Speech
Communication presentations, personal perspective of the expositions, and my learning
outcome
This blog was created to
comply with my speech class assignment and it only intends to share my point of
view and first-hand observation of facts of this class guided by Professor
Sherri Sinkoff, whom with a very clever and constructive strategy of bringing
interesting guests (professional colleagues), and/or imparting tools and tips in
every class, allows us (the students) to take control of this course without directly
noticing that we are gaining knowledge with experimental learning. In other words,
Professor Sinkoff introduces, directs/conducts, and influences this class while
we explore, and learn the course material hands-on through presentations,
events, etc., and the experiences we get from each assignment.
In our very first class,
each of us (the students) presented ourselves to get used to the first days of
a new semester, gain some trust among us, and get to know each other. During
the second class, the presentations for chapters 3, 9, and 10 of our Cengage
COMM 6 book were assigned. By Thursday, January 13th, 2022, the
first group presented chapter 3. The following paragraphs are a recapitulation
of our previous classes, and for whoever missed the first couple of classes
will be an introduction and my interpretation of some of the events that took
place as part of the presentations. As my preferred choice to write this blog,
I will use narration to describe our class’s past occurrences during the rest
of this blog, which, as it will be observed in the next paragraphs, description
will be the preferred method to share my perspective.
The main goal of this
chapter was to define the part that communication plays in relation to culture.
The learning objectives of this segment allow us to reflect and gain knowledge
about the impact that culture (social behavior, beliefs, race, traditions,
nationality, ethnicity, etc.) has on the way that people communicate with each
other.
Group number one conformed of
twelve students including our class leader did a wonderful job presenting their
themes after only one day and a few hours of preparation. Even though the period
was quite short for my classmates, they all manage to organize themselves in a
timely manner to be able to share a very informative presentation.
To fast-forward a bit my narration,
this presentation included great multimedia material such as videos, pictures,
and graphics with statistics with a summarized explanation of the topics. Professor
Sherri provided feedback throughout the entire presentation and the rest of the
students participated in the chat sharing opinions, comments and asking
questions to clarify doubts about upcoming presentations. Finally, our class leader
concluded the exposition with a summary of the lecture with some definitions, explanations
of her understanding of the subjects and added a self-experience example for
better acknowledgment of the themes.
What caught my attention during
the presentation was how much culture can affect the form a person communicates
with the rest of the population. From the way people dress to the way people speak,
many factors intervene in how we communicate with each other depending on their
culture, and it is impressive how challenging it can become to communicate with others when we are not
willing to accept different traditions and forms of expression.
My learning outcome from this chapter, is to be open-minded, to respect other cultures, and to avoid communication barriers/conflicts. To enrich our communication, we must learn how to accept other cultures and get involved with our surroundings in any type of environment, at work, school, church, doing extracurricular activities, etc. The most familiar you get with the people you interact with and their backgrounds, the better opportunities you will have to express your thoughts, share your ideas, exchange information, and have fluent communication. Why is culture important?
Group two: Group Communication / Communicating in groups (Chapter 9)
The learning objectives of
this chapter were:
ü ---> Identify
different types of groups,
ü ---> Recognize
the characteristics of healthy groups,
ü ---> Assimilate
the stages for group development, and
ü ---> Apply
strategies to manage group conflict effectively.
There are several types of
groups that were introduced and described in our exposition, some of them were:
family, social groups, support groups, interest groups, service groups, workgroups
and teams, heterogeneous and homogeneous groups, virtual groups, and its subnets
such as asynchronous virtual groups, healthy groups, and interdependent groups.
