INTRODUCTION:

Second language education as moved away from the tenets of behavioral psychology and structural linguistics towards their thoughts, ideas, and intentions clearly. socio-cognitive psychology. Strong communication skills allow individuals to express their thoughts, ideas and intentions clearly. this helps prevent misunderstandings and ensures that the intended message is conveyed accurately. Effective communication fosters collaboration and teamwork. Behavioral communication skills, which include nonverbal cues such as body language and facial expressions, play a significant role in building report and trust. Strong communication skills are highly valued in both personal and professional setting.

They enhance a person’s ability to network, present ideas, and advance in their careers. When learners believe that they can manage their own learning, they develop a feeling of independence and self-confident.

Affective filters in communication

Affective filters in communication refer to emotional and psychological barriers that can affect how information is received and understood by individuals. These filters can influence the effectiveness of communication in various ways:

1. Emotions such as stress, anxiety, or anger can act as filters that hinder the reception and processing of information. When people are highly emotional, they may be less receptive to new ideas or information.

2. Cultural Background: cultural difference can create affective filters because people from different cultures may interpret messages differently or have varying emotional responses to certain topics or gestures.

3. Personal-Bias: Personal biases and preconceived notions can act as filters, causing individuals to selectively perceive or interpret information based on their existing between beliefs or attitudes.

4. Trust and Rapport: trust and rapport between communication can either facilitate or hinder effective communication. A lack of trust can act as a filter making it harder for individuals to open up and share information.

5. Communication Channel: the choice of communication channel such as face-to face, or digital communication, can impact the emotional context of a message and affect how it’s received.

6. Language and Clarity: language barriers and unclear communication can create affective filters, as misunderstanding may lead to frustration or confusion.

Understanding and managing these affective filters is crucial for effective affective filters is crucial for effective communication, weather in personal relationship, business interactions, or any other context. Empathy, active listening and clear respectful communication can help reduce the impact of these filter and improve overall communication outcomes.

This state of affairs not only at the tertiary level, but all through the primary, secondary and higher secondary stages. By the time a learner reaches the tertiary level s\he has been trained by the organization for over twelve years. The outcomes are the following features of an ESL class.

a. Inactive learners and active teachers.

b. The teacher design lessons and deliver knowledge.

c. The teacher tries to find out the linguistic errors and correct it.

d. Teacher evaluates the learners by an oral exam test.

e. Students actively participate in the class.

This paper examines an experiment carried out with a group to 20 learners from the PRSU B.A & M.A. who belongs to hindi medium class, to make them fluent in English communication skills through confidence building and motivation.

Fluency in Communication Skills: barriers and needs

Absolutely, fluency in both oral and behavioral communication is crucial for students’ success in various aspects of life. oral communication helps them express their ideas clearly while strong behavioral communication skills enable them to interact positively with others, fostering healthy relationships and teamwork. These skills are valuable not only in academics but also in personal and professional settings

Effective communication can face several barriers, including:

1. Language and vocabulary differences: difference in language proficiency or jargon can hinder understanding.

2. Physical barriers: these include distance, noise, or, technology issues that disrupt communication.

3. Psychological Barrier: prejudice, bias, or emotional states can affect hoe messages are received.

4. Cultural Difference: differing cultural norms and communication style can lead to misunderstanding.

5. Lack of Attention: inattentiveness or distractions can impede effective listening and response.

6. Lack of Clarity: poorly structured message, vague information, or ambiguity can confuse recipients.

7. Assumption and Stereotypes: making assumption about others or relying on stereotypes can lead to miscommunication.

8. Feedback Failure: Lack of feedback or misinterpretation of feedback can hinder communication improvement.

9. Information Overload: To much information at once can overwhelm and hinder understanding.

10. Physical and mental Health Issues: illness or mental health conditions may affect communication abilities.

Overcoming these barriers requires active listening, empathy, clarity, and adaptability to different context and audiences.

Lowering affective filters in oral and behaviour communication:

Lowering affective filters in oral and behavior communication is crucial for effective interpersonal interactions. To do so:….

1. Active listing is an important tool for affective oral and behavior communication. One should pay attention to what others are saying without interrupting. This shows respect and encourages open communication.

2. Empathy: Try to understand others’ perspectives and emotions. Empathetic responses can help create a safe and comfortable environment for communication.

3. Positive Body Language: maintain eye contact, use open gestures, and maintain a relaxed posture. Non-verbal cues can greatly affect the emotional tone of a conversation.

4. Clear and respectful Language: use clear, concise, and respectful language to convey message. Avoid aggressive or confrontational speech.

5. Manage Emotions: Practice emotional self-regulation to prevent emotional outbursts or defensive behavior during communication.

