Human Communication - Diary 9

Nowadays, forming groups is our natural part of life. For example, we need to form a group to do assignment and to complete our mission.  Small group refers that individual depending on one another for common objective or to complement each other. Besides that, Sir Anwari also taught us about format of small group which included the round table, the panel, and the symposium-forum. But, why we need all these things? Actually, we need round table because it enable members to hear clearly when sharing the information. We need the panel because it also can let members to understand easily. Furthermore, symposium shows that each member delivers a prepared presentation much like public speech and conferences. Power in small group also play a vital role in completing mission. Therefore, there are different categories of power inherent indifferent individuals such as legitimate power, referent power, reward power, coercive power, expert power and information power. Besides that, we also learn about types of small group which are idea-generation groups, personal-growth groups, information-sharing groups, and problem-solving groups. 

Sir Anwari also told us that problem-solving group is very important. That is because in this category, group come together to face or solve a certain issue or problem. There are 6 stages in solving issues. Firstly, we need to define and analyse the problem and then establish the criteria for evaluating solutions. After that, Identify possible solutions and evaluate solutions. Lastly, we need to select solutions and then test solutions. If failed, we can try again. If okay , then proceed. For example, I always got a bad result in examination and this is my problem. So, I ask myself , "Why I always score bad result?" After that, I realised that I did not pay attention when lecturer was teaching in class and another reason is I am too lazy to do my homework. Therefore, I try to change myself to solve this problem. I want to concentrate and pay attention in class. Besides that, I also will become hardworking and do homework every day.  I will do revision  before the examination is coming. So, I hope this solutions  could help me to solve my problem.

Finally, small group is very important in our life. That is because small groups are usually formed over a need to address certain issues that would be hard to solve alone.

Human Communication - Diary 8

This week, Sir Anwari taught us about functions of friendship, love and family relationship. 

Actually, friendship is an interpersonal relationship that characterized by mutual regard. Everyone need to trust, provides emotional support and sharing interest to their friends to maintain their friendship. In fact, There are 3 types of friendship which are the friendship of reciprocity, the friendship of receptivity, and the friendship of association. Besides that, friendship could help us to achieve specific goals and help us to recognise own attitude. It also help us to expand our worldview. There are three development stages of friendship which are initial contact & acquaintanceship, casual friendship, and close or intimate friendship. The first stage of friendship is initial contact acquaintanceship. In this stage, impressions are formed and it is important to stay open of the presence of your new acquaintances. The second stage of friendship is casual friendship. In this stage, we can doing things together with friends to enhance friendship. The last stage is close and intimate friendship. In this stage, most intimate form of togetherness. Moreover, value of friendship also will affect by culture, gender differences and technology.

Apart from that, Sir Anwari also taught us about love and romantic relationship. Through this lessons, we know that there are many types of loves such as Eros, Ludus, Storge, Mania, Pragma, and Agape. Eros love is basically represents love comes out with physical attraction, beauty and appearance. Ludus love represents the thrill of excitement and pleasure seeking. The ludic lovers who are individualists or self-centered and would only maintain their relationship with their partner until they become bored. Besides that, storge love represents the act of seeking love but with the absence of pasion and emotion in the process. Pragma love refers that the lover more concerned about the ability of the other partner and the benefits that they could gain from the friendship. On the other hand, mania love show that lover love the thrill of having love and at the same is depressed or worried of having love. Lastly, we learn about agape love. Agape love is a truly unconditional love. In this category , they will loving another with no favor expected in return. Besides that, Sir Anwari also play video for us to make us more understanding about type of loves.

Furthermore, Sir Anwari also taught us about the families. In this lesson, we also learn about types of family. In fact, there are three types of family. For example, traditional couples, independent couples, and separate couples. The traditional couples is the conventional form of family because they will shared values, belief and tolerance for one another. Besides, independent couples shows that individuals in this family setting stresses individuality as the main theme of family. The last one is the separate couples. This family setting is not really a family but individuals in this family stay together for a common benefit like paying the rent or sharing living expenses. 

From this lesson, I learn many things about importance of friendship, loves, and families in daily life. All of these relationship play a vital role in my life. Therefore, I hope that I could maintain relationship with my friends, lovers and families. 

Human Communication - Diary 7

This week, Sir Anwari taught us about relationship stages and theories. After we've developed a good sense to carry out conversation, we can look at how effective interpersonal communication can form and relate to relationships around you. In fact, the relationship stages include contact, involvement, intimacy, deterioration, repair and dissolution.

 The first step is contact . In this stage, perceptual and interactional contact takes place. Second stage is involvement and in this stage people have tighter bonds and engagements with one another. For example, we can ask friends to join with us. After that, intimacy takes place. At this stage, people will have a deep and committed relationship with one another. The next stages is deterioration where other communication factors such as temporal, cultural or societal context weakness the bond with each other. Besides, the fifth stages of relationship is repair where those affected in the deterioration stage try to work things out with one another. Then, the last stages of relationship is dissolution where bonds are broken or returned back to a platonic. 

