Talking the Talk

By Laura Cummings

Communication is an integral part of our everyday lives - good communication skills are a serious asset in the workplace, at home and in any learning institution. An inability to properly express ourselves can lead to everything from fights with significant others to slow service at restaurants.

That's where Dr. Aviva Freedman steps in. She is a professor at Carleton University, in the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies. She is also highly involved in other groups and organizations on campus that help both students and citizens alike to learn better communication.

One such place is Carleton's Centre for Communication in Professional Activity (CCPA), where Freedman is the director. The Centre's focus is on communicative skills, practices and cultures for both individuals and organizations, for purposes of learning, creativity and innovation.

Funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and teammates from both Carleton and McGill University are helping Freedman to conduct one current study: the comparative communications skill sets needed by young people to excel in either university or workplace settings.

"University is about learning and showing what you have learned," she said in an interview last year. "Work is about informing and persuading. For example, if you are writing a paper you often save the really juicy bits for your final argument and the professor will read a long paper. At work, you state key points up front and no one is going to read anything too long. This explains, in part, why students are unprepared for the workplace."

Another research area Freedman and the CCPA deals with is how technology and communication interact. New communication methods like e-mail - now used as frequently as the telephone - can complicate conversations instead of simplifying them.

"So much of what is sent by email is sloppy," Freedman said. "Informality can actually leave an impression of disrespect for your reader and damage a work relationship."