Term Assessment One

Read and follow the instructions for each of the seven assessment items below.

Use Google docs to write and edit your responses and share your document's link with me via email to comm2110.09@gmail.com with 2110 A1 YourName in the subject field. Submit your responses no later than midnight, June 30th.

1. Engage in a conversation and identify and apply the existing contexts and elements of noise during a your exchange. Remember, there are five contexts and three types of noise.

2. In a different communication context (meaning a different person in a different conversation) from number one, document your own perception process as you speak with someone else. What perceptual influences did you deal with? Write about the perception theories you might automatically default to, such as the Attribution theory, Self-fulfilling Prophesy, the Implicit Personality theory. Then comment about how the makeup of your self–concept influences your perception.

3. Practice active listening in your communication. This is easier said than done (pardon the pun), as you may need to encourage someone close to you to self-disclose. At the very least write about your attempts, but what I’m most interested in is the effect your active or passive listening has on the person to whom you’re listening. Indicate whether you were active or passive, perhaps both, and what listening style you used during the exchange.

4. Understand the risks and advantages involved in increasing self-disclosure. You might be able to respond to this item with your research from item three. Write about the risks or advantages that evolved from allowing yourself to be seen, the vulnerability of your self-disclosing to another.

5. Get out of your box and strike up a conversation with a stranger who shares very little of your own cultural frame of reference, someone you normally wouldn’t speak with for whatever reason. Write about your experience discussing how you handled the situation, what changes, if any, did you make in the way you spoke to this person, what cultural insecurities you may have experienced. The rules for this include:

• The person you speak with must be on your social level, meaning waiters in restaurants and retail salespeople are off limits for this since they’re paid to talk with complete strangers. Likewise, if you’re employed in a service position, you can’t use that context for this item.
• Be careful with whom you decide to approach.
• Don’t patronize. If you have to force it, it won’t work.

6. Practice your assertiveness and develop your confidence with the person you’ve identified in your notes as one with whom you experience communication apprehension. Write about your success or the areas in which you found you might need a little help.

7. Are you humanistic or pragmatic in your interpersonal approaches? Or are you both? Detail your communicative make-up, and what changes in your communication you see yourself making as a result of what you’ve been learning.