Assessing Communication Skills

Communication Skills - Essential transferable skills

In my earlier post, I had written about the importance of transferable skills and listed about twenty-three essential transferable skills. Furthermore, I wrote about assessing leadership skills in students (the first in the list of transferable skills) in yet another post.

In continuation, in this post, I wish to focus on assessing communication skills, the second in the list of transferable skills.

Communication skills are very important because we are communicating all the time. It is as simple as that. It is one of the most sought after transferable skills by job providers, academicians and professionals in the job market. No matter the nature or sector of work, communication skills are imperative for proving your job worth.

Schools, universities and companies organize training sessions and workshops for students and employees for improving their communication skills. They also assess the level of your skills or the impact of training sessions.

Areas for assessing Communication Skills:

People usually assess communication skills in four areas. These are Verbal Communication, which includes oral and written, Non-verbal communication and Visual communication.

Verbal Communication implies communicating verbally in the form of words either orally or in written form.

Oral Communication – This refers to spoken words. It can take face-to-face communication, phone conversation, audio and video conferencing and so on.

Written Communication – This refers to the use of scripts, signs and symbols in written form such as e-mails, reports, letters, memo or any such document. This can be handwritten or typed.

Non-verbal Communication – This refers to the use of body language, gestures, postures, eye contact, facial expressions and touch in communicating messages.

Visual Communication - This refers to the use of pictures, graphs, tables, photos and such other illustrations for communicating a message.

Based on the above, I have uploaded a sample questionnaire to assess communication skills. The questionnaire has 27 statements on a five-point scale. You can modify the statements to make it suitable for specific target groups.

Click here to download the questionnaire. Communication Skills Questionnaire