Communication-related Activity 1

Think of someone (e.g., family member, celebrity, politician, friend, or professor) who demonstrates competent communication within a particular context. What behaviors does this person exhibit that make him or her effective? Would you want to model some of your own communication behaviors after this person? Why or why not?

Once, I saw one of my colleagues dealing with an issue where a child was crying and she tried to find out why. Lowering down herself to the same height of the child, giving a gentle touch on the child's back and with her soft and calm voice, she said, "Calm down. Did you get hurt? Can you show where if you get hurt?" The child shook his head and showed that he did not get hurt. Then she said, "Good that you did not get hurt. Then can you tell me why you are crying?  You need to stop crying first; otherwise, I cannot hear clearly when you are crying." The child then tried to stop herself from crying. "Great! Thank you for stopping crying. Now you can tell what happened so that I can help you." Then she looked into her eyes and carefully listened to what the child said, without interruption, and then she started asking questions after the child finished her talk.

In this context, the teacher showed her care and respect for the child, by lowering her body so that the child would feel more comfortable and easy to talk, by giving a gentle touch and using her caring voice to make the child feel better and calm down, by thinking of ways to make the child stop crying, by encouraging the child to tell what happened. These appropriate and effective behaviors contribute to her effective and competent communication, which causes affiliation of the child with the teacher and makes the teacher reach her goal--to know what happened to the child. The communication skills that the teacher showed are effective so that I would like to model some of my communication behaviors. However, I would like to consider one of them--looking into others' eyes. In some cultures, it is polite and respectful to look into others' eyes while in other culture it is rude. Therefore, first of all, I need to have a basic understanding of diverse cultures of children from different places and know their dos and don'ts, so that I can communicate with children in an effective way. Just as stated in the National Communication Association, "We strive to understand and respect other communicators before evaluating and responding to their messages." (O'Hair & Wiemann, 2009, p. 15)

Reference"                                 

O'Hair, D., & Wiemann, M. (2012). Real communication: An introduction. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's.