Week 11, Unit 8: Improving Communication

Identify one relationship in which you feel on-guard and defensive and one relationship in which you feel comfortable and supported. Describe and analyze the communication behaviors in each relationship. To what extent do the defensive and supportive communication behaviors discussed in the text explain the climates of these two relationships? Refer to your textbook for information on climates in terms of communication.

This is the final blog posting for the quarter. On Monday, 12/8, I’ll hand out the instructions and evaluation criteria for your final project, the Blog Reflection Essay and Presentation.

Week 10, Unit 7 Communication & Emotions

Describe one situation in which an irrational fallacy did or continues to debilitate you. Identify two ways you might challenge that fallacy. Some irrational beliefs could include perfectionism or fear—see your textbook for other examples that could apply to you. Your textbook also identifies ways to change, such as monitoring.

Week 9: Presentations and Thanksgiving

Again, because you are all working on your presentations, there will be no blog assignment this week. The weekly blog assignments will resume on December 1. Have a happy Thanksgiving holiday!

Week 8, Focus on Presentations

I am sure you are all so busy practicing your cross-cultural presentations that I’m giving you a week off from blogging!

Week 7, Unit 6: Listening

Reflect on a time when you wished that you would have really listened. Describe the situation, and then explain the result of not listening effectively. What would you do differently now?

For example, you may not have listened carefully to your boss at work, and the result was that you did a project incorrectly. Now you know you listened in a defensive manner to your boss, and in the future you will guard against this type of listening by listening attentively.

Week 6, Unit 5: Nonverbal communication

What does my office say about me?

Analyze the artifacts and environment of your room and answer these three questions: 1. What do these things communicate about who you are? 2. How do those things you own affect your feelings of comfort, identity and security? 3. What would be different if all of your personal artifacts disappeared?

Week 5, Unit 4: Language

Identify at least one regulative and constitutive rule for interacting in face-to-face situations, and one of each type of rule when communicating over e-mail. Reflect on how you learned each of these rules.

Your response should distinguish between regulative rules and constitutive rules in general. Examples of regulative and constitutive rules for face-to-face interaction can be found on pages 107 - 109 of the textbook. Examples of regulative and constitutive rules for e-mail could be that one should reply to an e-mail within 24 hours of receiving it (regulative) and using ALL CAPS counts as “shouting” (constitutive).