RE: Efficient understanding of communication (Unformatted)

[Cynthia Nadalini <invenia@guate.net>]

On Monday, July 05, 1999 5:26 AM, H Sodersved [SMTP:info@expira.se] wrote:
> This "thinning effect" of knowledge in such a serious area as the Deming 
Philospohy of Quality is not all positive to me. I would be glad to hear 
other international responses on this. The lack of cross-linguistic 
DEN-member's interest in taking repetitive part in a DEN subject discussion 
might be a sign of this phenomena.
> The more obvious reason might yet be people's available time.

Available time is definitely reason #1, but I think in part it also has to 
do with language, because writing in a foreign language is more time 
consuming.  IMO, when it comes to "philosophizing" it's easier when it's in 
your oun language, not just because of what you have to say (mostly when 
there's a word in your language that describes better what you intend to 
say than a word in the foreign language), but also when it comes to 
undestand what other people are trying to explain.  There's also another 
thing, as Hakan's post mentioned: there are cultures where body language is 
realy important to get your message through.  I don't know what my latin 
colleges may think, but I think latin people uses a lot of body language in 
their communications.  Also, latin people are really social people, we tend 
to chat a lot, it's part of our culture, we know everybody's life. We know 
what the neighbor is up to most of the time.

But... I also thing written communication can be helpful sometimes.  As I 
have experienced with my students, emailing has become a very useful tool 
for those who have questions about the class but won't come up to you and 
ask.  They prefer to write them down and send their questions in a more 
impersonal way (i.e. not face to face) ...they feel more confortable with 
that.  And I think the ones that emailed me during the trimester learned a 
lot more than if there had not been such communication media.  And there's 
the other way around...a student to whom I returnd a paper so that he could 
make some corrections, gave them to me by phone (spoken), because he had 
difficulty trying to get his ideas in writing.
So, my conclusion is, email is just a communication tool, of course, just 

as spoken words, or body language, or other, and just as all of them, 
sometimes is useful, sometimes is not, but most of the time the combination 
of two or more of them seems to be the most efficent way to get your ideas 
through, depending on who you are communicating with, and what is that that 
you're trying to communicate.

Regards.

Cynthia N.
INVENIA
Guatemala, Central America
invenia@guate.net
Phone/Fax: (502) 5946161
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