something to be clarified

I wrote the last 2 lessons first as they are shorter and easier to be managed.
There are still 4 blog posts left, and i will still continue updating them
hopefully can finish them before tuesday

Human Communication: Week 13 - 26th Nov 2014 (Wed)

Another day of presentation..
after the presentation, the Mr Anwari announced the scope for the final exam.
Class dismissed after that.
Hmm..
Time flies..
This is the end of our lesson..
Well, i found that this course is actually quite useful in our daily life.
However, i personally think that this course would be more effective to have more practical activites during the lecture class.
Last, thank you Mr Anwari for your teaching. I enjoyed your class.
and goodbye this blog!! i promise i wont log in to this blog anymore!! WAHAHAHA

Human Communication: Week 13 - 25th Nov 2014 (Tue)

Video Presentation Day

hmm...  there are too many groups presented their video.. i couldn't really remember what did they presented.
However, there are some groups that prepared well for this presentation,
Some of the video are informative because they included a lot of theories and content in their video.. it's too packed and difficult for us to digest in such a short period of time

Let's talk about our video..
a short introduction, followed by a lot of example of do's and dont's, and then a short conclusion. i am the one who did the editing job, there are a few things to be highlighted.
My group actually used a lot of non-verbal communication in the video, such as the caption with green background and yellow fonts represents the DOs and the bllue background with red fonts represents the Donts. Sound effects added for dos and donts are actually cognitive to the situation in the video. so the messages are conveyed in a very clear manner. although there are still quite a number of imperfection, i think it is still acceptable. (we are not professionals)

well, i personally think our group video is not as funny as what i expected.. it's alright lah, we had put a lot of effort on this video and we have tried our best. Good job my teammates :)

Human Communication: Week 11 - 12th Nov 2014 (Wed)

Consultation of Video Presentation

No lecture conducted.

Human Communication: Week 10 - 4th Nov 2014 (Tue)

Interpersonal Communication

Relationship stages

Stage 1 : Contact

• aware of the existent of someone
• perceptual contact and interactional contact take place
• perceptual - could be detected by 5 human sense
• interactional - first point of contact, usually is a introduction of both parties to know each other

Stage 2 : Involvement

• having tighter bonds with another, eg. friend
• testing and intensifying each other
• TESTING - try to know each others' interest by asking questions
• INTENSIFYING - amount of time that both parties contribute to each other

Stage 3 : Intimacy

• closer, deeper and stronger relationship, eg. best friend
• explicit display of affection
• feel familiar and comfortable to each other
• same likings, beliefs and ideas

Stage 4 : Deterioration

• the bond between one another weakens due to communication factors
• eg. temporal factors, cultural factors, societal context
• intrapersonal and interpersonal dissatisfaction become apparent

Stage 5 : Repair or Dissolution

5(a) Repair

• try to solve the problem that weakens the bond during deterioration stage
• intrapersonal and interpersonal repair
• Intrapersonal repair, eg. changing ownself's behavior, changing your expectation towards the others
• Interpersonal repair, eg discuss the problem among each others

5(b) Dissolution

• bonds are broken
• relationship returned back to a plantoic (neutral level/ before frienship)
• interpersonal and social separation take place
• interpersonal separation, eg. stop interacting with each others
• social separation (also known as public separation), eg. avoid meeting each other

Relationship Theories

1. Attraction Theory
2. Relationship Rules Theory
3. Relationship Dialectics Theory
4. Social Penetration Theory
5. Social Exchange Theory
6. Equity Theory

Attraction Theory

People tend to be attracted by individuals that possess several aspects :

• Similarity
• similar taste, beliefs, ideas with you
• Proximity
• shorter distance between you and he/she
• Reinforcemet
• reinforce your personality and lifestyle
• Physical Attractiveness and Personality
• physical attributes, mental attributes, inner beauty, outer beauty

Relationship Rules Theory 

Different relationship possesses different levels and attributes

• Friendship Rules
• Romantic Rules
• Family rules
• Workplace rules

Relationship Dialectics Theory

people in a relationship like to explore extreme qualities which are opposite. there are 3 pairs of opposites qualities which are:

• Closeness and openness
• Autonomy and Connection
• Novelty and Predictability

Social Penetration Theory

• People would like to explore the personality of the individuals who are related to them
•  eg. friends, family, girl friend, boy friend, etc.
• The Deeper the relationship, the deeper the person get to know the core personality

To be continued...

