What are different ways to enhance your English communication skills?

English is an international language and is a common medium for communication for many people across different nations. English plays a major role in almost all the sectors like public and private sectors. English helps in finding a high quality job and also in communicating with international world. Speaking good English is very important because almost all the companies prefer candidates who have good communication skills in English. And having good communication skills is much more important when it comes to interview process, because employers at the time of interview see how well a candidate is communicating and also the way they express. Many deserving candidates lose their job opportunity because of poor communications. If a candidate has good command in the subject and if he/she is not able to express, then it ruins all their efforts of getting a job. Therefore it is very important that one should have effective communication skills.

Tips to enhance communication skills

For speaking good English, one should have zeal to learn English and has to put enough efforts. It takes at least 3 months of continuous efforts for a non-speaker to speaking English fluently. Here are some tips to improve your communication skills in English:

• Read books, news papers and magazines daily that are published in English. Keep a pocket dictionary always with you, so that you can check for meaning of the words which you don’t understand

• People who start learning English may find difficulty in pronouncing some words. So, make a list of the words that you find difficulty in pronouncing and try to use phonetic symbols in the dictionary to pronounce different words correctly or ask a person to pronounce those words for you, who can speak the language well.

• Many of them have MIT (mother tongue influence) while they converse in English. They can overcome this by watching English channels like CNN, BBC, NDTV, 24*7 etc. Try to observe mouth movements of the speakers and try to imitate. This will help you to improve your speech.

• Start speaking English in your daily life because only practice can help in learning and communicating effectively.

• Practice speaking loud before a mirror so that you can know your flaws or record your speech, play it back and listen. This is a very important exercise because doing it will help you become conscious of the mistakes you are making.

• Slow your speech until your learn the correct intonation and rhythm of English, because if you speak fast without proper intonation, native speakers will have a difficulty in understanding you.

• Try to pronounce the ending of each word like the words that end with S and ED. This will strengthen your mouth muscles and thus you can speak English fluently.

What are your strengths and weaknesses?

Interview is a process of evaluating the capabilities of a candidate to decide whether he/she is suitable for the position or not. As a part of the interview many candidates will face this question. Interviewer will ask this question and in both the cases wants to determine a candidate’s character assets. Many of the candidates give all irrelevant answers and lose a chance of getting a job. Answer for this question should be natural and should sound genuine so that the interviewer gets impressed. Therefore one has to prepare an honest list of strengths and weaknesses that they have and practice them well. One should confidently answer their strengths and weaknesses. Candidates can easily explain their strengths, but they lose out when it comes to explaining their weaknesses. While talking about weakness, one should tell in a way that their weaknesses also appear as one of their strengths to the interviewer. Remember that you always portray your weakness as strength but not your strength as weakness. Here are some best answers that one can give to impress the interviewer:

Strengths

• My biggest strength is that I am very good at communication. I can easily gel with all kinds of people and manage the tasks. I understand that everyone has their own perspective and approach about the project and work tasks, therefore I can work as a good team member and also see that that everyone comes to the table with different priorities and objectives. I keep this in mind when I communicate tasks that need to be accomplished with positive reinforcement.

• I have a positive attitude and I think that is expected from every employee. Having a positive attitude will help us to work with fresh mind and will also help us to take up challenges and achieve success.

• I am very flexible i.e. I can adjust in any kind of work environment. I have the ability to cope with failures and try to learn from my mistakes.

• I am a hard worker, punctual and very determined at work. I am confident enough and I think this will help to get self motivation.

• I am good team worker and I think good team work plays a very important role in bringing out the final output successfully.

• I always like to take the initiative and be the first in winning things.

• I am highly energetic, quick learner and I have zeal to learn new things. I am very organized at work and I have good interpersonal and good negotiation skills.

Weaknesses

• My weakness is that I am a hard worker and I work for long hours without even caring for my health.

• I feel very restless and disturbed when the work is not complete or it is half completed.

• I am a bit afraid of speaking before public and I have joined a course to overcome that. This shows that when you identify problems, you take corrective steps to overcome that problem.

• I had a trouble with procrastinating. To overcome that I prepare a list of things that I need do and also maintain a calendar to keep track of the work. This is helping me to complete my work on time.

• I may go to any limits when it comes to helping my friends and due to this I faced lot of problems.

• I am very much focused on my work and because of this I will not get more time to relax.