in intercultural aspect.

 Communication is a process in which channels, contexts, media, and cultures

are used in transcending messages or information from one person to another.

 According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, it is the act of passing or

sharing of information from one person to another.

 According to Groenbeck, it is defined as the glue that holds together societies;

the witness part of the Latin term cum-munis (to work publicly together with).

 According to Denis McQuuail, communication is the sending of meaningful

messages from one person to another. It is the primary means by which people
obtain and exchange information through words, voice, signals and gestures,
and emotions.

WHAT IS THE NATURE OF COMMUNICATION?

 It is a process. It highlights the not just sending the message, but also the
receiving manner.

 It takes place between two or more people. Communication process always

involves the speaker and the sender of the message whether the feedback is
presented or not.

 It can be presented through words, actions (non-verbal), or both at the same

time.

THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS

Think of yourself playing baseball and talking to your friend during leisure time. What do
you think are their commonalities? As you can notice, you cannot play baseball alone,
you need to communicate while playing in order to reach the goal. While, simply
talking to your friend portrays already the process of communication.
 The common thing about baseball and communicating is that they both use elements.
Those elements work together in processes (1) for the game, to reach the goal and (2)
for the communication, to create and exchange meaningful messages.

In the word “process,” there lies a series of patterns or steps conducted to attain an
objective of a certain activity. Once you understand how the process in
communication works, you will be able to control some powerful tools in conveying
your thoughts or ideas. It can help you redefine your communication choices to
achieve particular results. With the help of all these, it may help you to discover and
develop more the skills necessary to become a competent communicator.

The process of communication refers to how the sender of the message transmits
or pass his/her message towards the receiver through the use of channel (medium of
communication). It is called as a process because it has a cyclic feature that begins
with the sender to its receiver and goes back to the sender in a form of feedback.

Since the process of communication refers to a cyclic manner, it only means that
communication must in a continuous and dynamic interaction between the sender
and the receiver of the message. This also features certain steps in which once
followed, an effective communication will take place.

The following is a brief analysis of the important steps of the process of

communication:
 The best example situation to represent the process communication is as follows:

REMEMBER

Communication is very vital to our everyday lives. It involves more than just a spoken
word. Every single physical feature, stance, and action that a person has speaks
volume of messages about who he or she is. Just like the interaction between people,
the message usually conveys more meaning than the actual words. It is only through
communication where we get to share thoughts, impart information, persuade others
about beliefs, and show love and affection.

COMMUNICATION MODELS

What is a Communication Model?

Communication Model…

 describes what is necessary for an act of communication to take place. It

represents the major features and eliminates the unnecessary details of
communication.
  helps a person to understand how the communication process works and helps
to expand the understanding of an effective communication.

1. Aristotle’s Communication Model

One of the earliest recorded models is attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher
Aristotle (351 BC). For Aristotle who taught that ‘politics is the highest form of public
service’, he called the study of communication “rhetoric” and spoke of three basic
elements of oral communication within the process.

In Aristotle’s communication model, there exists a sender (speaker) who delivers a

message to a receiver (listener). As a verbal activity, the sender tries to convince the
listener, thus reaching their own goal, and this is achieved by using a tactical construct
of an argument and presentation of speech.

2. Lasswell’s Communication Model

In 1948, Harold Dwight Lasswell, a social scientist designed a communication

exchanges type mixing the four (4) main elements of communication exchanges in a
linear pattern.

Lasswell focuses on the oral message emphasizing the terms such as speaker, message
and audience, even though he uses different terminology and sees also
communication as a unidirectional process in which the individual influences the others
with his/her message.

The point in Lasswell’s idea is that there must be an “effect” if communication takes
place, otherwise, communication breakdown happens. If we have communicated,
we’ve “motivated” or produced an effect.

What distinguishes Lasswell from Aristotle?

 He offers a wider definition of the channel by including mass media.

 He expands the view of the target or effect of the process of communication in

general.

 He suggests diverse results or effects of communication.

 He expands the function of “convincing” by adding “informing, entertaining,

rousing, irritating.”

3. Shannon and Weaver’s Communication Model

Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver produced a new mathematical theory

regarding conversation in 1949. About a year after Lasswell’s presentation of his point of
view, Shannon put out results in the area of signal transfer. Shannon and Weaver tried
to do two things:
  Reduce the communication process to a set of mathematical formulas; and

 Discuss problems that could be handled with the model.

