SPEC 3 -- Mr. Trotter -- Course Schedule -- Barstow College

Major Assignments

WEEK ONE:

"Getting to know one another."

It is important that students feel as comfortable as possible to experience less anxiety in trying out new communication behaviors and to learn and practice new skills. That is what this course is all about: Interpersonal communication. The first objective of this course is to learn about one another. Every individual student will write a short history of his/her self, presenting to the class via the Discussion Group important information that make up their personality, including hobbies, special interests, pets, family, hometown, personal values, embarrassing moments, accomplishments, educational background and goals, people you admire; anything that the class would find interesting about you.

Your reading for Week One is as follows: Read Chapter One of Looking out Looking In.

WEEK TWO:

OBJECTIVES: After studying the material in Chapters One and Two, you should understand:

The types of needs that communication can satisfy.

The elements and characteristics of the transactional communication model.

The differences between impersonal and interpersonal communication.

The principles and misconceptions of communication.

The content and relational aspects of messages.

The concept of net communication.

The characteristics of effective communicators.

How the self-concept is defined.

How the self-concept develops.

The five characteristics of the self-concept.

Four reasons why the self-concept is subjective.

Differences between public and private selves.

The role of self-fulfilling prophecies in shaping the self concept and in influencing communication.

Four requirements for changing the self-concept.

The ethics of impression management.

Be prepared to discuss the above objectives with your classmates and instructor using examples from the text. We will also have a quiz on the two chapters consisting of twenty-four multiple choice questions.

Your reading for Week Two is as follows: Read Chapter Two of Looking out Looking In.

Week Three:

Readings: Read Chapters Three and Four of the text and be prepared to discuss their content.

Also:

You are to bring back to the class the "CHECK YOUR COMPETENCE" assignment. Other people are often the best judges of your competence as a communicator. They can offer useful information about how to improve your communication skill. Find out for yourself by following these steps:

Chose a person with whom you have an important relationship.
In cooperation with this person, identify several contexts in which you communicate.
For example, you might choose different situations such as "handling conflicts," "lending support to friends," or "expressing feelings."
For each situation, have your friend or mate or co-worker rate your competence by answering the following questions:

Do you have a wide repertoire of response styles in this situation, or do you always respond in the same way?

Are you able to choose the most effective way of behaving for the situation at hand?

Are you skillful at performing behaviors?

Do you communicate in a way that leaves others satisfied?

After reviewing your partner's answers, identify the situations in which your communication is most competent
Answer the following questions:
- Were you surprised at your partner's comments?
- Did your partner see you as committed to the messages you sent?
- How accurate (to you) were your partner's ratings?
- Is there any reason why they might be inaccurate?

Bring back through the Discussion Board to the class the observations and comments. It should be very interesting to learn about ourselves using personal comments of others. 20 POINTS

OBJECTIVES: What you see is what you get. You will recognize the perceptual, physical, role, interaction, psychological, and membership constructs that help you categorize others.

You should be able to understand how perception can be changed by different physiological conditions. This lesson should further your awareness of your feelings and how these feelings register physically in your body; you need to learn to express feelings clearly and how thoughts can shape your feelings. You need to replace irrational thinking with rational thinking! In this lesson, you should understand:

How the processes of selection, organization and interpretation operate in the perception process.

The physiological, cultural, social roles, gender roles, occupational roles, and self-concept variables that influence the perceptual process.

Four factors that influence the accuracy and inaccuracy of your perceptions.

Requirements for developing empathy to improve the accuracy of perceptions.

The three components of emotions.

Reasons why emotions are not expressed.

The characteristics of facilitative and debilitative emotions.

The relationship between activating events, thoughts, and emotions.

Seven fallacies that result in unnecessary, debilitative emotions.

Four steps in the rational-emotive approach to coping with debilitative feelings.

WEEK FOUR:

OBJECTIVES: Language and nonverbal communication: Messages with and without words. In this week you should be able to avoid using troublesome language by identifying the relative, euphemistic, equivocal, and emotive terms you use and compose alternatives to them in your daily life. You need to identify overly abstract statements you and others make and propose less abstract ones and identify the ways in which your language and the language of others you know reflects degrees of responsibility. You must identify and describe your nonverbal behavior in particular situations, giving examples of nonverbal behavior that repeats, substitutes for, complements, accents, regulates, or contradicts a verbal message. Think about the differences between verbal and nonverbal communication and observe them carefully. In this lesson, you should understand:

The symbolic nature of language.
That language is rule-governed.
That meanings are in people, not words.
The various types of troublesome language described in the text.
That language describes events at various levels of abstraction.
The problems that occur when overly abstract language is used.
How behavioral descriptions clarify thinking and communicating.
The ways that sexist and racist language shape the attitudes of both speaker and person described.
How language and culture are related.
The manner in which a speaker's language can reflect responsibility.
The importance of nonverbal communication.
The six characteristics of nonverbal communication.
The twelve types of nonverbal communication described in the text.
The differences between verbal and nonverbal communication.

Assignment for Week Four: Read Chapters Five and six of the text and be prepared to discuss their content. Also be prepared to discuss the Pillow Method as described in the text. Draw your own "pillow" on a separate piece of paper for reference (don't submit it via the on-line system) and share your thoughts with your classmates. I also want to divide the class into two groups and play the "Gender Game." The males and the females in the class will submit one question each that they have always wanted to ask the opposite gender but, for some reason or another, never have. We will then answer them on the Discussion Board all this week along with our usual discussion questions that are included in the lecture. Have fun with this one. 20 points to all who participate.

