The effectiveness of teaching communication skills on willingness to communicate with others and preventing shyness of slow paced adolescents

The purpose of this study was to study the effect of communication skills training on the desire to communicate with others and to prevent the shyness among slow paced adolescents. The research method was semi-experimental with pretest-posttest design with control group. The statistical population of the study consisted of all 13-15 year-old slow paced female students in the city of Ghaenat (South Khorasan Province) in the academic year of 2013-2014. From this community, 24 slow-paced girls were selected by random sampling method and randomly assigned to two experiment and control groups (each group consisted of 12 students). Teachers or parents of both groups answered the research questionnaires (pre-test). The experiment group was trained in communication skills for 10 sessions of 45 minutes and the control group did not receive any education. At the end, both groups responded to the research questionnaires (post-test). The tool was a measure of the Samouie’s Shyness Questionnaire and Ganji’s Desire to Communicate. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS software version 22 using covariance analysis. The results showed that the effect of communication skills training on the desire to communicate with others (P=0.50, F=0.000) and coping with shyness (F=153.49, P=0.000) is meaningful. That is, the difference between the experiment and control groups in terms of the effect of communication skills training on the desire to communicate and coping with shyness is meaningful. Communication skills training for the experiment group compared to the control group significantly improves the desire to communicate with others and deal with shyness among slow paced adolescents.