Critical reflection on learning points in the course

Through this course, I have learned and improved in many areas with regards to interpersonal communication.

Firstly, I learned that I need to know about myself and others. This knowledge helps me identify my weaknesses, enabling me to overcome and improve my communication with others. With the knowledge of self, I am able to plan about how I should respond internally when different situations arise so that I will react positively when I am placed in such a situation. With the knowledge of others, I am able to narrow down the strategies to use in order to attain the best outcome.

Secondly, I learned that I need to speak and listen with my mind and body. The impact of non-verbal communication is something that had not spoke very strongly to me before. I was not able to see the importance of non-verbal communication till I learned about how body language affects the other party and how he or she interprets my intent or attitude through the instinctive visual cues I exhibit. This made me conscious about how I am behaving when I am communicating to people and I do need to work on my non-verbal communication. This is due to the fact that I am listening but tend to show through my body language that I am not or I have no interest in the topic the speaker is sharing with me. However, with this awareness, I am now able to improve in the area of non-verbal communication.

Thirdly, I learned that there are a number of ways when handling conflict and it varies for each individual. I personally lean towards avoiding and accommodating and learned that these approaches are not viable for every kind of situation. There are times where I am required to be competing in order to achieve the required results and there are times where I have to be compromising so that progress can be made. Knowing this helps me in interacting with groups and leads to higher possibilities of a positive outcome.

Lastly, I improved in the area of presentation. The mock presentation greatly helped me as my faults were pointed out and I was able to work on it. My presentation skills still require loads of work but I believe that I improved compared to my previous presentations. I am able to make eye contact with the audience and maintain my composure better. However, I need to work on my tone and pronunciation as these areas show no improvement.

Overall, there are many points that I have learned through this course. There are many areas that I need to work on in the future and this course is only the first step towards being able to have good interpersonal communication skills.

Critical Reflection on Project Learning

In this project, there are many areas that I learned from and one of them is the presentation. I always had stage fright and was never good at presenting in front of a group of people.

Whenever I stand in front of people, I become nervous and lose my train of thought. I am unable to make eye contact as it would intensify my nervousness and causes my mind to go blank. There will be the urge to hold onto something and I mostly end up grabbing my own hands. My voice is normally monotone and adding to that, being nervous causes me to mumble, stutter and slur when I speak.

Through the project presentations, I realized that I have improved in a couple of areas. I could make eye contact with the audience and I do not grab my hands when I am presenting. I experienced my mind going blank but was able to carry on with the presentation. However, my voice and pronunciation still requires improvement as I did not make any progress in that area.

This experience showed me that practice can negate the cons of nervousness during presentations. The mock presentation really helped for the actual presentation and I could work on the points that people advised me on. In fact, the advising session was also a learning experience for me as I am not good with people I am not close to and one of my advisers is someone I do not know on a personal level, making me quite nervous.

Interpersonal communication has been an interesting topic as it is normally not observed intentionally but by doing so, I learned to speak to people better and handle situations in a more beneficial manner. This experience reminded me that I have a lot to improve on for my presentation and to intentionally be aware of situations and the appropriate manner to respond with.

Resolving Interpersonal Conflict

Conflicts can occur anywhere and with any kind of party. It can be a loved one, friends, acquaintances and even strangers. Due to differing worldviews, characteristics and thought processes, conflicts will occur no matter the bond between the parties involved.

In this situation, there are a bunch of friends hanging out together. Although there are some who listens attentively, there are a few that wants to speak their thoughts and be heard. Generally, a number of people wants to be heard and have the attention of the group on them. However, this only works if the rest of the group listens. When a few people wants to speak at the same time, it results in a clash and the rest has to stop or the conversation will be very difficult to follow. In addition, if the topic spoken is of little interest, people would not want to listen to the speaker.

In this bunch of friends, there are a few people who seemingly wants to speak their mind and frequently cut each other. When that happens, everyone will stop before someone continues and gets the attention of the group. However, one person in the group constantly talks about his area of interest and the others lost interest after hearing him mention it many times. This results in the group focusing their attention on another person talking and ignoring him. He caught the drift after many occasions and felt ostracized by the group. In turn, he reacted by speaking in a rude manner to the group. This behavior led to the group disliking him and shutting him off more than before. This continues on in a vicious cycle of 'revenge' and ended up with cutting him off from the group.

The main cause of this problem is the lack of patience and selflessness. With the desire to be heard but not contributing to hearing others, that selfish approach led to the guy being cut off from the others. In the same manner, the rest of the group were also not patient and selfless enough to bear with him and to teach him to listen to others. If everyone were to think less of themselves, the situation would have a better ending.

If you are a part of that group of friends, how would you help both the group and the guy to prevent that scenario from happening?

Evaluating Verbal & Nonverbal Behavior

When people interact, they display certain behaviors regardless if they are aware or not. The behavior can be used to infer the person's, thoughts, emotion, upbringing and values, though the accuracy of the inference is another factor itself.

I observed the interactions among my friends and noticed a number of interesting factors. The one that is most obvious to me is the desire to speak. In this interaction, and for many other interactions between friends, many wanted to be heard but only a few are listening. The one that manages to speak is mainly the loudest with a combination of repeating themselves till they got the attention of the rest. I believe this stems from the culture where we are so self serving and in the age of convenience, we expect to have what we demand handed over to us immediately. With this selfishness and need for instant gratification, we start to press on until we get the attention of everyone, not bothering to wait and listen to others. While it was not demonstrated in an extreme manner in the interaction, it is a glimpse of the general direction society is heading towards. However, there are some who patiently wait and listen to others, showing respect to the one speaking and only voicing out when there is a chance, resulting in the others giving  him or her their fullest attention. This became a very interesting factor I derived in that interaction. When someone patiently listens and flows into the conversation at an appropriate moment, people naturally give their full attention to the person. This happens irregardless of age and gender as it occurred not only from male and female individuals but also both younger and older individuals in the interaction.

Wrapping up, what was seen in the interaction is that respect and patience leads to good communication, irregardless of gender or age.

Strengths and Challenges in Communication

I have always been an introvert and reactive person. I rarely approach people first and keep to myself when it comes to strangers. That becomes the factor which makes it hard for me to open up to strangers. This results in a longer period of time required for me to warm up to someone and communication becomes a challenge when I work with people I am unfamiliar with. I will tend to reply people instead of initiating a conversation and will reply in a manner that can be interpreted that I want to end the conversation or that I am not willing to talk with the other party.

However, when it comes to people I am close to and am comfortable with, I have two conflicting sides in terms of communication. The first is my introvert self, where I still do keep to myself and have time to myself even in the company of friends. This is bad as I am not being considerate of their presence. The second is my desire to speak my thoughts. This has two sides to it, where it is a good thing as I interact with people and voice my opinions, engaging people and having wonderful conversations. On the other hand, I want to be heard and this is the same for the majority. This is a problem as there has to be listeners for someone to be heard but there are rarely people who wants to hear. When I came to realize this, I began to control myself when I want to speak but instead be a listening ear to others so as to have meaningful conversations.

There are definitely many other factors in communication and it is a learning journey to discover the different interactions among people.