Self-Reflective Essay On Communication and Academic Scholarship Skill Development.

Reflection Report

In this report, the parts which I will be reflecting upon is the various communication skills and the academic scholarship skills. Communication skills are very important for a person in his daily life. The report will be in a descriptive style and will highlight the various aspects of the self-reflection on the concerned topic. It will also shed light on the importance of the academic skills and why it is necessary for a person to develop these skills in conducting a scholarly study. The report concentrates mainly on the progress that I have made in my life till date in acquiring the various aspects of the communication skills and academic scholarship skills. It also deals with the experiences that are gathered during life in developing these skills and how it has helped in my life and various situations of life. The progress will be extensively highlighted in this report, and it will also suggest ways through which the skills can be improved in the future performances in my life.

Communication Skills

As I have grown up, the most important aspect of life that has been stressed upon is the communication. Effective communication goes a long way in solving a lot of problems that are faced by ordinary people all over the world (Henderson & Mathew Byrne, 2016). Communication helps in understanding the people around me and also the help in understanding the nature of the surrounding that a person lives in. Throughout my life, the emphasis has been given on the way I communicate with people. To conduct an effective communication the most important thing is to transfer a clear and correct message. The message is the most important part because without a clear and a concise message the other person with whom the communication takes place will be incomplete (Travers, Morisano & Locke, 2015). The skills that are required to conduct an effective communication can be classified into the following points. These points are the skills that I have achieved through my life and have developed over the years.

• Formulating a Clear Message– Formulating a clear and a concise message is the most important part of the communication process (Arnold & Boggs, 2015). This skill of formulation of the clear massager helps in understanding the message and also the purpose. The purpose and the objectivity have to be maintained in the formulation of the message. The formulation of the message has been developed by me over the years.
• Showing Empathy– One of the communication skills that are helpful in conducting an effective communication is showing empathy. Empathy means being open to ideas and suggestions from other people in communication. The communication process becomes very helpful if people show empathy. It helps in gathering knowledge and information and keeps the people who are communicating with each other informed about the various aspects of the communication (Muller & Young, 2014). Through various communications and gathering information for research purposes, I have developed the skill of showing empathy in communication. This helped me gathering relevant knowledge and also helped in understanding various types of people in my life.
• Understanding Body Language and Interpreting– A lot of people uses gestures or body languages for the purpose of communicating with each other. Reading the body language helps in reading a person’s mind and what they are thinking at that particular point in time. The correct interpretation is required for understanding the various sign languages and the gestures. Developing this particular skill of interpretation helped me understand the emotions of people and also how they think at a particular moment.

Academic Scholarship Skills

Academic Scholarship skills help in the management of the various scholarly skills of a person (Durkin, 2016). The development of these skills helps a particular person in doing well in the university system. Academic skills are important in today’s competitive world and also for the purpose of higher studies. Developing the academic skills helped me in knowing the various academic weaknesses and strengths that I had. It improved my knowledge about the various things that I needed to do to become successful in higher school and further studies. The most important skill that I have developed over the years is the organizational skill. To become successful in academic fields a person has to be organized and should be able to properly manage the resources he or she has got.

During my early years of school, I had trouble in writing. I could not express myself properly according to the topics given. Correctly organizing myself and knowing the various weakness and strengths helped me in understanding the requirements of the topics given to me. Academic scholarship skills depend on the mindset of a person, and it helped in understanding the basic needs with which I can develop various ways to improve my skills in the concerned departments. During those years of school, I have developed various kinds of classroom habits. These habits can be termed as academic skills which are needed to be successful in the academic sphere of life. These skills start from the basic. It concentrates on the writing and reading skills of a student from a very early age. These basic skills help us in mustering the various aspects of education in our future studies. Knowing the basics of academic learning helped me in developing the academic scholarship skills. After the early years of developing writing and reading skills, the next step of development has been through the technology. The advancement in technology has made it compulsory for everyone to develop skills in performing various tasks with the help of computers and other technical devices.