Human Communication: Week 9 - 29th Oct 2014 (Wed)

Interpersonal Communication
Interpersonal communication is a communication pattern between sender and receiver which more than 1 person is involved.
Conversation and dialogue are used in interpersonal communication

Process of conversation

Principle of conversation

1. Principle of Turn-Taking
2. Principle of Dialogue
3. Principle of Immediacy

Principle of Turn-Taking
In conversation, we usually exchange cues of speaker/listener actively - this is called the conversational turns.
Conversational turns =  a form of meta communication/gesture/non-verbal communication.

A table is constructed to help in understanding this principle

Principle of Dialogue
Dialogue is the conversation which contains meaningful message, showing the interaction between the sender and receiver.

Principle of Immediacy

• Immediacy= sense of togetherness, creation of closeness between speaker and listener
• both parties in a communication are required to consider the intimacy of their relationship and ajust their message according to the environment and context.

Everyday conversation

People have to maintain a social etiquette and obey conversational rules

1. Small Talk
2. Excuses and Apologies
3. Complimenting
4. Advice

Small Talk

• Small talk is a bridge to the conversation. 
• we usually start a conversation by using small talk, and it often leads to a bigger issue/message

Excuses and Apologies
Excuses

• etiquette to maintain excuses : don't lie and don't be too extreme
• type of excuses
1. I didn't do that - strong declination of involvement
2. It wasn't so bad - neutral stand on your involvement
3. Yes, but ... - Admitting the fault but defending your involvement

Apologies

• Etiquette for apologies: 
• maintain an open position.
• apologies only when you mean it

Complimenting

• complimenting = message of praise
• etiquette of compliments:
• qualified compliment : praises that justified the words
• unqualified compliment : praises that help you get favor or help you get out of trouble
• Etiquette of receiving compliments: do not expect praises from others when you do well in something.
• 2 options when received complimets from others
• denial
• acceptance

Advice

• Type of advices (which also known as META-ADVICE)
• Explore options - advice that helps someone to seek out alternatives
• Expert advice/ second opinion - advice that helps someone to emphasize/de-emphasize their belifs and inlination
• Delay decision - advice that delays one's decision

to be continued....

Human Communication: Week 9 - 28th Oct 2014 (Tue)

4. Spatial message

5. Artifactual communication
A channel that uses human-made messages to communicate

6. Smell Communication
also known as Olfactics/Olfactory, which means communication that is affected by odors/smell

7. Haptics
Also known as touch communication. this channel could be considered as the most primitive form of non-verbal communication because it is the first sense that is fully developed before a baby born.
Touch may contain several meanings:

• positive emotions
• playfulness
• control
• ritual
• task-relatedness

For example, it is inappropriate to touch one's face when you are talking to someone, but it would be fine to touch one's shoulder/arm during a conversation.

8. Paralanguage

The sound produce in your speech(not the words), including the rate of speech, the pitch, volume, accent, etc

eg. people might think that you are getting angry when you raise your volume and pitch in your speech

9. Silence

It might be very effective if it was used in correct timing.

it has several functions:

• to have time to think before speaking
• silent treatment/cold war is a way of using silence to protest something
• a way to respond threatening 
• to express anxiety/ shyness
• to avoid responding to certain topic
• to convey an emotional response, such as defiance or annoyance

10. Chronemics

 also known as Time communication, which means the way you organise time and react to time

People with PAST orientation usually be more traditional and tend  to do something with old methods

People with PRESENT orientation usually forget about the past and do no plan for tomorrow. they just let everything be in nature.

People with FUTURE orientation always making plans, setting goals and looking forward, they always think a lot about their future, so they are more organized.

Culture and Non-Verbal Communication

Different cultures always have different ways in their communication. Here are the few aspect we are going to discuss.

Culture and gestures

A body gesture may be defined differently by different culture.

eg. OK sign

this gesture means OKAY in most of the countries all over the world, however, there are a few exceptions. In Brazil and Argentina, it represents ASSHOLE, but in Japan, it represents MONEY.

Culture and Facial expression
the difference of facial expression in culture is often affected by the permissibility of the public.
eg. Asians usually control themselves from laughing out loudly because it is impolite to the speakers, but Americans don't care- they just laugh out loud when they feels happy.

Culture and Colours
Different cultures define colours differently.
eg. For chinese, wearing a red shirt to attend a funeral is greatly inappropriate because red represents happiness, you should not feel happy when someone died unless you are trying to insult him/her. wearing a black shirt during chinese new year is not encourage because black represents bad luck.

Culture and eye communication
Most cultures encourage people to have eye contact in a communication, but there's always exceptions.
For example, Japanese rarely see eye-to-eye level when they greet the bow to each others.

Culture and Touch
 For some cultures, touching someone when communicating is impolite and inappropriate. (eg. northern European countries  and Japan) While some cultures greatly encourage people to physically contact with each others.(eg. Southern European countries and middle east countries)

Culture- Paralanguage and Silence
in Japan, valued silence is greatly appreciated while in the most of the countries, silence is impolite to the speaker in a conversation.

Human Communication: Week 8

21th Oct 2014 (Tue) - Midterm, No class
22th Oct 2014 (Wed) - Deepavali , No class

Human Communication: Week 7 - 15th Oct 2014 (Wed)

Non-Verbal Communication

Non-verbal communication is communication that does not involve any words.
It includes everything that could  be sense other than the spoken words.

Functions of Non-Verbal messages

1. Integrating Non-verbal and verbal messages
2. Forming and managing impression
3. Defining Relationships
4. Structuring conversation
5. Influencing and Deceiving
6. Expressing emotion

Integrating Non-verbal and verbal messages

integrates non-verbal messages and verbal message may help convey message more effectively

The following shows how non-verbal messages integrate verbal messages:

• accent/emphasis verbal message
• complement/add nuances of meaning to verbal message
• contradict verbal message
• regulate/control verbal message
• repeat/restate the verbal message in a non-verbal manner
• substitute verbal message

Forming and managing impression

non-verbal messages do affect one's impression to others in few ways. It may ensure someone  

• to be liked
• to be believed
• to avoid failure
• to secure help
• to hide faults
• to be followed by others
• to confirm self-image and communicate it to others

Defining Relationships

We could define a relationship by identifying the non-verbal gestures used by different parties. This is because different non-verbal gestures and communications are used in different stages of relationship.

For example, people usually be polite and respectful to elder family members, such as parents, grandparents, parents' siblings, aunties and uncles etc. besides that, people also be polite and respectful to their boss. however, we can still differentiate ones' boss from their family members. what we had done is to identify the non-verbal messages used. People would be more friendly to their family members, but they usually keep a distance with their boss.

Structuring conversation
in a conversation, we the listener always give response to the speaker right after the speaker finish their speech. We seldom see both a listener speaks before the speaker ends his/her speech(unless they are quarreling/arguing for something). Why?
This is because people always give and receive cues that they are ready to speak, listen, comment non-verbally. This is called turn-taking cues. however, it might be verbal sometimes. for example, "don't you agree with that?"

Influencing and Deceiving
Non-verbal messages could influence others. For example, you would trust somebody who talk to you with a sincere and confident eye contact than a person who talks to you but does not look at you at all.
Non-verbal message could be deceiving too. This happens when you are trying to tell a white lie to someone with presence of third party who already knows that you are lying. 

Expressing emotions
You cry when you feel sad, you laugh/ smile when you feel happy, you shout when you are angry, these are the examples that show the function of non-verbal message in expressing emotions


Channels of Non-Verbal Communication

The following chart shows the channels of non-verbal communication.
*Drawn by Lim Tao. Copyright Reserved.

1. Body messages
   The figure below shows how body messages acts as a channel in non-verbal communication
  *Drawn by Lim Tao. Copyright Reserved.