I was part of this team, and
the following will be a brief description of my participation with this magnificent
team. First and foremost, we created a WhatsApp group chat where all of us (the
members involved in group 2) planned and organized how we were going to develop
and present the slides corresponding to our chapter. We decided to use Google
slides (https://docs.google.com) and the
easiest and most convenient way to access, use, and modified anytime, anywhere,
the slides for our presentation. Then we discussed and agreed on how to split
the content of this chapter so each member of this gang will have an equal
amount of work to do to build our presentation. Unfortunately, that did not
work out as expected due to a new member was introduced a day after we decided
the words we were going to take, and our group leader had to change them a few
times on the assignment list. Once we got that part clear, we proceeded to
create our respective slides and, in my opinion, the outcome was a well-structured,
striking, and resourceful masterpiece… I know, I am exaggerating a little bit but is because I want
to praise my group for time well invested in creating the slides and everything
in them. But taking it seriously, we all put a lot of effort to come up with a presentation
that I believe met our expectations and satisfied the professor’s requirements.
We included a lot of media
content in our presentation, videos, gifs pictures, etc. to illustrate our
topics and we used colorful backgrounds to catch the attention of our fellow
classmates. I think a lot of people were able to relate some videos from our exposition
since half of the videos we included came from popular movies that we are all
familiar with somehow.
Everything went smoothly, we
had no technical difficulty with the slides and the audio and video worked
accordingly… Some of the members of our group were not able to attend the class
the day of the presentation; however, they did a spectacular job recording
their parts of the exposition and indirectly were able to participate and most
importantly contribute to the final lecture.
About thirty minutes from
the time the class started, it was my turn to present my topics. Funny fact, my
classmate Hidalgo unintentionally open his microphone, and the iCarly theme
song (iCarly gif) and some reggaeton music (reggaeton gif) was playing when I was about to talk, I must
admit it caught me by surprise and distracted me for the first couple of
minutes because I could not take the iCarly song out of my head… I used to love
that show when I was like 12 or 13 back in 2008/9. I started my exposition very
confident of myself, what I learned from my reviews and what I had to say, but in
the middle of my speech I crossed the order of some words of a written summary that
I had previously prepared to read and explain my topics from the book, and I got
a bit nervous when that happened; therefore, I have a feeling that the rest of
my lecture did not go as smooth and definitely not as I expected it. I wish I
would have gained my confidence back after that confusion, but I did not. I
must admit that kind of scramble is usually my main problem during expositions.
I start to hesitate about different forms to express my ideas in a better way
and get stuck while doing that, or when I encounter a word that I do not know
how to pronounce well, or I cross the context of the words because I am
thinking in Spanish Thinking in Spanish (English is not my maternal language), and then I struggle with
the rest of the things I want/need to communicate… Unfortunate - gif
I was able to continue with the exposition despite my setbacks, I slightly had to improvise with some parts almost at the end and I am aware that the factors mentioned before affected what could have been a more straightforward, clear, and concise performance. Setbacks gif Setbacks gif 2 Setback gif 3 Your setback is a setup for your comeback
Shortly leaving aside the main topic, I want to thank Professor Sherri for giving me a perfect score. I truly appreciate it because it has boosted my confidence again, and it has motivated me to do much better next time. I do think I have a little bit of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and that is why I am always noticing so much the things that according to myself are not up to the standards (probably my own standards at this point) … Anyhow, thank you again, professor, for your superb grading. Thumbs up - gif
Now, returning to the main subject
of this blog, I explained my lecture topics with short definitions and examples
of the following words: asynchronous virtual groups, social information
processing theory, netiquette, and healthy group. For better comprehension of whoever
is reading this blog, a brief explanation of the previous words follows:
Ø ***Asynchronous virtual groups are virtual groups that are opposed to real-time, in other words, a person does not have to be present during the meeting to participate and provide feedback to the rest of the team. For example, a person can watch a recording of a meeting that has already concluded, at any time and will still be able to provide his/her input through a group chat, a message board, a work/study platform, a personal text to the leader of the team, or even a video conference programmed for another day. Nowadays there are many forms that allow you to be part of something without actually being present.
Ø ***Social information processing theory basically describes how individuals and groups interact and develop relationships in virtual environments. A clear example is this class, it is purely virtual, so, unfortunately, we do not get to meet each other in person, but through group chats, group assignments, live classes, phone or video calls, social media, and many other technological tools we are able to associate with our peers almost as if we would if we were talking to one another face to face.
