Barriers to Communication

It could be hard to communicate when there is a noisy background because you may not be able to hear or understand the other person properly to fully communicate. - To reduce the impact of this barrier, you could either talk louder or move to a place where it is a bit quieter. This is because then you will be able to hear the person if they talk louder or there will be less background noise.

If you have no signal on your mobile phone it could be a problem because you would not be able to talk to the person because the signal wouldn't allow it. - To reduce the impact of this barrier, you could move to a location where you have a good enough signal to talk on your mobile. If you are in an enclosed space, this can be hard but you need to move to a more open space where the signal is strong enough.

If someone is deaf/blind it will be hard to communicate because they may not be able to hear you or see you so they won't know what's happening. - To reduce the impact of this barrier, you could use hand gestures if they are deaf so they may be able to understand your gestures more, for example; pointing at something if you want their attention focused on that object. If they are blind you will be able to speak to them, but describe everything in detail.

If somebody is too far away you may not be able to hear them properly. Or if its a call for example; England to Australia, it will cost a lot of money to phone somebody that far away. - If somebody is too far to hear you, you can wait and move closer to each other. If you can't move closer, try to talk a bit louder for them to hear you. If an overseas call costs too much, you can try communicating free over the internet.

It will be hard to communicate with someone who speaks a different language to you because when you try to speak to them, you both won't be able to understand each other. - To reduce the impact of this barrier, you should use more hand gestures and use visual communication to help understand each other. For example; drawing a simple picture, pointing to focus their attention on something, or imitating something or someone to help them understand are all ways to overcome this barrier.

If someone is from a different culture to you, it will be hard to communicate because if something means one thing to you in your culture, it could mean something completely different in another culture. - If somebody is from a different culture to you, you should try not to use words specific to your culture. Or you can explain to them what the word means in your culture, then they will understand what you mean when you say it.

If someone has a lack of interest in what you're saying or vise versa, it can be hard to communicate with each other because none of you will want to listen to what the other is saying so you will try not to listen to them and it can become awkward. - Try to make the conversation more interesting by speaking about what they enjoy, then when you have their full attention again, you can go back to what the original focus was. If this does not work, try to encourage them to take control of the conversation, so they are interacting with you.

If someone is not giving eye contact when they are being spoken to, it shows they are not interested in what the other person is saying. So the other person may not want to speak anymore if they know the other person is not interested. - The best thing to do in this situation is to give it a bit of time and come back to speak later when you have their full attention again. Or you could ask them politely for their full attention. If they still don't give you their attention and you need it urgently you should do something to get their attention.

Poorly written work can make it hard to understand something because they may have bad grammar which may make the sentence mean something completely different than what it is supposed to mean. They could also have bad spelling which can make it hard to understand certain words, which can then make the sentence make no sense. - If you cant understand somebody's written work, you may need to think what they are trying to say, or you could ask them personally. Try to relate their written work to the context they are writing about. That should narrow it down to things that the word looks like.

If someone is speaking to quietly, the other person may not be able to hear them properly so they won't be able to make out what they are saying so it can become confusing for the listener because they don't know what they are talking about. - To reduce the impact of this barrier, you could politely ask them to speak a bit louder as you are having trouble hearing their voice. Or ask them to repeat themselves. You can also move a bit closer to them (appropriate distance) so you can hear them better.

Different accents can make communicating hard. Even though they are speaking the same language it can be hard to make out what they are saying because different accents have different ways of saying each word so it can become confusing for the listener. - When listening to somebody with a different accent, you could politely ask them to repeat what they said more clearly for you to understand. If you still don't understand you could even go as far as asking them to spell out the word you cannot understand.

If someone is too tired their words can be slurred so it will be hard to understand what they are saying, because if they are tired they won't want to communicate at all so they will put little effort into doing so. - To reduce the impact of this barrier, you can either speak to them another time when they are more awake, or try to catch their attention if they look at you. Or try to say something that will wake them up a bit and grab their attention.

Slang could hinder communication because the person being spoken to may not understand or know what the slang terms mean. So they may think the slang term means something completely different to what the person saying the slang term means. - To overcome this barrier, the person speaking should not use a slang term out of respect that the other person may not know what it means.

Predominantly in written communication, abbreviations can hinder the understanding of something because the full word isn't used. For example; an abbreviation of a company name, or a short phrase such as I don't know abbreviated to idk. This could cause a problem in communication because the other person involved in the conversation may not know what the abbreviation means. - A way to overcome this barrier is to not use the abbreviation at all so the other person doesn't have to try to work out what it means, instead, they know straight away as you've explained the meaning of the abbreviation without saying the abbreviation.