Key skills assessment: communication

Introduction

This key skill focuses on the ways in which you receive and respond to information and communicate with other people in your work, study and everyday life. Communication skills include speaking, listening, reading and writing for different purposes. Techniques such as note taking and writing summaries are important, but so, too, are the techniques of evaluation and application, such as evaluating the relevance and quality of information.

Communication is part of everyone's life and improving your skills also involves you being able to integrate changes in the way you communicate into your study or work. Essentially, this means you will be improving your skills while communicating what you are learning. This is much more than developing your presentation skills or tackling an essay. It is also about strategically planning how to communicate, applying your skills in different situations, and critically reflecting on your performance, that is being consciously aware of what you are doing and how well you are doing it. This unit is designed to be studied for 1 hour per week over 50 weeks.

This unit is from our archive and it is an adapted extract from the Teaching and Learning course which is no longer in presentation. If you wish to study formally at The Open University, you may wish to explore the courses we offer in this subject [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .