Abstract:

Interpersonal communication is one of the best means of knowing someone better. In a developing country like India, where the student-teacher ratio in a classroom is very high, it is difficult for students to know each other well. There is the formation of ingroups and outgroups, especially due to the multicultural context, among other factors, creating greater feelings of otherness. Unacquaintance and misconceptions about others may lead to an uncomfortable classroom environment. Such classroom dynamics are detrimental to learning and develop fear or anxiety towards expressing oneself and comfortably participating. It develops communication apprehension, which has long-term impeding effects on the life of students, such as poor academic performance and low perception of self. Students carry such negative learning experiences even when joining a college of national importance or courses of greater significance, such as Engineering. Besides, even in colleges, the classroom environment remains the same as the schools.

Language Labs in Engineering colleges are conducted with the students to help them improve their communication skills for better industry-based performance. They are conducted with the sophomore batches after the students get acquainted with the new environment and the people around them. As part of the course designed to address the communication apprehension of students, 80 sophomore students of an Engineering Institute in India appeared on the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA-24) scale by McCroskey's (1982) conducted to assess the communication apprehension, which also includes interpersonal communication. As these students took admissions during the Covid-19 lockdown, their first year was limited to virtual interaction. We introduced an activity that involved one-to-one conversations among the students paired randomly. The students were given the option to choose among three topics and a time limit of 20 minutes to interact. They wrote about their experience after the interaction. The experience of the students is analysed qualitatively and categorised as positive and negative. Further, they are categorised into themes to identify the impact of this activity in a classroom environment. Our findings indicate that students have the highest apprehensions in contexts of public speaking and interpersonal communication, according to PRCA-24. Most students had a positive experience from the interpersonal communication activity with their peers. Students were surprised to find commonalities with their peers, appreciated knowing closely about them, felt good to have a listener and being able to open up to them, and were delighted to have a new friend through the activity. We recommend considering such classroom activities as platforms to help students know each other from a closer level and break the barriers to open up for better learning in a comfortable classroom environment.

Keywords:

Interpersonal communication, multicultural classroom, classroom environment, activity.