subject: Inter-personal Skills with Communication Skills [print this page] Inter-personal Skills with Communication Skills
Inter-personal communication denotes face-to-face contact involving a small number of people (typically two) rather than large groups. The section below is aimed at testing the ability of the candidate to understand and manipulate the dynamics of social interaction to his/her advantage. Communication skills are a function of certain psychological / attitudinal / personality traits and a mellifluous sense of language. Although, as we have stressed earlier, the best way to check Inter-personal skills / Communication Skills would be in a Personal Interview or in a Group Discussion. In these test formats, in order to be excellent at communication, a candidate needs to be exceptional at certain linguistic skills. These are:
1. Language - The language in question (Hindi for candidates taking the exam with Hindi as the medium and similarly English for candidates taking the exam with English as the medium) is in terms of vocabulary, grammar, common sense, etc.
2. Listening and comprehending Ability to understand what is being discussed and asked. This requires attention and the rare ability to be a patient listener. Only an attuned sense of listening and subsequent comprehension would allow the listener to formulate an appropriate response.
3. Speaking Ability to convey / speak clearly what information the candidate has in mind in response to the question asked, and decide what part of the information should be conveyed to the listener with clarity. This is the mainstay of the entire process.
4. Psychological / Personality Traits Eloquent speakers are not only good at language, listening, comprehending and speaking, but also need to be good at effectively deciding when to speak, what to speak, how to speak and how to flexibly mould what you speak according to the target audience. They also need to take into consideration the rest of the rules governing dynamics of social interaction.
When these skills get tested in a written exam, the format gets changed drastically. To check your competence in Ability 1 (Language), you will get straitjacketed questions of Sentence Correction and Fill in the Blanks to test grammar, clarity of language and sense of language. To check your competence in Ability 2 and 3 (Listening, comprehending and Personality Traits) you will have to be good at understanding the information given in questions and stick to the rules for solving a particular type of question, which may test you for Sentence Completion, Para-editing, Critical Reading, Para-anagrams, Critical Reasoning, etc.