WEEK FIVE:

OBJECTIVES: Listening is arguably as important as speaking in terms of making relationships work; a demanding and complex activity. We spend more time listening than any other type of communication. One study revealed that college students spent an average of 14 percent of their communicating time writing, 16 percent speaking, 17 percent reading, and an amazing 53 percent listening. Does listening help your personal relationships? What makes us seek relationships with some people and not with others? How intimate are we in our relationships? This week our objectives will be:

The seven types of nonlistening.
The reasons why people listen poorly in most circumstances
The characteristics of informational listening as they are used to gather information.
The seven styles of listening that can be used to help others with problems, and the strengths and drawbacks of each.
The Altman-Taylor model of social penetration.
The five variables affecting interpersonal attraction.
The ten stages of interpersonal relationships.
How self-disclosure is defined.
How the Johari Window represents the relationship between self-disclosure and self-awareness and how it can describe self-disclosure in a dyadic relationship.
How the four types of self-disclosure affect breadth and depth in a relationship.
The seven guidelines for self-disclosure.
The alternatives to self-disclosure.

Be prepared to discuss the above objectives with your classmates and instructor using examples from the text and your own life. We will also have a quiz on the two chapters consisting of twenty-four multiple choice questions. If you haven't already, begin reading our second book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Covey. We will begin our discussion next week.

Assignment for week five: "THE EYES HAVE IT" Prove for you the role that eye contact plays in social influence by trying a simple experiment.

Choose a situation in which you can make simple requests from a series of strangers. You might, for example, ask to cut in line to use a copy machine, or you could ask passerby for a small amount of change to make an important phone call.

Make similar requests to at least four people. Use the same words for each request, but alternate your nonverbal behavior.

Half of the time make direct eye contact, and the other half of the time, avoid making direct eye contact with the other person when you make the request.

Record your results, and see if your eye behavior played any role in generating compliance with your request.

If eye contact does make a difference, describe how you could apply your findings to other real-life situations.

Let all of your classmates know your findings via the Message Board this week. 20 points for all who participate.

Read Chapters Seven and Eight.

WEEK SIX:

OBJECTIVES: The seven habits of highly effective people is a concept by Dr. Stephen R. Covey which relates directly to our discussions in class such as self-concept, perceptions, emotions, communication, and the like. Our objectives this week are to provide the class with our reactions to the thoughts of Dr. Covey and to agree or disagree with his concepts. You will explain if you find the text applicable to your past or current circumstances. If the reading calls for a change, will you change? As with all Discussion Group assignments, discuss as a respondent group of five (and then another group of five, etc.) at least four different sections of the Covey book and "react" in any way you feel about the comments of your class-mates and also of the author's position.

Assignment for week six: For the next five days, observe the way your partner or co-worker or close friend behaves. Notice movements, mannerisms, posture, style of dress, how they listen to you and others, and so on. Secretly note your observations. Do not interpret their behavior; just record what you see. At the end of the five days, share what you've learned with them. In this conference you should tell your partner what you thought of his/her behaviors and record their reactions--positive or negative--to what you observed. Report to the class next week on how well you did, and how correct you were in your interpretation--at least in the eyes of your victim. You may be surprised how checking out the nonverbal clues you observe can help build a relationship with another person. 20 points for those who participate.

Read Chapters Nine and Ten.

WEEK SEVEN:

OBJECTIVES: We need to improve our communication skills and manage interpersonal conflicts. We need to identify the communication climate in important relationships and to decide the confirming and disconfirming behaviors that help define this climate and to encourage the student to reflect on the patterns of defensive behavior he or she may have; always encouraging to create a plan for a more satisfying behavior. We need to practice responding non-defensively to criticism and to discover some of the ways we deal with conflict in our lives. This class should enable the student to practice expressing satisfactory messages and to gain confidence in communication in general by:

How confirming and disconfirming messages create positive and negative communication climates.
The relationship between a communicator's self-concept and his or her defensive reaction to a message.
How defensive mechanisms operate when a communicator perceives attacking messages.
How and why Gibb's defensive and supportive behaviors can minimize or increase defensive responses to your message.
How seeking more information from a critic and agreeing with the criticism can minimize a communicator’s defensive response.

That conflict is natural and inevitable.

The five personal styles of conflict.

The characteristics of three types of conflict resolution:

win-lose

lose-lose

win-win

WEEK EIGHT:

OBJECTIVES: PREPARING A SPEECH. Even though you will not be giving an actual speech in this class--and it is a speech class, remember--you should know how to research, write, outline, and present a speech. The objective of this week is to give you guidelines in doing so.

Choose your subject with care. Your assignment is to use all of the concepts, ideas, terms, etc. from our two texts and pick a topic that fits the assignment mentioned in the lecture.

Ascertain your purpose: Persuasive or informative.

Gather your materials/facts/figures/comments/etc .

Organize your material. Find the basic theme of your speech. Choose a statement, story, question, statistic, or illustration relative to the subject that might make for an interesting opening, then further arrange speech to form a sequence of facts and examples that support your main idea.

Select your words carefully. Don't use difficult, trite or tiresome words or phrases. Don't use overly abstract or confusing phrases or analogies.

Be simple and exact.

Use quotations correctly. Back up your own opinions and ideas with those of experts; but be sure to give proper credit.

Employ personal references. Pertinent personal stories are perfect for this type of interpersonal class.

Make your speech your own.

The opening words can make or break a speech. Start your speech with some humor or rhetorical question or a show of hands--anything to relax you and the audience.

The body of your speech has all the important information. You should structure your main points so clearly that they are not just distinct but unmistakable to your listeners. You should state your main idea clearly and then support or explain in detail.

Then you conclude, or summarize, your speech where you tell the audience what you just told them in a short summary and concluding remarks.

Using the outline form provided, organize your thoughts in the order given in simple sentences.

Be prepared to discuss the content of these speech outlines with your classmates and instructor. Positive and negative comments are encouraged.

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