Ø ***Netiquette:
An easy definition is the norms, personal behavior, values, respect, code of
politeness, etcetera that we utilize to communicate with others in a virtual
setting.
***Healthy groups are characterized by ethical goals, interdependence, cohesiveness, productive norms, accountability, and synergy. In simpler words, if a group works and functions in an equitable, productive, positive, and satisfactory way, it is a healthy group, where everyone is equal and fair to one another, where everybody gets to share their opinion, and contributes to a common goal of success.
I particularly consider that the best way to communicate in a group is being willing to work as a team (as the most important rule of all) … I am a huge believer that union makes force (Union gif Union 2 gif); cooperation/alliance is vital for any group to function accordingly, and some of the most important mechanisms used to enrich any group are:
§ >>>To develop
productive norms and act in accordance with these guides.
§ >>>Always
being ethical, clear, focused, accountable, responsible, reliable, interdependent,
and proactive.
Group three: Leadership and problem solving (Chapter 10)
The third group was the last
team to present, and the main learning objectives of their lecture were to explain
how leadership functions in teams and how to successfully achieve problem-solving.
Leadership is defined as the
act of guiding a group of people and according to our textbook’s definition, leadership
is a process “whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to
achieve a common goal” (Northouse, 2013, p. 5).
This lesson also mentions communication
solutions in a group setting and the ways they can be delivered (written, oral
and virtual formats) and forms to determine the effectiveness of a group through
teamwork, adequate dynamics that will help to mark out and analyze a problem, which
consequently will induce to find the right procedure to solve the issue(s).
Sadly, some of the presenters
(classmates) had some technical issues with their audio and/or video, but they
were all able to share the information needed to comprehend the concepts of
this chapter. Besides some tech difficulties, the slides this group created had
great multimedia resources. Their videos were short and to the point and overall,
this team did a stupendous job illustrating the different types of tasks, maintenance,
and procedural roles and simplifying for us the parts that compose leadership responsibilities
and guidelines for meeting leaders, which is extremely important and helpful for
upcoming assignments in this class since we have to create an agenda and the
first step of guidelines for meeting leaders is to prepare and distribute an agenda.
This group also described
the guidelines for meeting participants, which I believe is often ignored, we
care much more about how leaders interact and express during a meeting, than
how we manifest and react as participants. It is crucial to be prepared for, during,
and after the meeting, by:
----- Getting
familiar with the material that will be discussed during the congregation.
Being
ready with the task(s) you were assigned to do.
----- Managing
productively the assigned time to accomplish short- or long-term goals of the
meeting and the project in general.
----- Learning
how to communicate your thoughts (provide feedback) and get clarification of
your doubts (ask questions).
-----Paying
attention and listening actively to the information provided during the meeting.
----- Staying
focused on the specific agenda, so the main goal stays on track.
-----Taking
notes and contributing in a balanced manner, so everyone has the opportunity to
play their role and work equally.
Another essential topic
explained in this exposition was systematic problem-solving. The following is a
list of steps (from our class book) that will help to resolve any obstacle that
could be encountered in our way.
v Step
one: Identify and define the problem.
v Step
two: Analyze the problem.
v Step
three: Determine criteria for judging solutions.
v Step
four: Generate a host of solutions.
v Step
five: Evaluate solutions and decide, and
v Step
six: Implement the agreed-upon solution and assess it.
To sum up my understanding of
this chapter, good leadership is the positive, proactive, and efficient influence
an individual or organization brings to/upon others.
Links and resources used to
create this blog:
The book used for
presentations: Cengage COMM
6 Speech Communication (ISBN-13: 978-0-357-37027-8).
My blog concludes here. If you made this far, I want to personally thank you for reading my entire composition. Happy - gif Joyful - gif Thank you - gif 1 Thank you - gif 2 Appreciation - gif