The model introduces three elements not found in Aristotle’s model: a transmitter, a
receiver and sources of noise. The “noise” concept introduced by Shannon and
Weaver can be used to illustrate “semantic noise” that interferes with communication.
Semantic noise is the problem connected with differences in meaning that people
assign to words, to voice inflections in speech, to gestures and expressions and to other
similar “noise” in writing.

Their concept tried to highlight an awareness that there is semantic noise in face-to-
face verbal communication.

4. Schramm’s Communication Model

Wilbur Schramm (1954), the well-known communication theorist, designed an

easy device communication model. In his model he notes, that communication always
requires three elements – the source, the message and the destination. Ideally, the
source encodes a message and transmits it to its destination via some channel, where
the message is received and decoded.

Schramm highlighted that for understanding to take place between the source and the
destination, they must have something in common. One contribution Schramm made
was to consider the fields of experience of the sender and the receiver. The sender
encodes the message based upon the sender’s field of experience. The user’s field of
experience guides the decoding. If there is no commonality in the sender’s and
receiver’s field of experience, then communication does not take place, thus,
communication breakdown occurs.

Schramm is also concerned on the importance of feedback, which he sees as an

effective means to solve the disturbance problem. The sender and receiver must be
cautious of the feedback to modify the message according to what they observe or
hear from the other side.

5. Berlo’s S-M-C-R Communication Model

David Berlo developed a model named S-M-C-R model of communication in 1960.

Rather than attempting to identify elements of interest, and relationships between those
elements, he created what he called “a model of the ingredients of communication.”

The elements of Berlo’s model are discussed below:

Source: All communication must come from some sources. These sources actively
exchange messages to achieve the maximum form of communication.
Message: these are the information, views of thoughts to be sent by the source. The
source must choose the code or the language foe sending the message.

Channel: This is the method through which the messages will be transmitted.

Receiver: This is the final element in the communication process. The receiver is the
audience of the message.

Remember:

Communication is imperfect. Like an iceberg, 10% of what we say is above the surface
while the 90% is below the surface. Failure to grasp the meaning beneath the words
results in lack of communication.

ELEMENTS OF COMMUNICATION AND VERBAL AND

NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION

Elements of Communication

Communication is a systematic process in which individuals interact with and through

symbols to create or interpret meanings (Wood as cited Padilla et al., 2016). Just like
any other processes, communication is made up several components. Knowing how all
these elements works will lead you to greater understanding of the process of
communication.

SPEAKER – it is the source of information or message – be it encoded in words (verbal)

and/or without words (non-verbal).

MESSAGE – it is any information, ideas, or thoughts that the speaker or sender wants to
convey. It refers to either verbal or non-verbal content of the message that must be
encoded by the sender and decoded by the receiver.

Encoding - it is the process of converting the message into words, actions, or other
forms that the speaker understands. This process involves assembling of the message in
a manner that the receiver can comprehend.

Decoding – it is the process of interpreting the encoded message of the speaker by the
receiver. The receiever must be knowledgeable enough on how to find meaning of the
sender’s message.
CHANNEL – it is the medium by which the message is being delivered by the speaker to
its receiver. It serves as the means in conveying the encoded message such as personal
or non-personal, verbal or non-verbal means.

RECEIVER – it is the recipient of the message. It is responsible for decoding the message
being sent by the speaker.

FEEDBACK – it is the receiver’s reactions, responses, or information on the decoded

message. It confirms whether there is mutual undertanding between the speaker and
the receiver based on the message being conveyed. Through feedback, the sender
can adjust the communication process to be more effective.

CONTEXT – it is the situation or environment in which the communication takes place. It

refers to the idea that communication is affected by some sort of enviroment which
may include experience or cultural backgrounds that influence how the
communicators encode and decode messages.

Physical Context – this refers to the physical aspect of where communication is taking
palce. It includes loctaion or setting of the communication. It also taps on the
environmental conditions such as time, temperature, lighting, noise level, and the
distance between the speaker and recceiver. The scenario that best exemplifies
physical context is when the message being conveyed in a conversation with a friend
over the phone will differ to the meaning of the message being sent during face-to-
face conversation.