6. Build Trust: Consistently keeping promises and demonstrating reliability can foster trust in relationships, lowering affective filters.

7. Encourage Openness: create an environment where others feel safe expressing their thoufhts and feelings without fear of ridicule or rejection.

By incorporating these strategies, one can help create a more open and effective communication environment with lower affective filters.

Implementation:

Scharle and Szabo (2000) consider motivation and self-confidence, monitoring and self- evaluation, learner’s action plan, participation and group union, distribution of knowledge among learners, consistent control, and delegating tasks and decisions as the building blocks to develop learner responsibility. The determine to dedicate mole time for learning English after college hours. Learners were asked to decide the timing of the classes. After serious conferences, the decided to dedicate an hour extra time every day for a year without making any alteration in the existing college time table.

Content of the course

The Student were free to select their content of the course and also can share their problem and anxiety. Their first is to achieve degree not to be a good communicator and so they escape to read other book not related to university level. and so university-level communication course typically covers a wide range of topics to help students develop effective communication skills. Here’s an overview of common contents areas:

Stage-1: considering the limited time available, it was decided that the focus would be on communication within personal relationships, including listing skills conflict resolution and non-verbal communication, at that stage most frequently used parts of speech and were taught and revised through real life examples word cards and picture as far as available. Later on techniques of basic structures and grammatical items were dealt with. The language learnt was then used in situations created in the class.

Stage 2: the activities in this stage as in the previous one intended to reduce language stress and build confidence in the use of phonetics and pronunciation. Characterization and group communication based on topics that interested the students were carried out. They discussed the topic of role play in pairs, clarified doubts regarding phonitics and word power building with their academician if they were unable to do so among themselves, after which each pair shared their views or carried out the role play before the entire group. Some activities are given below…….

1. Public speaking: Practice giving speeches or presentations to improve verbal communication and confidence in front of an audience,

2. Debates: engage in debates on various topics to improve critical thinking and the ability to articulate arguments effectively.

3. Role-Playing: Role-play scenarios to practice different communication styles and develop empathy for others’ perspectives.

4. Storytelling: share personal stories or anecdotes to enhance storytelling, abilities and connect with others.

5. Listening Exercises: Engage in active listening exercises, such as summarizing what someone said or asking clarifying questions.

6. Group Discussions: Participate in group discussions to learn how to express ideas, collaborate ‘and respect others’ opinions.

7. Body language Awareness: practice understanding and using non-verbal communication cause

8. like gestures, facial expressions, and posture.

9. Writing skill: improve written communication through journaling letter writing or blogging.

10. Networking events: Attend networking events to practice introducing yourself making small talk and building professional relationship.

11. Feedback sessions: Seek and provide constructive feedback in both personal and professional settings to improve communication skills.

Motivational Strategies:

Zoltan Dornyei (2001) has rightly opined that tree motivational condition are in particular indispensable to generate motivation, good relationship between students as and teacher, a cheerful classroom atmosphere where learner centred decisions and activities are taken and students help one another and are seriously participated in the classroom activities.

The strategies used with these learners were

· Encourage to take benefits of each and every opportunity they get to use the target goal.

· They were offered clarification of problem.

· Strategies for next class

· Written works by them were displayed on the departmental notice board or published in the reputed magazine.

· They were offered to participate in various group discussion and debates.

· The learners were given regular reminders of the progress made. Thy have to evaluate their own progress and share it with the group.

FINDINGS AND CONCLUSION:

During any activity, the teacher remained in the background as a kind of ready reckoner who aged them on. These conversational actions helped them to use English in place of activity which were nearly authentic, thereby increasing their confidence level. The programme undertaken gave them a basic grammatical and behaviourial competence which supports them cross the first difficulties of communication and instilled in them a positive vision for communication skill which is absolutely important to help them scale higher in their English proficiency levels.

Motivational strategies can be effective only in a learner centred class. And the transition from a teacher centred class to a learner centred class can be smooth if there is a positive change in teacher behaviour. Taking students’ learning seriously can create basic motivation conditions. Showing that the teacher genuinely cares about their progress can generate initial motivation. The curriculum and learning materials can be made more relevant to the students if their needs, goals interests are taken into consideration. The students are more involved in the activities if the subject matter is related to their everyday experiences and background.

Involved and motivated students can event break out of “the anguish of impossibility” concerning language learning and sustain the long and often tedious learning process.

REFERENCES:

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Received on 28.09.2023 Modified on 22.10.2023

Res. J. Humanities and Social Sciences. 2023; 14(4):243-246.

DOI: 10.52711/2321-5828.2023.00048