Glossary of Technical Terms

Goal

The end result towards which your effort will be going to, provide general purpose and direction.

Independence

Someone who has independence is able to act without depending on others. E.g. for financial support, approval or assistance in completing a task.

Integrity

Another word for integrity is honesty and it is essential in most jobs as it means other colleagues and higher members of staff can trust you with important tasks as they trust you with what you are doing.

Interpersonal Skills

For communication to happen, two or more people must be involved. One person expresses a message through words, signs, signals, facial and bodily expressions or even silence. The other person uses his/her senses to gather aspect of the message.

Numeracy skills

All jobs require some sort of numeric skills although very few jobs only require a high degree of maths.

Organisational

This means the people need to be able to work anytime anywhere.

Perception

Is the way in which different ways that each person sees things through their own eyes.

Planning

This helps each person to keep an eye on their tasks at hand and it helps them sort out their schedules and to meet deadlines at the end of the day. Keeps people on track during the day to do the things that they need too.

Prioritising

Identify which tasks are most important and putting these at the top of your ‘to do’ list.

Soft Skills

Skills that manipulate how people interact with each other, e.g. analytical thinking, creativity, diplomacy, effective communication, flexibility, leadership, listening skills, problem solving, team building and a willingness for change.

Specific Skills

Specific Skills is a specific skill to work in a certain field.

Team working

This when each person individually work together as a group to complete a task that has been set. Team working means that each person contributes to the group with their own ideas and suggestions and the task is spilt equally between the whole group and everyone puts in the same effort.

Frequently asked questions

1.    Give three examples of soft skills.

Flexibility, Leadership and Teambuilding

2.    Describe a strategy for problem solving.

Plan a step by step guide on how to accomplish the task at hand

3.    How can you maintain the attention of your audience during a presentation?

In order to maintain the attention of your audience during a presentation you could maintain eye contact with the audience, to change the tone of your voice and also to use visual effects that engage the audience and make it more interesting for the audience. You could also encourage the audience to take part in your presentation to make it enjoyable for the audience. Not to fill to much in the presentation and have as little as possible on the slides as not to discourage the audience and stop them from engaging and learning.

4.    What are the differences between open questions, closed questions and probing questions?

An open question is an invitation to the other person in the conversation to take control of the conversation by talking back to the person that asks the question. An open question can be the following:

“How are you today?”

A closed question is the way a person expresses that a reply to a question is limited and is only limited to one or two words and these words can be the following:

“yes” or “no”

A probing question is used to extract the information that the person asking the question can get information that they wanted to achieve. It may be effective in this to repeat the question but the down side of repeating a question can be seen to the person that is answering the question as aggressive or impolite.

5.    Explain the purpose of proofreading. How else can you ensure the     accuracy of written text?

Before you send a written report for example it is essential that you review the work and check your work for accuracy. When you first create a report it is called a draft. Each time someone redrafts there report they should proofread it to check the document for errors. Arrange with someone to look over your work as with your own eye it is very tricky to find errors in your own work. Also read your work more slowly than you normally would and read it out loud and focusing on one word at a time. Also

read your report backwards line by line to see your errors yourself.