2. Facial communication
    Indicates the degree of pleasantness, agreement and sympathy felt. It contains emotions such as happiness, surprise, fear, anger, sadness, disgust, contempt and interest. These expressions show higher physiological arousal than those who suppress these expressions.

Facial management
technique that enable people to communicate feelings to achieve the effect they want and act in socially acceptable ways, such as:

• intensifying: exaggerating surprise and happiness
• deintensifying: covering up happiness/joy
• neutralizing: covering up sadness
• masking: pretending happy when you are not
• simulating: expressing emotion that you do not really feel

Eye communication

one of the most important non-verbal cues. Eye movements have several functions:

• to seek for feedback
• to signal openness in communication channel
• to signal the  nature of a relationship
• to change the psychological distance between speaker and listener
• to help others maintain privacy through civil inattention (eye avoidance)
• to signal lack of interest by avoiding eye contact

To be continued...

Human Communication: Week 7 - 14th Oct 2014 (Tue)

Confirmation and Disconfirmation(cont.)

There are several aspects that involved in Confirmation and Disconformation. They are:

1. Racism: Discrimination to the other races 
2. Sexism : Discrimination to the other gender
3. Heterosexism : Discrimination to the other sexuality 
4. Ageism : Discrimination to the other age, especially to the children or elder people.

We should avoid involving in any kinds of discrimination stated above. generally, there are some ways to avoid them:

1. Avoid offensive language
2. Respect the others

Cultural identifier 

Cultural identifier refers to the preferred terms which are widely used in talking / speaking of different cultures (language that is free of racism, sexism, heterosexism and ageism). We should be sensitive and avoid offensive languages to different

1. Race and nationality
2. affectional orientation
3. age and sex

Using verbal messages effectively

Verbal messages can be:

1. Symbolize reality
2. express both facts and inference
3. be relatively static
4. obscure distinctions

Symbolize reality

Verbal message are often used to symbolize something, event, situation, people, etc, it doesn't mean that the message is exactly same with the reality. (Message symbolize reality, not represent reality)

• Eg. When somebody says UCSI is good, doesn't mean that it is really good, just that the person who said that believed it is good.

People used to judge someone/something before they really know it. When people do so, they fell into the trap of Intensional orientation. We should avoid practising Intensional orientation but Extensional orientation which means that knowing the person/things/situation/event before judging it.

• Eg. Students often believe that Physics is difficult because everyone say so. They believe it is hard before they know it.(intensional orientation) if people tried to learn it and study hard, they will find that physics is not as hard as they think.(extensional orientation)

Messages express facts and inferences

Message could be misleading because it always infused with emotions, feelings, thoughts, etc. Therefore, we have to bear in mind that messages must be made up of facts but not inference.

We should avoid inferential statements in our speech when we convey a message. Factual statements are encouraged to be used to prevent confusion.

For an example:

• Factual statements - I like to eat Cheeseburger. (Listener would immediately know your preference)
• Inferential statements - I don't like Cheeseburger. (Listener might be confused-- so what do you like to eat? Chicken burger? Beef Burger? Fried Chicken? Pizza?)

Message can be relatively static

Humans tend to retain the old evaluation despite it may change from time to time. They failed to recognize the past does not dictate the present or future. Such incident is called Static Evaluation.

eg. Some people think that homosexuality is wrong because they think it is a choice- they choose to be homosexual. However, scientists have proven that homosexuality is not a choice, therefore people could not decide to be heterosexual or homosexual. These people do not update their information and still evaluate homosexual people with outdated thoughts, which shows that messages they received are relatively static.

Message can obscure distinction

Message that is not specific can be confusing because it generalize context and surroundings. Thus, it blurs the distinction between people, object, events etc

Indiscrimination

People who could not distinguish different people, objects or event that are similar

Eg. Some people from China could not distinguish the difference between Malays and Malaysia-borned Chinese.

Polarization

The tendency to think in only 2 extremes. For these people, they do not allow the possibility of a middle of a ground.

Eg. Some people could not accept Transgender because there are only 2 gender in their mind: male and female. They could not accept a man possesses female's personality and vice versa.