Apart from that, Sir Anwari also tell us that there are 6 types of the relationship theories such as attraction theory, relationship rules theory, relationship dialectics theory, social penetration theory, social exchange theory and equity theory. From the attraction theory, we know that why the individual will attract to each other. That is because of the similarity, proximity, reinforcement and physical attractiveness and personality. Furthermore, from the relationship rules theory, we know that different relationships have different relationship levels and attributes like friendship rules, romantic rules, family rules and workplace rules. Moreover, relationship dialectics theory describe that people in relationships often want to explore the extremes of the opposite qualities. The three pairs of opposites are closeness and openness, autonomy and connection,and novelty and predictability. The next relationship theory is social penetration theory. This theory describe about the people in relationships have the need to explore each other's personalities. The more deeper relationship would go deeper into the core personality of persons. Besides that, there are still have social exchange theory and equity theory. Both these theories suggests that individuals form relationship with one another based on whether or not it would bring benefit to them. In addition, equity theory is more towards forming professional relationship with one another.

On the other hand, we also learn about the dark side of interpersonal relationship such as jealousy. That is because relationship can get complicated and lead to ugly things in life and with one another. Sir Anwari also tell us that there are different types of jealous such as cognitive jealously, emotional jealously, and behavioral jealously. In conclusion, interpersonal communication is very important to each other in our daily life.

Human Communication - Diary 6

This week, Sir Anwari taught us about "Interpersonal Communication". Interpersonal communication is communication between sender and receiver. It is the process by which people exchange information, feelings, and meaning through verbal and non-verbal messages. The essence of interpersonal communication is through conversation and dialogue. There are five process in the conversation such as opening, feedforward, business, feedback and closing. Besides that, there are three types of principles such as principle of turn-taking, principle of dialogue and the principle of immediacy.

First, principle of turn-taking is described about where speaker and listener exchange roles throughout the conversation. Both speaker and listener will perform and indicate different and various cues during a conversation process. For example, speaker cues include turn-maintaining and turn-yielding while listener cues include turn-requesting and turn-denying.Turn-maintaining is help to maintain speaker's role. Turn-yielding is described that we tell the listener that we're finished and wish to exchange the role of speaker for that listener. Turn-requesting cues is let the speaker know that you like to take a turn as speaker while turn-denying cues is described that listener can deny the cues to take over as speaker.

Secondly, dialogue is a context where two person share message to one another. For example, two friends talking about a common interest - two girls talking about how handsome the boy is. Lastly, immediacy is the creation of closeness, a sense of togetherness, of oneness between speaker and listener. Principle of immediacy is effective communication and conversation requires both parties to take into consideration the relationship and intimacy of one another, as well as adjusting to the environment and the context. 

Besides, Sir Anwari also taught us that there are various type of conversation such as small talk, excuses and apologies, complimenting and advice. As a responsible individual and member of society, we need to maintain a social etiquette and conversational rules.

Human Communication - Diary 5

Last Saturday, we have the replacement class of the human communication because of the on coming Chinese New Year. That day, all of my group member were very anxious because our group had chosen to present the principle of verbal message.

Actually, verbal message is using words to describe our messages and information to the receiver.They are typically straightforward and it is easy for the listener to understand the message being sent. Besides, verbal messages are also sent through the tone, pitch and volume of the voice with which the words are being transmitted. For example, speaker's voice could let the listener know if the speaker is angry, nervous, happy or sad.Therefore, being an effective communicator , it requires more understanding the principles of verbal messages.There are six principles of verbal messages. The first principle, meaning are in people describe that everyone has a unique worldview and style of communicating. When we interpret a message, the message is filtered through our beliefs, values, morals and the way we see the world. So, it means that different people may say different things, but mean the same thing. Likewise, different people may say the same things but different meaning. The second principles of verbal messages is messages meanings are in denotative and connotative. Denotative is literal meaning of a word or it's dictionary meaning. For example, if I look up "dog" in the dictionary the definition is : " A highly variable domestic mammal closely related to the Gray wolf." The denotative meaning of the word dog means that we are literally talking about a dog.

On the other hand, the connotative meaning refers to a word's subjective or emotional meaning. For example, when I say the word "dog" , some may think "cute", "man's best friend", "dirty" and "annoying".