Social Context – this refers to the nature of social relationship of the participants within
the communication process. The relationships among friends, family members, work
colleagues, and strangers can affect the decoding stage of the message. The
meaning of a message can actually be based on your relationship to whom you’re
talking to. An example of this is the manner of how you talk to your parents which differs
with how you communicate among your friends.

Cultural Context – this refers to the cultural aspects affecting what and how messages
are formed, this basically includes cultural orientations, beliefs, values, assumptions and
rituals from which the speaker or receiver come from. Since culture is a mirror of life and
is always part of our being, it greatly affects the way we communicate to one another.
This is best represented when a Batangueño tries to omit his dialect “ga” when
speaking to his friends who are born and raised in Metro Manila.

Psychological Context – this refers to the feelings, emotions, and mood of the
participant of the communication process. To further explain this context, try to imgaine
yourself who is reviewing lessons in preparation for your exam tomorrow, but it so
happened that your older sibling is playing a loud music. As a result, you will feel
irritated because the loud music is making you out of focus and this will reflect on how
you are going to talk to other members of your family.
Historical Context – this refers to whatever has been agreed upon or encountered
during the previous communication which technically influence the present
communication exchanges. It is best illustrated in a scenario wherein two high school
best friends affirmed to use “bff” as callsign together with certain hand gestures
everytime they will be seeing each other. Both of them may understand what those
gestures mean, but others may not since the meaning is created exclusively for their
own use.

NOISE – it pertains to anything that impedes or interferes the communication process

which usually distorts the meaning of the message being conveyed. Noise can come in
the form of different perceptions of the message, language barriers, feelings, emotions,
mood, or attitudes.

External Noise – this type of noise comes from the environment. It is anything that can
be perceived by the senses such as scenery, loud music, and perfume fragrance.

Internal Noise – this type of noise occurs in the mind of either the sender or receiver of
the message. This includes thoughts or feelings that are focused on something else like
daydreaming, fatigue, and exhaustion.

Semantic Noise – this type of noise is generally caused by the emotional reactions to
words or languages used. An example of which is a high-falutin vocabulary, offensive
and vulgar words. In some cases, differences in the dialects can also be considered as
semantic noise.

Types of Communication

What is Verbal Communication?

Verbal communication encompasses any form of communication involving words,

spoken, written or signed. The conversation we have with our coworker at lunch, the
morning news or the sports page we read in the morning--even the text message you
send to your spouse telling him to pick up some milk is a form of verbal communication.
Our ability to communicate with a language that is based on an organized system of
words, rather than merely sounds, is what sets us apart from lower species. Not only do
we have language, but we also have the technology that enables us to communicate
with one another no matter the physical distance.

Verbal Communication refers to a type of communication which involves spoken

words. This is done through the use of language as a tool in the process of oral
communication. This occurs when someone speaks or uses words in communication
exchange. It is done with face-to-face interaction and through certain medium such as
telephone, cellphone, or video or conference calls.
For instance, correcting a mispronounced word is better done verbally. The same thing
goes when saying “I love you” which appears to be more of a reflection of care and
affection than any other material gifts. Words come with a different power especially
when you are trying to apologize by simply saying “I am sorry.”

Why is Verbal Communication Important?

We use verbal communication to inform, whether it is to inform others of our needs or to

impart knowledge. Clarification is a key component of verbal communication. Often,
we do not articulate ourselves clearly, or our words or actions are misconstrued. Verbal
communication helps to clarify misunderstandings and provides missing information.

We can use verbal communication to correct a wrong. The power of the words, “I’m
sorry,” is often more effective than an action. Verbal communication can also be used
as a tool of persuasion. It creates an opportunity for debate, stimulates thought and
creativity, and deepens and creates new relationships. Robert M. Krauss in the article,
“The Psychology of Verbal Communication,” published in the International
Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences in 2002, explains, “A species’
survival depends critically upon its ability to communicate effectively, and the quality of
its social life is determined in large measure by how and what it can communicate.”

What is Non-Verbal Communication?

Verbal communication coexists alongside non-verbal communication, which can

affect people’s perceptions and exchanges in subtle but significant ways. Non-verbal
communication includes body language, such as gestures, facial expressions, eye
contact and posture. Touch is a non-verbal communication that not only indicates a
person’s feelings or level of comfort, but illustrates personality characteristics as well. A
firm handshake or warm hug indicates something very different than a loose pat on the
back or a timid handshake does. The sound of our voice, including pitch, tone and
volume are also forms of non-verbal communication. The meaning behind someone’s
words is often entirely different than the literal translation, as is seen in instances of
sarcasm and mockery. The clothing we wear and the way we design our living space
are also forms of non-verbal communication that frequently shape people’s judgments
about others, regardless of whether or not the perceptions are true.