Human Communication: Week 6 - 8th Oct 2014 (Wed)

Mr Anwari took a medical leave yesterday, therefore we have only one class this week.
for this class, those groups who didnt present their topic about principle of verbal message continue their presentation.

Messages Vary in Assertiveness
Assertive people speak their minds and opinions, and they welcome others to do so. they operate "win-win situation" that both parties could gain something from their interaction

However, being assertive is not always the most desirable response.
eg. You and your friend want to go for lunch, your friend want to have McDonald but you want to have pizza hut. if Both of you are assertive: You voiced up and tell your friend that you dont want to have McD, but your friend still want to have McD instead of having pizza hut. this might end up with a quarrel.
Therefore, it is the best to be rational when being assertive. using the example above, the quarrel could be avoided if both of you be tolerate. you and your friend can take away your food and meet up at school to have lunch together.

To communicate assertively, the following steps are suggested:
1. Describe the problem you faced
2. State the consequences of the problem
3. Suggest solution(s)
4. Confirm the message you conveyed is understood by the others

Message can Deceive
Not all the messages conveyed are true- some of the message could be deceiving/lying. Lying is the act of *sending message that you believed to be false *intentionally. If you unintentionally give some wrong/false information which you believe it is true, you are not considered lying. vice versa, if you send a message which is true but you believed it is false, you are considered deceiving somebody.

Type of lies
1. Pro-social deception: The aim of giving this lie is to achieve some good effect.
Eg. You are trying to help your friend gain confidence in a competition, you might be giving white lies to he/she, telling him/her that he/she looks well-prepared.
2. Self-Enhancement deception: this lie makes yourself look good.
Eg. You present your good grades, good personalities and characters but you omit the poor ones during an interview in order to get hired.
3. Selfish deception: this lie is to protect yourself from being hurt by others.
Eg. Those who are homosexual would try to hide their sexualities by telling others they are straight.
4. Anti-social Deception: this lie would hurt/harm somebody.
Eg. People might be jealous at you and they would spread rumours which are bad to you in order to harm you.

Generally, Lies are not easy to be detected by people. This is because of we assumed that everyone is telling the truth in most of the situation, this is called the TRUTH BIAS. Whilst in some minor cases which a person often tell lies, we would lose confidence to he/she. The reason why we hardly believe in his/her speech or the information told by he/she is because of the LIE BIAS, which we assumed that the person is telling a lie.

To avoid people losing confidence at ourselves, we should always prevent ourselves from sending deceiving messages.Sometimes, lying is, however, not considered as a immoral or unethical action- lies are good in some cases to prevent somebody being harmed. Telling the truth is not always the best decision in some situation. Therefore, we should lie wisely according to the need of the situation with the premise of the lie is beneficial for everyone.

That's the end of the Principle of Verbal Messages.

The second topic would be the
CONFIRMATION AND DISCONFORMATION
there are 3 terms that i would like to introduce
1. Confirmation: a communication pattern that involves your acknowledging the presence of the person and the acceptance of the person
2. Disconfirmation: a communication pattern that you ignored the person and his/her message.
3. Rejection: an action that refused to accept someone's opinion, message, action, etc.

Eg. You chatted with your friend with a very loud voice and kept playing music using your handphone during the class which disturbed your classmate. The lecturer asked you to be sitted and keep quiet but you ignored him. The communication pattern used by you is Disconfirmation.
You continued doing these actions without listening to the lecturer, he finally yelled at you : "Get out of my class right now!!!" You yelled back to him : "Why should i??? I paid the tuition fees for you to yell at me and ask me to leave the class??? It's your responsibility to teach me, you should not give such an irresponsible order to me!!" What you had done is that you refused to leave the class, and it's call the Rejection.
Then the lecturer screamed to you : " I don't care!! If you do not leave right now, I'll bar you from the final exam!!! Please disappear from my sight in 10 seconds!! GET OUT!!!! NOW!!!" You are afraid of being barred from the final, so you shouted back to the lecturer : "OKAY!! FINE!!!" then you packed your bag and leave the room. What you've done is that you acknowledged the presence of your lecturer and you accepted him as a person who speak to you, which is the Confirmation.