The computer skills that were taught to me in the early years of schooling helped me in developing various types of computer generated academic skills. These improved my academic learning and also helped me in my further studies. Academic skills that were developed by me in the concerned area are web researching, web posting, and word processing. These are skills that are influential in my improvement of the academic skills over the years. The next step in the learning led to the various skills that I acquired during my college years. The study and literacy skills that I developed during my study years are organizing my work, maintaining a proper time table and also balancing my study life with the social life. After completing my college life, it was important to look back at the essential skills that were developed by me. The skills of communication and academic skills helped me in succeeding in various ways. Managing through time, working on different subjects simultaneously and to be disciplined are some of the improvement that I developed through the years.

Action Points for further Improvement

Through the years the development of skills regarding communication with other people and academic scholarship skills helped in managing various aspects of my life. Three of the action points which will help me in my future endeavors are as follows.

• Getting rid of fillers in conversations- The first step to improving the conversation with people will include getting rid of the various fillers in my conversations. Filler words like ‘um’ and ‘like’ should be omitted to have a better conversation. These kinds of words do not make the conversation effective (Benus, 2013). An effective conversation takes place when the people involved use proper words. Cutting off the fillers from my conversation will help me in being more confident while conversing with others and also lead me to be persuasive. Over the years I had the tendency of using filler words in my conversation. This habit should be minimized and eventually be eradicated. Paying more attention to the times when I use these sorts of words will help me in cutting these words off my conversations.
• Reading- As I have grown up people around me has emphasized the importance of reading a lot. Reading helps in developing more academic skills than anything else. It makes the people aware of the various things around them (Orr et al. 2013). Reading has always been one of the things that I did not do very often. This is why it is one of the most important action plans that I would want to incorporate into my daily routine. Reading more novels, journals, articles, and books will help me gather valuable scholarship and academic knowledge. This knowledge will help in my future experiences in various fields of work. Gathering knowledge through reading will also develop academic skills that will be influential in my growth.
• Maintaining a Positive Attitude- In life it is important to maintain a positive and cheerful attitude. Being positive and handling everything with the right attitude helps in understanding the various natures of people. It also helps in solving conflicts and any problems that may arise (Allan et al. 2014). In Academicals and especially communication, maintaining a positive attitude goes a long way in ensuring a healthy relation with others. In academics, the positive attitude will help me in doing my work with more enthusiasm and realism. It will improve the quality of my work and will help in progressing through life.

These are some of the action points that are noted by me which can influence my performance in any future work. Incorporating them into my daily routine will help me developing various skills that are needed to succeed in life and different spheres of life.

Reference List

Books

Arnold, E. C., & Boggs, K. U. (2015). Interpersonal Relationships: Professional communication skills for nurses. Elsevier Health Sciences.

Durkin, C. (2016). Social entrepreneurship: A skills approach. Policy Press.

Journals

Allan, N. P., Hume, L. E., Allan, D. M., Farrington, A. L., & Lonigan, C. J. (2014). Relations between inhibitory control and the development of academic skills in preschool and kindergarten: a meta-analysis. Developmental Psychology, 50(10), 2368.

Benus, S. (2013, December). Cognitive aspects of communicating information with conversational fillers in Slovak. In Cognitive Infocommunications (CogInfoCom), 2013 IEEE 4th International Conference on (pp. 271-276). IEEE.

Henderson, K., & Mathew Byrne, J. (2016). Developing communication and interviewing skills. Skills for social work practice, 1-22.

Muller, J., & Young, M. (2014). Disciplines, skills, and the university. Higher Education, 67(2), 127-140.

Orr, F., Kellehear, K., Armari, E., Pearson, A., & Holmes, D. (2013). The distress of voice-hearing: The use of simulation for awareness, understanding, and communication skill development in undergraduate nursing education. Nurse education in practice, 13(6), 529-535.

Travers, C. J., Morisano, D., & Locke, E. A. (2015). Self‐reflection, growth goals, and academic outcomes: A qualitative study. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 85(2), 224-241.