Communication skills are some of the most broadly-applicable and impactful talents you can develop. This topic encompasses both written and verbal communication, and includes many interrelated, more specialized subtopics such as business writing, email writing, presentations, public speaking, interviewing, and negotiation.

Improving your communications skills is important because it can help your career in virtually any field. There are few jobs that don’t require emails or other written forms of communication, and most jobs require working with a team and expressing yourself clearly to colleagues. Communication skills also help you interview for a job - or negotiate for a raise.

Making yourself understood isn’t just useful for your professional life. Effectively expressing who you are, how you feel, and what you want is important to achieving satisfaction in your personal life as well. And regardless of whether you’re a native English speaker or learning it as a second language, communication is a skill that continues developing over the course of your entire life - and you can always improve.

Strong communications skills can improve your prospects in just about any career, whether you’re working as part of a team of software developers or in the business world. They are particularly important for management roles at companies, since the ability to direct and motivate personnel depends on a keen sense of what to say and how to say it.

There are also careers that are centered around communications. If you have strong writing skills and an eye for a good story, you can work as a journalist or author. If you can distill complex scientific, computing, or similar types of technical content into clear, useful formats such as instruction manuals or journal articles, you can become a technical writer.

If your communication talents are more about building interpersonal connections and shaping narratives through both the written and spoken word, you can work as a public relations (PR) specialist. PR specialists today must be adept at using social media and other internet platforms to succeed, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics expects the demand for communications professionals broadly to continue to grow as new platforms emerge.

Yes! Coursera offers a wide range of courses and Specializations that can improve your communications skills. Regardless of whether you’re a native English speaker or learning English as a second language, and whether you’re looking to build general skills in topics like writing or more specialized topics like delivering presentations, Coursera has choices from great schools like Georgia Tech, the University of Michigan, and the University of Colorado Boulder.

And, with virtual live sessions, office hours, and team projects, you can be assured that online courses on Coursera can help you develop spoken as well as written communications skills. Indeed, with online communication becoming more important than ever, learning online is a perfect way to practice and improve these skills remotely, on a flexible schedule, and at a lower cost than on-campus courses.