Effective Communication
Senior 4 · General and Religious Studies
Effective Communication
Lesson 1 of 5
25 min
A community health worker (an illustrative case) must make sure that the parents of every young child in her cell, about four hundred households, know that a measles vaccination day will be held on Thursday at 8 a.m. at the health centre. How should she tell them?
She could announce it at the village assembly, ask the local radio station to broadcast it, send text messages, pin a poster at the health centre, ask religious leaders to announce it after prayers, or walk from house to house. Each choice is a different form and way of communicating. Each reaches different people, costs different amounts, and fails in different ways. Choosing well is the first skill of effective communication.
Definition
Communication: the process of passing information, ideas or feelings from one person or group to another so that they are understood.
Sender: the person who starts the message and encodes it, turning an idea into words, signs or images. Receiver: the person who gets the message and decodes it, turning it back into meaning.
Channel (or medium): the way the message travels, such as speech, a letter, radio or a text message.
Feedback: the receiver's response, which shows the sender whether the message was understood.
Noise: anything that distorts or blocks the message: a loud market, a poor phone signal, an unknown word, a rumour, or a tired mind.
Two lessons follow from the model. First, a message can fail at any point: the sender may encode it badly, the channel may be noisy, the receiver may decode it differently. Second, without feedback the sender cannot know whether communication happened at all. A health worker who only broadcasts on the radio has sent a message; she has not yet communicated it.
| Form | Examples | Strengths | Limitations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oral (spoken) verbal | Conversation, phone call, meeting, speech, radio | Fast; immediate feedback; tone adds meaning | No permanent record; easily misremembered |
| Written verbal | Letter, text message, email, report, notice, minutes | Permanent record; can be checked and kept as evidence | Slower; no tone of voice; needs literacy |
| Non-verbal | Facial expression, gesture, eye contact, posture, tone, distance, dress | Shows feelings and attitude; works alongside words | Easily misread; meanings differ between cultures |
| Visual | Road signs, posters, charts, maps, symbols, photographs | Understood quickly, even across languages | Can be ambiguous without words |
| Sign language | A full visual language of hand shapes, movement and facial expression used by many deaf people | Complete language with its own grammar | Few hearing people learn it, so interpreters are needed |
| Way | Meaning | Example in a school |
|---|---|---|
| One-way | No immediate feedback | A notice on the board; a radio announcement |
| Two-way | Sender and receiver exchange messages | A class discussion; a parents' meeting |
| Downward | From those in authority to others | The head teacher announces new exam dates |
| Upward | From others to those in authority | Class representatives present students' concerns |
| Horizontal | Between people at the same level | Two teachers of the same subject plan a test together |
| Formal | Through official channels, often written and recorded | A letter from the school to parents |
| Informal ("grapevine") | Unofficial, person to person | A rumour that the holidays will start early |
Read the chart carefully. Radios were in 81% of private households and a mobile phone owner in 78%, but only 14% of people aged 10 and over had used the internet in the previous twelve months. A message placed only online would have missed most Rwandans in 2022; radio, text messages and face-to-face meetings reached far more. A communicator chooses the channel by asking who the audience is and what they can actually receive.
Warning
The "93% non-verbal" myth. You may read that only 7% of meaning comes from words, 38% from tone and 55% from body language. These figures come from experiments by the psychologist Albert Mehrabian in 1967, which tested how people judge feelings when single spoken words and the speaker's tone or face disagree. They do not apply to communication in general: try understanding a lecture with the words removed. Non-verbal signals matter most when they contradict the words.
Tip
Audience, aim, access. Before you choose a form and a channel, ask: Who is my audience? What is my aim (inform, persuade, request, record)? What can they access (radio, phone, internet, meetings, reading)? Then use at least two channels for important messages, and plan how you will get feedback.
Important
Discuss. Many public services now communicate mainly through websites and social media. Using Figure 2, argue for or against the claim that "online communication is now enough to reach Rwandan citizens". What would change your answer in ten years' time?
Alexander Lyon, communication coach: "Transmission Model of Communication: Shannon and Weaver", about 4 minutes. Note each part of the model and the criticism that it treats communication as one-way; compare it with the feedback loop in Figure 1.
Practice
Key points
Sources and credits
Written by Ganzaa: the vaccination case, Figures 1 and 2, the tables and the exercises.
Quick check
Match each part of the communication process to its example.
Tap one on the left, then its partner on the right.
