Barriers to Communication

Barriers in General Communication

 

Language

 

 

Language can have different types of barriers which can affect general communication. One example is when people may speak only in their own language but people from a different nationality may only know their own language and therefore may not be able to communicate in different languages so this can lead to difficulties in understanding each other.

The other language barrier is when the person may know how to speak different languages but may not have the suitable accent in the foreign language which may result in some people from a different nationality finding it difficult to understand a foreign person’s accent, e.g. a lady from Russia may be able to speak English as she knows English words and sentences but may not have a good accent so some English/Irish people may not understand what she’s trying to say.

Also the person may not speak clearly enough which can be another language barrier. They may speak too slow or even too fast and sometimes their tone of voice can be too quiet or too loud which some people from a different nationality and accent may find difficult to understand.

 

Different nationalities, different countries speak in different accents even in their own language. E.g. people from London have a different accent in English than Irish people. This means some people may not understand each other’s different accent as the accent may not be clear, speaking too fast etc.

 

Barriers in Interpersonal skills

  

Background noise

 

 

Background noise produces its own barrier too in interpersonal skills as it may cause a barrier disruption for example when someone is doing a presentation and talking to the audience. Background noise may be caused by building work outside, sounds from other places, people talking and not paying attention to the speaker etc.

 

This can be a barrier in interpersonal skills which can disturb other people during their presentation.

 

The background noise can be a barrier in interpersonal language as the people during the presentation might not be able to hear the speaker clearly enough and also the speaker and even the audience might not be able to fully focus during the presentation.

 

Also if the audience won’t turn off their phones or put them into silent mode, the phone noise can disturb the presentation such as a message tone or ring tone.

 

Barriers in Communicating in Writing

 

  

Documents not well structured:

 

Text font, text colour and layout can be barriers in communicating in written form, e.g. the text colour can be too blurry for the audience to see or too bright, the text font can be too bold and the font size can be too small for seeing it clearly or too big. Also the page layout can be a barrier as it can be too bright in colour or it can be too dark, especially if the text and layout colour is similar, this can cause people not to see or understand clearly enough the text or what is written.

 

 

Too much text in written communication can be a barrier too. People might not be interested in reading something which contains a lot of writing/typed text as this could cause people to become bored and lose interest in reading that text.

 

Text language can be a barrier in written communication too. Text language can be written in different languages which not all people would understand, especially people from a different language.

Also the presenter may not use headings during the presentation. This means that the audience may not understand what the information is about, so it’s important to use headings.

Also the presenter may not use bullet points in the presentation. This means the audience may find it boring or difficult to read if there is too much information put into one slide, it is best to use up to 4 bullet points to shorten the amount of information presented.