Non-verbal Communication is a non-speech type of communication. This only means

that communication takes place through facial expressions, bodily movement or
gestures, stance, eye contact, haptics (touch), artifacts (objects), chronemics (the use
of time), proxemics (the use of distance or space) and other signals.
This is also considered as the reflection of one’s personality which may be unintentional
or does not intend to hurt someone. If unintended nonverbal message has been
decoded negatively, then it may be related to either individual or cultural differences.
Some nonverbal messages may appear to be ambiguous and here is where the use of
verbal communication takes place. It is done to have a clear interpretation of the
nonverbal messages or symbols for it may be affected by our schema or field of
experiences.

Why is Non-Verbal Communication Important?

Think of how many relationships start with a man and woman making eye contact
across a crowded room. A playful wink tends to be more effective than a well-thought
out pick-up-line. Michael Argyle, in his book “Bodily Communication,” identifies five
main functions of non-verbal communication: to express emotions, communicate
interpersonal relationships, support verbal interaction, reflect personality and perform
rituals, such as greetings and goodbyes. Edward G. Wertheim, Ph.D., in his paper, “The
Importance of Effective Communication,” details how non-verbal communication
interacts with verbal communication. We can reinforce, contradict, substitute,
complement or emphasize our verbal communication with non-verbal cues such as
gestures, expressions and vocal inflection. Avoiding eye contact when we tell someone
we love them communicates something far different than do spoken words, just as a
bright smile when we say congratulations reinforces the sincerity of our words.

Please watch the video for a more vivid understanding of the two types of
communication.

Please note: WRITING IS A FORM OF VERBAL COMMUNICATION.

EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION SKILLS

Effective communication requires great effort among the participants of the

communication process. It requires the speaker to convey his message in a manner
which it could be easily perceived and understood by its receiver. Likewise, the listener
should listen attentively to the message by getting its full meaning, through this way he
makes the speaker realize that the transcended message is heard and understood.

According to Robinson, Segal, and Smith (2015) as cited by Padilla et al. (2016),
there is a set of skills needed to have an effective communication, it includes becoming
an engaged listener, paying attention to nonverbal signals, keeping stress in check,
and asserting yourself.
 1. Becoming an engaged listener – A listener must be attentive and particular to
the speaker’s voice, pitch, tone, intonation and volume to hear how he shifts in
the speech delivery. Through those factors, the listener can decipher the feelings
that the speaker would like to convey. On becoming an engaged listener, you
will be able to understand the meaning behind his messages and make him feel
that you’ve heard and understood him.

2. Paying attention to nonverbal signals – The nonverbal languages, signals, or

symbols tells more about the personality of the participants of communication
rather than their verbal languages. Using the nonverbal language properly can
help build connections and better relationships among others. Knowing how to
interpret and deliver nonverbal communication can make you an effective
communicator.

3. Keeping stress in check – Getting along with stress is never an easy task, but if
you wanted to become an effective communicator, you should know how to
stay calm and manage your stress. Once you’re stressed, there is a tendency of
misreading other people’s point of view, you may give off confusing nonverbal
signals, and you may manifest tremors leading to disorganized thoughts. There
are ways of effectively communicating while under pressure: you must give
yourself a time to think, pause for a while to gather, decide to make a point and
provide supporting details to it, speak clearly once decisive of what to say, and
lastly is to summarize your idea and then stop talking.

4. Asserting yourself – A good communicator must express his ideas, thoughts,

feelings, emotions, and beliefs in an open, honest, and direct manner. Being
straightforward will help the listeners of the message capture its intended
meaning. Being assertive does not mean that making an opinion means you are
trying to win an argument. It more of making your intentions known to other
participants of communication without being characterized as a disrespectful
communicator.

On Listening Skills

Communication is a two-way process that involves speaking and listening. We

are all well-versed with speaking since it is the nature of human being – to talk. On some
point, when we talk about communication, people tend to focus only on the speaking
part. Active listening and understanding makes an effective communication, however
people usually disregard the act of listening and focus solely on speaking.

