For me, communication for me is everything that happens. There are many ways to communicate, including verbalizing, body language, facial expression, and others. According to the text book, Thinking Through Communication (17), “A good definition of communication tells us which behaviors count as communication and which do not. It also describes the essential characteristics of communications.” In my opinion, everything that the book says is true; the behavior exhibited from a person when you speak to him or her can tell you a great deal about what the person is thinking or feeling.
DISCUSSION
Not many things in life occur without communication. One of my favorite types of communication is non-verbal communication. This is because you can communicate with anyone without saying a word. A good example is in billboard commercials on the streets; they attract the attention of passersby and encourage them to buy products, with the use of just pictures and colors. Additionally, using non-verbal communication, it is possible to communicate with animals, and also with young children that have not yet learned to speak. For me, especially, non-verbal communication is very useful. Not long ago, I came to America for the first time. I didn’t speak any English, so in the beginning, communication with other people was very difficult for me. There were many times when I had to use signs to describe what I wanted to say to people.
There is a negative side of communication: people can interpret you wrongly, even when you are communicating verbally. That is why a very important element of communication, and is one of the most frequently studied, is receiving and listening. Receiving is imperative as, for example, if you are in an important meeting and a person misunderstand what you have said, this can lead to wide-reaching problems.
As a communications major, I want to understand what it is and how it works. Communication is not simply something that happens when you are talking to someone; rather, it is happening around you all the time. The CN101 class has helped me to understand how vast communication really is, and how it can be done in many ways. I started to properly understand communication when tutors explained to me that it requires three very important elements. There is the sender of the message, the message, and the receiver of the message. Using again my previous example of the billboard, the company who is advertising is the sender, me message is the information on the billboard, and the receiver is whoever is looking at the billboard. Once I understood this concept, I began to understand much more about communications; it all made sense on a deeper level. There are many types of communication, but applying this model of sender, message and receiver makes each type easier to understand.
The sender, message and receiver are all very important in communication, but the sender and the receiver are the most vital. The sender has to make sure that he sends the message correctly and with no mistakes, because if he changes one word it could change the whole meaning of his message. In the same way, the receiver has to make sure that he understands the message correctly because, once again, if he changes one word he could misinterpret the whole message.
Communication is highly important for the world and for every single person in it. Effective communication can assist a person in many ways in his personal life, professional life, and public life. To apply communication to their personal life, I think a person should be himself. He should communicate with friends the way that he usually does, but without forgetting to send messages correctly. To apply communication to someone’s professional life, he should be very clear when talking, for example, in a meeting or a job interview. In order to apply communication to public life, just like in professional life, a person needs to be clear and focused about the messages he is sending out. Nowadays in public and professional life, a person has to maintain a good status, so people would trust and believe in him.
Communication is changing all the time. With advances in technology, communication is much easier now. However, some alternative methods of communication are not the same as talking to someone, face to face. Today I see people constantly using their cellphones to communicate with people. As communications are being increasingly done through technology, I believe that people are forgetting about the benefits of meeting and having a good conversation. I am from Brazil and to talk to my family back home, the only way I can speak to and see them at the same time is through a computer. However, for me, this method is not the same as talking to them face to face, as it is not possible to demonstrate the same affection though a computer screen.
There is one story that I often tell to people, because I feel really proud of what I did. When I first arrived in the US I enrolled in a junior college because I did not score a good grade enough in an English test enroll in a larger university. When I arrived in the airport, a coach was supposed to collect me. I could only speak basic English and had never had a real conversation in the language. It was an hour journey to the college; people tried to speak to me but I couldn’t even answer. When we arrived at the school I had to sign many papers but had no idea what I was signing, until my coach introduced me to my team mate who was also from Brazil; he had been living in the US for a semester already so he knew how to speak English. The Brazilian man helped me a lot with English during that semester. It was very tough for me to come to a country where I couldn’t speak the language. I spent half the semester trying to communicate with people through signs, pictures, or any other ideas I had. By the end of the semester I was speaking a little bit of English and communicating with everyone. I made many new friends that I am still in touch with now.
At this time I was using a great deal of non-verbal communication and it helped me out a lot. However, the one thing that really helped me to learn this new language was group study. We would have some group studies at night and this would force me to talk and get use to talking and listening to the language every day. For me, group communication was the main element which helped me out during that rough time.
References
Trenholm, S. Thinking Through Communication: sixth edition.
