5 ways to increase your communication skills with greater care

Here are five good reasons to put more care into your English expression.

1. Positive Care
If you could not speak, you might still be able to communicate through sign language and written language. We often take for granted our ability to communicate, but we should care more about how we communicate because it impacts upon personal and professional success. Care is a feeling, an attitude and an action. The other reasons point to how we can care in action.

2. Change Your World
Care so much that you have a love affair with English! Think about all the emails and other messages you wrote last year – you might have written the equivalent of a novel!
We are all writers, it is just that some of us write more than others and some write in more than one medium. English can be very flexible if your vocabulary is wide and deep. The more you write the more you will come into contact with a labour of love. You use English to project yourself, so use your words to change your world – I dare you!

3. Inspiration from a Dictionary
You many or may not like the life of Malcolm X but there is one thing I learnt from him and that was the value of a dictionary as a learning and developing tool. Have you read every page of a dictionary? Have you studied every page? Have you imbibed every page? That is what Malcolm X said he did in prison and he did develop an eloquence beyond the average man. How many books do you have about English? How many have you actually read. Get to know your dictionary better.

4. Join a Group
Develop more passion about English by joining a group on the net – there are many such as Facebook Groups or join a Book Club or similar organisation in the real world. It will help you to be more conscious about English. In Singapore we have the Good English Movement. You can follow this organisation on the net - http://www.goodenglish.org.sg/ and sign up for their updates.

5. Dig into history
Another one for more passion, more feeling, more awareness and more caring. Most words have a clear link between meaning and history. If we become conscious of the history we may develop a greater feeling for the language. This is why some people get involved in organizations that perform language – either acting in plays, reciting poetry or singing in a choir. Talking and singing even in the privacy of your home deepens connections and feelings. There is a poetry to much of English language – feel the poetry more. All these activities develop our connection with language and English in particular.