The subtopics would be explained in the next post....

Human Communication: Week 5 - 1st Oct 2014 (Wed)

Today was the Presentation day of our topic, which is "Message Depends on Context", and i was responsible in explaining the Gender Context.

As I said yesterday, the time given is not enough for us to prepare everything for this presentation. For me, After  i went home, i spent my whole night to do some researches about this topic, prepare the slide and also look for some video. The hardest part is actually preparing the slide, because there's a lot of information about this topic, but you cant really include everything inside, or else it would be a long and boring session for the students. You have to select not only the interesting part, but also the important points so that the presentation won't be meaningless.

Besides, The process of searching a suitable video is really time-killing. You have to look for the video which is relevant to the topic, yet it have to be interesting. You have to go through every video, and decide whether it is suitable for the presentation. This spend me quite a lot of time. At last, I chose 2 videos and i sent them to Aaron, one of my teammate.

There's actually another briefing session early in the morning today. Due to some reasons, i couldn't attend it.

Well, our group members did quite well in the presentation, but i think i ruined their good performance...  Feeling too nervous and i cant control my speech. Thank god for the video, it caught students' attention as i expected...

well i think really have to train myself to do more public speaking and gain more self-esteem.

What i've learnt from this class is the 4 topics.

1. Meaning of verbal message varies in people. The term, Bypassing, means miscommunication that occurs when the speaker and receiver misunderstand the message conveys to each others. There are 2 types of bypassing,which is "Different words same meaning" and "Same Words, Different meaning". These are the examples.

• Different words, same meaning: 2 of your friends saw you eating chocolate, A says "The chocolate seems nice to be eaten" and B says"Chocolate is my favourite". The actual meaning of their speech is "Can i have some chocolate from you?" but they used different words to express their message.
• Same Words, Different meaning: You parked your car in the middle of the street, and your friend asked you to remove your car , but you rejected him. then he say  " fine! you will be fined!" both of the Fine in his speech is the same word, but they have different meaning.

    2.   Verbal message conveyed through languague is Denotative and Connotative

• Denotation : meaning found in the dictionary
• Connotation:  emotional meaning
• For example, somebody scolded you "You're a pig", the PIG might be denotative which means you looks like a pig, or connotative which means you are as fat as a pig.
• Snarl words: Words that are highly negative, as example, you're a pig is snarl words
• Purr words: words that are highly positive, as example, you're beautiful

     3.   Meaning of verbal message depends on context

• CULTURAL CONTEXT
• The principle of cooperation : cooperate among both parties of communication, there are 5 maxims
• Maxim of quality: speak the truth only
• Maxim of relation: talk about something which is relevant to the topic
• Maxim of manner: avoid ambiguities, speak clearly, briefly and in an organised manner
• Maxim of quantity: be informative

• Principle of peaceful relations: never insult the others to maintain peacefulness
• Principle of face-saving: do not embarrass someone
• Principle of self-denigration: be humble

• GENDER CONTEXT
• Boys and girls are constructed in such a different way and biologically non- identical, the way they convey their message would be different
• the difference are  due to biological factors, different patterns of socialization and inequalities in social power
• women are generally speak better, more polite, more indirect  than men do.

     4.  Verbal message varies in Politeness

• Politeness Online: internet communication has very specific rules for politeness, called netiquette. These are some of the netiquette:
• Familiarize yourself with the site before contributing
• Be brief
• DONT SHOUT ( Writing in capital letters is perceived as shouting)
• Dont spam and flame
• Avoid offensive language

• Be gentle
• Be social
• be positive
• be considerate
• be discrete

Human Communication: Week 5 - 30th Sept 2014 (Tue)

Time to update the blog!!

Actually today's class is like discussion class.
We were given the topic for the final video presentation.
My group got Do's and Don't's Intercultural Communication.
Well, that's a good topic, but it's a little challenging as we don't have any international student or student with different race. Therefore, we really have to be hardworking in searching the information of various culture in order to score higher grades.

