Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Blog Post #1 Effective Communication Skills

Hi people, this is Jake here writing my first blog post for the module. I have had a blog before, but instead of writing about everyday stuff, it was more of a website for me to upload random essays which I wrote from time to time. Sadly, the start of school meant that there wasn't enough time to pursue my literary interests, and I had to stop updating it.

The reason I chose this module was that effective communications have always been a big problem to me. While I am an approachable and generally friendly person, many people have commented that I have an arrogant air about me, which baffles me as my words do not reflect this persona. I thus conclude that it is my non-verbal communications, for example my habit walking with my face slightly turned up, which I can’t seem to change at all, that is giving off this vibe. Effective communications mean to be able to avoid all misunderstandings and through this module, I hope to be able to identify, and thus change any bad habits in nonverbal communications that I have, such as body language and tonality. I have also often wondered why some people are able to hold a conversation with anyone under the sun, while many others stammer out one or two sentences before falling into awkward silences which are uncomfortable to both parties. What did these people do wrong? And what did the former group do right? The intricacies of communications presents a mystery to me which I hope to be able to uncover through this module.

8 comments:

  1. Greetings to the person sitting next to me! There's a saying that only your neighbour can see the back of your head (otherwise a mirror would be useful!) and there will always be things about yourself that you will be unaware of.
    That could be the basis of "bad first impressions"
    Mannerisms are formed over time and changing undesirable ones will unfortunately take a certain amount of time as well, but it is not impossible!
    We can't always give people the right impression of ourselves, but we can always prove them wrong. ^^

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  2. Hey Jake, is this post suppose to be the assignment 1? So that I can start commenting without delay!

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  3. hi jake!

    I realized we seemed to have similar understanding of what effective communication means. :)

    I've always been envious of people who can converse about anything under the sun, 'cause I am usually the one that cause conversation to come to an awkward standstill. *laughs

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  4. Hey Stella, so nice to see that someone shares my views too!!!

    Don't worry, we'll talk more in class and solve your 'problem'! =)

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  5. Thanks, Jake, for this first post. I like the way you explain your needs in communication very concretely, and honestly. I also like the fact that you provide a motivation for taking this module, to "uncover", as it were, the "mystery" of communication.

    Since this is an "official" post though, I would leave out the first paragraph, perhaps putting that in a post of its own. That paragraph's information is very casually presented, and it is not focused on the assigned topic. I also wonder about this statement:

    Effective communications mean to be able to avoid all misunderstandings and through this module, I hope to be able to identify, and thus change any bad habits in nonverbal communications that I have, such as body language and tonality.

    Does that definition of effective communication really work, even while it focuses on the negative?

    You might also look at the sentence structure of the sentence. Concise?
    I'd call it a run on sentence, one that needs to be broken into component parts to be more effective.

    In any case, Jake, I appreciate your effort.

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  6. Brad, thanks for your comments. For the definition of effective communications, I believe that there are two sides to it and unfortunately I only wrote down the negative aspect of it. I will take your advice to heart in my future posts. Cheers!

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  7. Sup Jake,

    That's so sweet of you when you said you will take Brad's advice to your heart in future posts. It got me chortling! I'm not sure why I did though!

    Your post was pretty straight forward to understand, Jake. It's fantastic to know you have a vision for yourself even before you took the module. In any case, that is the rule; there is nothing wrong with it.

    The only issue is the one Brad already brought up. You mentioned you think effective communication can eliminate all misunderstandings might be guilty of spurious idealism, which is the square of the impossibility of the word idealism with no adjective in front of it.

    Effective communication already cannot attain perfectly itself, because no human agent is intrinsically perfect. It follows also some misunderstanding will always exists as a result. We may work to try to eliminate as many misunderstandings are possible, but never completely.

    There are also some sentencing and grammar errors I observed. You may want to check out your last sentence. It should be 'present' in singular rather than plural.

    Cheers

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