Listening, as a skill and process, makes a complete communication. Each

situation in the communication exchange requires certain types of listening such as
informative, empathic, appreciative, critical, and discriminative (Kline, 1996 as cited by
Padilla et al., 2016).

 Informative Listening – Every listeners’ goal in communicating is to understand

the message, decoding its meaning as close as possible to what the sender
intends to convey. Vocabulary, concentration, and memory are the important
variables in informative listening.

 Empathic Listening – It involves the ability to understand someone’s feeling by

letting him feel that he has somebody to lean on. Through this type of listening,
relationships between people can be improved. Attending, supporting, and
empathizing are the key behaviors that must be considered in this type of
listening.

 Appreciative Listening – The purpose of this listening is for enjoyment; it includes

appreciation of important factors such as presentation, perception, and
previous experience.

 Critical Listening– Skillful criticism is done through this listening; it includes

judgment of all aspects related at home, school, work, or in worship place. In
doing this listening, the listener must take note of the speaker’s ethos (expertness
and trustworthiness), logos (well-supported arguments), and pathos (emotional
elements).

 Discriminative Listening – Among all other types of listening, this is the most
important and basic one. It involves the ability of the listener to determine subtle
changes in speaker’s voice quality, speech fillers (e.g., “uhm,” “uh-huh,” “well”),
pauses, verbal and nonverbal cues.

Features of an Effective Communication

Our everyday routine results to communication. However, people are not used
to exceptionally conversing their thoughts using a set of communication skills. It will take
a lot of effort in learning and improving ability to communication through repeated
practice.

Therefore, if you would like to communicate effectively, you need to learn and be
familiar with the features of an effective communication to hone your competencies in
communicating. The list of 7C’s of Effective Communication made by Professors Broom,
Cutlip, and Center (2012) as cited by Sipacio and Balgos (2016) highlights the factors
that a speaker must portray in the transmission of message across audience.

 Completeness – the quality of communication process can be generally

discerned if there is complete communication. In this feature, the speaker must
provide all the necessary information that the receiver needs to hear so that he
can adjust properly on its response and reactions.
  Conciseness – this involves making your idea precise without sacrificing the
whole thought of your message must be done to eliminate irrelevant or
repetition of information to be sent to the audience.

 Consideration – the speaker must always consider the backgrounder of his

receiver particularly his mood, emotions, race, preference, education, social
status, needs, and interests. To become an effective communicator, the speaker
must be considerate of his audience to build rapport.

 Concreteness – the message is considered as concrete if it is supported by

factual information, figures, real-life examples and situations. By doing so, the
receiver will be more connected to the message being conveyed, making the
communication process effective.

 Courtesy – the speaker’s respect towards the culture, values, and beliefs of his
receivers is what we called as courteous. Through this feature, the speaker can
create a positive impact among his audience.

 Clearness – the free-flowing communication can happen if the speaker uses

simple and specific words in expressing his ideas. In this way, the speaker creates
clear argument for he is focusing only on a single objective to avoid confusion.

 Correctness – the speaker can eliminate negative impact among his audience if
his message portrays good and correct grammar usage. Applying such will
increase the credibility and reliability of the message being conveyed.

INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

Communication is what makes everyone connected regardless of where we are

located in the world. Keeping in touch with other people has been made possible by
the help of modern technology. The means may be accessible but still, communication
will never be that easy due to cultural differences. Learning what intercultural
communication is and what it is not will make you understand how culture and
language affect how we encode and decode messages.

At the end of this lesson, you would be able to demonstrate sensitivity to the
socio-cultural dimension of communication situation with focus on culture, gender, age,
social status, and religion.

Intercultural Communication

Communication, as the most important part of daily life, is always the key in
attaining our daily tasks. Wherever we go to or whatever we do, communication is
always essential. This entails not just being adept in using the language but also being
familiar with behavioral norms in communication. It is applicable when we are
communicating across cultures. It is not easy to decode messages and provide
feedback if you are not well-accustomed nor aware of someone’s cultural
background. To be an effective communicator, you must always take into
consideration how intercultural communication works.

