There were a lot of great speeches and great speakers last night during class. I always enjoy the informative speeches because we learn a little bit about everyone in class, their interests, and their experiences. I’m looking forward to your speeches this week and next. I’m hoping everyone is able to make some improvement based on the class feedback from last week, and I’m hoping that everyone will be able to stretch their speaking abilities a bit this week.
Below is the PowerPoint that I use for the reading assignments for Workshop 2. Of course, last night was a team teaching event, so you didn’t see these, but there are some points here that I would like to reiterate in Workshop 4, and we’ll have some activities to reinforce the concepts.
Here is another good site that interactively discusses some of the topics of this week’s reading, such as paralanguage, body language, tone of voice, proximity, and cultural uses of time, space, clothing, and gender. If some of the concepts of Chapters 2 and 3 were not clear to you, this site gives a good overview, and the rest of the topic of Language and Culture on the main page is probably worth of exploration as well.
I’m looking forward to seeing what our team has to teach the class tonight and hearing your informative speeches. It’s always neat to learn a little bit about everyone’s interests and what you enjoy in your spare time.
There is an interesting quiz at this web site. There are only about six or seven questions, but the questions are interesting in that they try to get you to decipher body language, examine the cultural aspects of communication (something I kind of wish were emphasized more in this course by the university), and predict how people will react to certain situations. There is a video series that goes along with this, and I think I might see if the university has one that I can preview for use in one of our later workshops.
One of the topics of this week’s reading is the process people use to listen to what is communicated to them and what they do with that information internally once it has been communicated to them. I found this interesting list out of the University of Minnesota-Duluth student handbook. Although this list applies more to a classroom environment, you could also apply this to a meeting at work or to the presentations your classmates will be giving this week.
Maintain eye contact with the speaker.
Focus on content, not delivery.
Avoid emotional involvement.
Avoid distractions.
Treat listening as a challenging mental task.
Stay active by asking mental questions.
Use the gap between the rate of speech and your rate of thought.
I think my favorite one out of the list is the one about treating listening as a challenging mental task. While it is easy to tune out poor communicators and blame them afterwards for their lack of skills, there are some occasions where what we are listening to is important to our jobs or even our lives. If a 911 operator sounded like he or she didn’t know what you were talking about, wouldn’t you take the time to actively listen to the person on the line and make sure they understood your location and situation? And, vice versa, those types of people are trained to decipher what a person in a highly emotional state is saying so they know what type of help to send and where to send it.
There’s a really good video on improving your listening skills in the Bachelor’s curriculum. I’m going to see if I can grab it for Workshop 4. I know a lot of people were bothered by the video choice this past week, although I think it was good for review.
Interest: what is the receiver’s interest in what the sender is communicating?
Competition: what other messages is the receiver hearing that the sender has to compete against for attention?
Cost/Consequences: what are the costs and consequences perceived by the receiver in focusing on a particular communication event to the neglect of other competing communications?
Willingness: what is the willingness of the receiver to listen at all?
Time: does the time it takes the sender to communicate interfere with the receiver’s needs/agenda?
Location: does the location make it uncomfortable or distracting for the receiver to understand what the sender is communicating?
Motivating Factors/Belief Systems/Sensitivity: is the sender sensitive to the receiver’s needs and attitudes?
Timing/Appropriateness: is the sender communicating at a time that is convenient for the receiver to hear it and is the message timing convenient to the receiver’s pre-existing plans?
There are other communications-related tidbits at the link as well, but these seemed most appropriate to the reading topics this week.
Here are the PowerPoint slides from last night’s class:
In addition, I will be emailing you the rubrics for the team teaching presentation and the individual speeches over the weekend. Remember the team teaching presentation must be a minimum of 1 hour in length, and the speeches will be 3 to 5 minutes.
To give you an idea of how this coming week and the following week will go so you can prepare: we’ll start class off with the individual speeches. That will probably last about an hour-and-a-half. The team teaching will follow the speeches. After that will be a video and maybe a quick recap of some of the points of the reading.
ASB 868, I have been woefully lax this week about providing content to your class, and while my post earlier in the week about the perils of Orwell’s 1984 happening about 25 years too late might have sparked some interesting thoughts, I want to provide content specific to your classroom experience. I think our discussions tonight might provoke some ideas, but in the meantime, you might find the tags to the right on Communication and Public Speaking of some interest to you. The problem with blogging on about a communications class is that there are so many other facets to the subject than just simply giving speeches. So, anyway, in the meantime, look in those subjects for some past articles of interest, and perhaps (God willing), I will be able to come up with some more subjects to post on this week.
As you can see to the left, I haven’t put up any links yet for your COM 115 class. One issue I had is that the link to the web site of the textbook no longer works. So, in the meantime, you might find some of the public speaking links useful, as we will start right in during Workshop 1 with presenting in front of the class (don’t worry, it’s not part of the homework and it won’t be graded).
One thing I was able to find online about your textbook is that it’s sold online by Target, just in case you were wanting to pick up some of the fancy food and furniture they sell and a communications text at the same time. My wife will be so happy when she finds this out as they are her favorite store. I am no longer allowed in Target because I continually make cracks while I am in there about how they are owned by the French.
Sorry if all that sounded weird… it is Friday morning after all. Anyway, I will be looking for more communications-oriented subjects to start putting up here in the coming weeks, so keep on the look-out, and have a good weekend!
For those of you visiting for the first time from the COM 115 class in Greenwood, welcome! Our class will start on Thursday May 8, and I’m looking forward to getting into this class. I haven’t gotten to teach too many communications courses this year, so I’m looking forward to getting back to the subject.
You will find my syllabus and assignment list on the tabs at the top of this page. I’m not going to change the assignments due for Workshop 1, but I am making some changes to the course of which you will want to take note. I’m still revamping a little bit from when I last taught this course last fall, so you might want to take a “wait and see” approach for now, but everything will be finalized by next week.
Also, about my classroom blog—this is kind of an experiment of mine to see how students use a collaborative workspace in a non-online course. It’s nice to have all my classroom information organized in one place online. I’m still trying to get things set up for links and other information of note on this site, so please keep visiting daily to see what is new. If you have any suggestions of what you’d like to see on this page, please let me know, and I will see if I can get something up there. Above all else, this blog is here to serve you the student, so please offer whatever feedback you would like.
In the meantime, feel free to contact me if you have any questions, and I look forward to meeting all of you next week!
The Indianapolis Star had an article in Monday’s paper on Chick-Fil-A and other businesses that are expressive in their Christian beliefs.
Here is a question: what about companies that overtly use Jesus to advertise their products or services (such as placing Scriptures or Christian symbols on vehicles, advertisements, etc.)? Is that a misappropriation of the Gospel? Even worse, what about such companies that use Jesus to advertise their business and deliver underperforming work that may lead people away from the Gospel by that witness?
