Lesson 2 Essay Nature of Communication

Assignment

Think of some experience you have had (preferably in a group situation) in which you came away feeling, “We just were not communicating.” Write a short account of the experience in which you first describe what happened that led you to think that communication was not occurring or, at least, not occurring as you would have liked and then, drawing on the material covered in Chapter 2 of the textbook (pp. 21–38), offer plausible reasons for the breakdown or failure. Did the problem appear to be a result of the ways in which the parties involved were forming and transmitting messages, poor listening, or a combination of both? Develop your account in sufficient detail at either the content or relational level and with enough specific illustrations that a person with no knowledge of the situation could read your account and say to him- or herself, “Well, that makes sense. I can easily see why these people failed to communicate successfully.” You should be able to complete this assignment in 250 to 500 words.

Expected Outcome

Carefully reading the pertinent material in Chapter 2 of the textbook and applying it to the situation you have chosen for your submission should make you more sensitive to the communication realities of everyday life and appreciative of the complex nature of human interaction. Often we attribute what we perceive to be failures in communication to the deliberate unwillingness of one or more of the parties to communicate. This is sometimes the case, but in most instances, such a view represents a gross oversimplification. When we understand that successful communication is almost always complicated, we are on the road to becoming better at it.

Contribution to Course Grade 4%