Developing sensitivity in communicating with people from different cultures has been
one of the musts in communication especially in today’s generation because of the
modern technology. It is through communication that we get to travel parts of the
world. This is made possible by exploring other cultures through simple conversations
(e.g., asking for the translations of certain words from your native language to their own
language, sharing thoughts about cultural and religious practices, identifying vulgar
words to be avoided once you get into their province or country, etc.) With such
interactions, we need to assess ourselves as to how we can have a sound and effective
intercultural communication; otherwise, we can get ourselves in trouble for there are
several verbal expressions and non-verbal cues that are strongly culture-bound.

Intercultural communication happens when two or more people are

exchanging messages and creating meanings based on their cultural backgrounds
(Ting-Toomey, 1999).

According to Gudykunst (2003), this type of communication happens to those

people having different nationalities. The usual point of view about intercultural
communication is that it is always influenced by different ethnicities, cultural practices,
religious beliefs and denominations, and sexual orientations.

Those two concepts about intercultural communication denote that

communication takes place between and among people with diverse cultures. It may
only happen if the communication participants are open to recognize and understand
different cultural identities. Likewise, this aspect reveals that cultural backgrounds are
not the only thing that is understood in the process, it only shows that through
intercultural communication, various human experiences reflected on varied societies
are also shared.

To be an effective communicator, having positive and productive interaction

must be the target in dealing with intercultural communication. Take note that by doing
so, you are not trying to adapt other culture, you must always remember that you are
communicating to understand the message that may be culturally inclined.
Understanding other cultures does not mean that you are going to abandon your own
culture nor be a member of a different society.

Looking closer to it, dealing with intercultural communication requires being

language proficient. However, understanding facial expressions, hand gestures, and
attitudes of other communication participants may mean different things which should
be decoded properly based on the recognized backgrounds. This only means that in
intercultural communication, communicators would take a lot more effort in not just
learning the spoken languages.

The Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity

The Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS), which was created

by Dr. Milton Bennett (1986, 1993), serves as a guide in explaining people’s experiences
influenced by their cultural diversity. It includes six stages; the first three are considered
as ethnocentric which means that one’s own culture is experienced as central to reality;
the second three stages are associated to ethnorelative which means that one’s own
culture is experienced in the context of other cultures.

Cultural differences are not recognized by the individuals.

Stage 1:
Denial
Example: “All well-known universities are the same; they have tall
buildings, fancy libraries, and modernized computer laboratories.”

Cultural differences in stage starts to be recognized by the individuals

which make them have either a superior view on own culture or
unjustified high regard for the new one.

Stage 2:
Defense Example: “Your culture does not pay respect to elders the way we do;
our practices are better than yours.”

“Their classroom settings are better than that of the

Philippines; how I wish it would be adapted in here soon.”

Cultural differences perceived by the individuals tend to be influenced

by universality of ideas and not by recognizing diverse cultures.
Stage 3:
Minimization
Example: “We can share our cultural practices soon, once we’re on it,
we can say that we do share the same culture.”

Cultural differences in this stage begin to be recognized and

Stage 4: appreciated by the communicators in terms of behaviors and values.
Acceptance
 Example: “We may different cultural backgrounds and beliefs, I’m
pretty sure we can both learn from it.”

Cultural differences are now openly accepted by the individuals

specifically if new ideas and perspectives are introduced.
Stage 5:
Adaptation
Example: “Our issue will be settled properly if we’ll consider each
other’s opinion.”

Cultural backgrounds start to expand in this stage because individuals

are going beyond their own cultural identity and made different
cultural viewpoints as their basis.
Stage 6:
Integration

Example: “Once I get to travel the world, I know I can view things
based on how others perceived their cultures.”

Characteristics of Competent Intercultural Communicator

To be an effective communicator, intercultural communication must not be

disregarded. The World Bank (2010) enumerated traits to be acquired on being a
competent intercultural communicator. Those are (1) flexibility and the ability to
tolerate high level of uncertainty, (2) reflectiveness or mindfulness, (3) open-
mindedness, (4) sensitivity, (5) adaptability, (6) ability to engage in divergent thinking
(creative thinking) and systems-level (thinking how systems or organization influences
each other), and (7) politeness.

Below are the tips on how to refrain from showing bias when talking to someone:

 Avoid stereotyping

 Challenge gender norms; avoid using “he or man” to refer to a general group of
people.

 Do not talk down on younger people and the elderly.

 Be sensitive to religious practices of others

 Do not belittle people you perceive to be on a lower social class than you