Tuesday, August 10, 2010

What learned this Summer...

Over the summer, I learned a lot about the importance of vocabulary. If there is no common vocabulary, then communication is impossible.  The more the vocabulary matches, the easier the communication.  This is true at work, where people from many cultures mix and communicate every day.  We get calls from all neighborhoods, all income levels and many many ethnic backgrounds.  Language is important. And by language, I mean vocabulary. As people who work in a phone environment, we need to be able to explain things in many different ways, to find understanding with these varied populations.

My friend brought to my attention how difficult English is, with its different words that mean the same thing, words that sound the same but mean something different, and slang terminologies.  It is easy to be misunderstood - and to misunderstand.

One very good thing about this class was that it taught us a common vocabulary.  When discussing arguments, claims and conclusions, we should now all mean the same thing.  Our definition of a good argument and a bad argument and an argument not work saving should all match.  This should make communication easier.

1 comment:

  1. Communication is a big part of our daily lives, along with that, is the choices of words we choose to use. Having and knowing more vocabulary each day is important to our daily usage of words to talk to others. You are right; it is easier to communicate with one another when you have similar sets of vocabularies. English is a difficult language, due to the fact that words can have the same sounding but is different and has different meaning and spelling. Adding to that, we now have slang words, what I call words for the lazy. It can confuse people and cause misunderstanding.

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