VUSSC/Content/Tourism/Applying Effective Communication Skills/Introduction

=Introduction=

Welcome to this module on "Effective Communication Skills!"

You will agree that most of time as a Tour Guide will be spent interacting with Tourists. This success of interaction will depend a lot on how you communicate with them. This module is meant to empower you with the necessary knowledge and skills that will help you communicate effectively as a Tout Guide.

This module is meant for self-study. It comprises three Units, each of which have been designed and structured in a consistent manner to ease navigation and study. Each Unit starts with the objectives. These are meant to help you assess your learning in terms of what you would be able to do after studying a particular Unit. Self-assessment activities are embeded in the study materials to promote active learning. You are advised to complete all of them and then examine our feedback. The summary highlights the key points developed in the Unit.

We start with Unit 1 where we introduce you to communication and the communication process, the key concepts and the reasons for communicating. You must surely have someone saying "There was a communication breakdown". Why do communication fail? You will also be looking at some of barriers to effective communication.

Once you are equiped with the basic communication concepts, we move on to the second Unit where we look at the ways of communicating under two subheadings, namely How do we communicate? and the	forms of communication

In your work as a tour Guide you continuously respond to diverse types of queries and will no doubt often come across difficult customers. How do you deal with them? This is what we shall examine in our last Unit. The strategies for effective communication include conversational skills and active listening skills in addition to telephone and presentation skills.

Good luck with your course!