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.