Second Blog - Groups 1, 2 & 3 Reflection {Jennifer Soler}

                          CHAPTERS 3, 9 AND 10

Daniela Hernandez Perez

02/01/2022

SPC1017

  During our first presentation for the speech class, we spoke about intercultural communications, communicating in groups and group leadership and problem solving. In this class we are using a book called COMM 6 Speech Communication by Deanna D. Sellnow, Kathleen S. Verderber, Rudolph F. Verderber. In this case we focused on chapters 3, 9 and 10. We work in small groups and it was a fantastic experience for me. I was in group #1 called "BEST GROUP " and we discussed chapter 3 about Intercultural communications. We enjoyed working together and we did a great job.

  There were two other groups who talked about chapter 9 and 10. They were also spectacular, discussing every detail of the chapters, giving us a good explanation, including pictures, that helped us understanding their point of view.

  We made this presentation with the help of a power point, this way we were able to share more specific information about what we were speaking about. There even were some of us that added videos to the power point and that made the presentation more animated, that is a good way to share and show our material. Besides, there were good communication and pronunciation skills.

Intercultural Communication 

 This project made us know a litter bit more about different cultures in the world and how difficult it is to interact with people from other country. The chapter included important concepts that involve communication like values and culture.  We also learn that a culture shock could happen if your customs and norms are disrupted in a cultural situation that is different from the cultural situation that you are used to. There is a detail that I found very interesting in the presentation, and it is about the dominant cultures that refers to the learned norms that all the society follows. That is something that really caught my attention because today there are a lot of "norms and values" that people are following that I do not think they are ideal for our society, but that is our reality. Sometimes I say that this world is taking the wrong way. We touched points like ethnicity, religion, sex and gender where we could learn about how the sexual orientation has changed in the United States during the last years and how some people do not feel identified with their generational co-culture. We learn that some of the potential barriers we can face while developing intercultural communication competence are anxiety, ethnocentrism and stereotyping. It is imperative to know about the potential barriers to be able to employ several strategies to overcome them. For instances, if we respect other we can avoid ethnocentrism, and at the same time, we can experience different culture than our owns.  

Communicating in Groups

 The topic of the Chapter #2 was Communicating in Groups. They also did a great job working together.  Group #2 discussed about the different types of groups, what is a group and the nature of it. We could learn about social groups, families, interest groups, service groups and other types of groups and how they are different. My favorite type of group was family, since in my case, I can find everything I need in my family, from support to fun and friends. Another thing they spoke about was conflict in groups, they said conflict is inevitable to groups as to interpersonal relationships. The different conflicts they discussed were: pseudo, personality-related and issue-related conflicts. I think that the most complicated conflict that can occur in a group or in an interpersonal relationship is the personality-related conflict, because your personality makes you understand better and face a hard situation in a group and can help you if another member has a pseudo or issue-related conflict.

Group Leadership and Problem Solving

  Group # 3 took care of the chapter # 9 that is about group leadership and problem solving. The main points of that chapter are leadership, effective meetings, systematic problem solving, communicating groups solutions and evaluating groups effectiveness. Group # 3 made a good explanation about this chapter. They debated about the definition of leadership, formal and informal leaders, role and different kind of roles. Something interesting in this debate for me was the maintenance roles. It helps the group develop and maintain cohesion, commitment, and positive working relationships. This is an important role, I do not say it is the most important because all the roles they spoke about are important, but I like this role, and I feel like this is one of my roles in my daily life. I am always trying to bring quiet, companionship and at the same time, fun. I always give a relaxed mood to everyone. I learn how important is to follow the guidelines for a meeting and to make your agenda to organize the information and decision items to be covered during a meeting. 

  We can conclude that it was a useful presentation that gave us information about our present situation. After this presentation I could say that we have expanded our knowledge about responsibility, culture, leadership, ways to face and solve a problem and a lot of things more. I have to say that it was difficult for me to do this blog at the beginning, because I was totally lost about what I had to do. But I have enjoyed doing it and this has been a way of express my thoughts and I have felt nice doing it.  

  I want to say thanks to our professor Sherry Sinkoff and Nerys Torralbas who taught us how to make a good blog when many of us thought that was very difficult and almost impossible.  They taught us how to use this application that have made our work easier and have been available to help all the time. I also want to thank the rest of the students in this class because we are always helping us each other since the first day of this course. All the members of the group # 1 "BEST GROUP" are super cool and I really like them very much. This course is just beginning now and I am sure we are going to have a great semester together.