The next principle is messages vary in context/abstraction. It means that words vary in description from concrete to abstract. Abstract terms are general and refer to ideas that can't be physically described. Example of abstract terms would be "love","democracy",and "animal". We can be perceived by the sense s and described. The forth principles of the verbal messages is messages can varying politeness. Politeness means that helping other to save face or avoid embarrassment. The another principle of verbal messages is messages vary in assertiveness. In this principle, assertive people are willing to assert their own rights and speak their minds. However, assertiveness is not all the time desirable(assertive people can be non assertive depends on situation). The last principles is messages meanings can deceive. Lying is when you send a message with false information.There are many different motives for lying such as pro-social deception, self-enhancement deception, selfish deception and anti-social deception. In addition, there are confirmation and disconfirmation messages. Confirmation takes place when you acknowledge others and accept the way this person views themselves . For example, an athlete sees himself as a good football player. Disconfirmation takes place whenever you ignore or devalue someone else's contribution or self-concept. For example, an athlete who thinks he is good  player stays on the bench for most of the season. Areas that affected by disconfirmation and confirmation are racism, sexism, heterosexism and ageism.

Besides, non-verbal messages do not require words. It is using body gestures, slangs, facial expressions and sounds to describe our messages or information to the receiver. Many non-verbal messages are sent without the sender even knowing she sent them, so it is important to be mindful of these mannerisms. For example, a slumping posture or nervous hands can send wrong message that about someone's personality. Non-verbal messages can be used to integrate non-verbal and verbal messages, form and manage impressions, define relationships, structure conversation, and express emotions.Furthermore, the channel of non-verbal messages included body message, eye communication, facial communication, spatial message, artifactual communication, smell communication, touch communication, paralanguage, time communication and silence. Besides, in this topic, I also learn about culture and non-verbal communication. Different country have different cultures and these different cultures perceive non-verbal cues, especially hand gestures , differently from one another. For example, "Reverse V" pose is cute in South East Asian countries but rude in UK. Besides that , colors vary greatly in their meanings from one culture to another. For example, red signifies prosperity and rebirth in China, masculinity in France and UK, blasphemy and death in many African countries. 

In conclusion, verbal communication and non-verbal communication are very important to everyone and it is an awareness of  power which will improve our ability to communicate with others.

Human Communication - Diary 4

This week, Sir Anwari played a movie named "The Miracle Worker" for us. It is a true story of Helen Keller (a deaf, blind and mute girl) and Anne Sullivan, a gripping battle to overcome impossible obstacles and the struggle to communicate.

As a young girl, Helen Keller is stricken with scarlet fever. The illness leaves her blind, deaf and mute . Often frustrated and desperate, Helen flies into uncontrollable rages and tantrums that terrify her hopeless family. After that, her parents seek help from the Perkins Institute, which send them a "half-blind Yankee schoolgirl" named Anne Sullivan to tutor their daughter. After the first separating Helen from her over-protective parents, Anne begins the arduous process of teaching the girl the basics of language. She tries to quell the child tantrums by spelling into Helen's hands whenever she wants something, namely 'cake' and 'doll'. But Helen outsmarts her, hitting Anne in the face with the doll and locks her in the room. Through persistence and love, and sheer stubbornness, Anne breaks through Helen's walls of silence and the darkness and then teaches her to communicate. 

I personally think that this movie is great because it is  about an amazing story of the relationship between Helen Keller and the woman who taught her how to relate to the world around her. In my opinion, the moral value of this movie is perseverance. For example , Anne Sullivan not only overcome her own disability, but enabled an imprisoned child to learn, grow and become a fabled author and public speaker. "The Miracle Worker" is a story and film portraying real human courage, patience, individual and personal will and it will continues to live in my memory.

Human Communication Diary-3

This week, Sir Anwari entered Chapter 4, "The Self". But, what is "The Self"? In my opinion, self are soul, ego, personality and individual. Self consists of a person's conscious and unconscious aspect, their personality, thoughts and feelings. All of these aspect combine together into the person's core identity. "Self" can also be deemed as the way in which communication and interpretation of messages take place within the individual. Through this lesson, i know that area of "self" can be explored into self-concept, self-awareness, self-esteem and self-disclosure.

Firstly, self-concept is describe about how we feel and think about ourselves. Besides, it is the image that we have of ourselves. There are four factors that can affect our self-concept such as social comparison, other's image of you, self interpretations and evaluation, and cultural teaching. Secondly, we learn about self-awareness. Self-awareness is understanding our own personality, behaviors, habits, emotional reactions, motivations and thought processes. In fact, having more self knowledge not only help us make better choices, but also help us understand our reactions to others. So, we need to grow our self-awareness as we can listen to others, seek information about ourselves and increase our open self.

Thirdly, we learn about self-esteem. Self-esteem is confidence or the level of trust or assurance to yourself. Self-esteem is depends on how much we are confident with our image, beliefs, potrayal in public with peers. Sir Anwari also tell us that low self-esteem can cause people to be negative, lack motivation, and be moody. Those with higher self-esteem like themselves, so they expect others to like them, too. Finally, the area of self also can widen into self-disclosure. Self-disclosure is an act telling other about things that they wouldn't know about you. Through self-disclosure, we can gain more confidence and be more truthful about ourselves. Although it may lost of friends and trust, but we can living without regret.

In a nutshell, "The Self" help me to discover that who am I and how I see myself influence not only the way I communicate, but also how I respond to communications of others.