Education, Learning to Communicate: Teaching Skills

It is clear that life is for learning, so we should all get involved with Education, Teaching and Learning. Self development for business, and continuous professional development should be part of our masterplan. Study Coach would like to encourage everyone to embrace new learning. The saying goes that a little bit of knowledge can go a long way, and so it is advisable to make the most of your education, you don’t need to have a degree, just make the most of your skills, and keep on up-skilling. 

Education/Academic  

My name is Morel Benard and I’m here at Study Coach. I have a liking for academic books, and learning about theoretical ideas. I have spent a number of years reading about theories. Over the years I have turned up to exams halls to be tested, submitted numerous written assignments and collected a handful of paperwork as a reward for time spent studying. I have learnt a lot and I’m a strong believer that theories are of little value unless they can be implemented in practice. I’m here to share some of my academic skills with you. 

Teaching/Training Skills

If it’s part of your work to deliver presentations, train, coach, mentor staff members, then you will be making use of teaching skills. Now, don’t panic I’m not relegating you to the post of teacher, but I’m simply pointing out that many people today are making use of teaching skills, whether they realise it or not. Designing a webinar, masterclass, workshop, zoom meeting, facilitating chats via applications, giving a business presentation, will to some extent make use of teaching skills. If you find some presenters more engaging than others it’s perhaps because they have learned some teaching skills. The use of emphasis can be important when delivering a presentation, or presenting a training session. 

Emphasis

What is Emphasis? The meaning of Emphasis is to place stress on a word or words. The speaker is therefore giving special importance to the particular word or words, giving words prominence, giving words weight, significance. 

Verbal Communication

 We therefore use emphasis when we want listeners to pay attention to certain points or to carry out certain instructions. For example if you are a medical professional, you might need to instruct a patient to take TWO tablets during the day, ONE tablet in the morning, before breakfast and one tablet AFTER their evening meal. Emphasis might therefore be placed on the word ‘BEFORE BREAKFAST’ and AFTER DINNER. In the context of health using emphasis is fine and the medical professional might choose to over emphasise the instructions if a patient is elderly or have hearing issues.   

Facilitator/Teacher/Trainer

In respect of doing business presentations and using Emphasis, it is useful to always remember you audience. When running a workshop, zoom meeting, webinar, delivering a presentation, standing on stage delivering a talk to prospective clients, presenting to work colleagues, then do be mindful how you use emphasis as a facilitator (teacher). 

We might feel the need to emphasise certain concepts to our delegates or colleagues, feel the need to emphasise certain points; this is okay, but there is a big BUT. We need to take great care that we are not over emphasising points. The use of over-emphasis could be interpreted as condescending, we need to bear in mind our work colleagues knowledge base, our listeners could be our teachers, boss, with superior knowledge of the topic.  The use of overemphasis might be interpreted as being rude (talking down to our audience/listeners) so do bear this in mind.  

Reflective Learning

If it is a cultural norm, or an individual personality trait to over Emphasise points, then reflect on this when speaking to people of a different culture. Do note that if you are in the business of Health and Safety, whether delivering a service or selling a product then emphasising the potential dangers of a device or talking about potential Health and Safety situations in the workplace then it is acceptable or in fact it might be deemed necessary to use Emphasis, to highlight risks factors.