After that, we were given a topic to discuss, and we are required to do a presentation tomorrow. wow that's challenging because we don't have enough time to prepare for it.
Well, each of our group member was assigned a subtopic to be presented tomorrow, and we have to do our own part including searching for more information, examples and think of some ways to make the presentation become more interesting. The good thing is, we had already finished searching for information. And I had done all my job, so I was exempted from the meeting at tomorrow morning! Yes, i don't need to wake up so early in the morning woohooo

okay lah that's all for today.
Goodnight everyone

Random post

Oh yes finally i managed to finish all these post by the end of the week.. feel sorry to my lecturer that i misunderstood what we should do for this blog. now i managed to get back on track.

okay i have to work on the other subject for now. see you next time hehehe

Human Communication: Week 4 - 24 Sept 2014 (Wed)

Again, we had already finished our syllables for this week, so we are not having lecture today, but what we do is watching a movie and we have to evaluate and apply what we had learnt for these few weeks.

First of all, let's see which movie we had watched for today...
I'm sure that quite a number of you had watched this movie..

For those who never watch this movie, you may look for the synopsis from the following link: 
Synopsis of Kung Fu Panda


There are 4 areas of human communication involved in this movie

1. Intrapersonal communication: could be seen when Po was talking to himself.
2. interpersonal communication: When master shifu is talking to Po
3. Small group and organizational communication: could be seen when the Furious five is talking to Po
4. Public communication: Was displayed when a tournaments was held to choose the Dragon Warrior 

During the tournament, one of the components of human communication was displayed : Noise

because of the noise made by the crowd, Po could not communicate well with the person who guards the door to open the door for him.

Po appeared as a fat panda, so we tend to percept him that he could not learn kung fu well, so did the furious five, master shifu, Tai Lung and Po percepts himself. Po predicted himself could not do well in Kung Fu  so he act towards it and he tried to run away. He is undergoing the self-fulfilling prophecy.

Master Oogwa has the ability  of listen emphatically. He knew what master shifu is worrying about Po did not possess any Kung Fu to become the Dragon Warrior. He felt master Shifu and gave advices to master Shifu and at last, he managed to persuade master shifu to train Po to become the real Dragon Warrior.

Besides, i realised the importance of body language from the movie. When Tigress was telling the story of Tai Lung to Po, she was annoyed by Po's facial expression and got angry.

In my opinion, the movie emphasis a lot on The Self. At the beginning of the story, the self-concept of Po is that he think he is a fat panda and he will never succeed in Kung Fu. He's lack of self-esteem in Kung Fu. After he was trained by master Shifu, he improved a lot in his Kung Fu, and he slowly realize his potential in Kung Fu, this is called self-awareness. However, he was still lacked of confidence to beat Tai Lung down. He and Master Shifu together with the furious 5 thought that he would be able to defeat Tai Lung after he got the Dragon Scroll, but when they found that the Dragon Scroll was empty, they lost hope and gave up in fighting with Tai Lung.

While the audience thought that that would be  the end of the town, Here comes the turning point of the movie: the self-disclosure of Po's father's secret recipe of his noodle. We would never expect the there was no secret except believing the soup is special, and what you need to do is to believe yourself without any hesitation. This theory gave a really big impact to Po, and he suddenly understood what was the message that master Oogway wanted to convey through the Dragon Scroll: To be confident and believe to yourself is the key of success. This is when he gain his self-esteem. He rushed back to the top of the hill and stopped Master Shifu from being killed by Tai Lung. When Tai Lung saw Po, he percepts that Po is fat, for sure Po couldn't defeat him. Then, he fought with Po in order to get the Dragon Scroll, and Tai Lung did it and he managed to get a chance to have a glance at the Dragon Scroll. He's so disappointed that there's nothing wrote in it. And Po had the chance to reveal  the secret of the Dragon Scroll(self-disclosure) and at last, Tai Lung was defeated by Po.

Human Communication: Week 4 - 23th Sept 2014 (Tue)

Due to some misunderstanding of my lecturer's speech, i owe him 2 blog posts, which are chapter2 and chapter3. I will try to update them as soon as possible.. so busy recently..

Okay, what he taught yesterday was about "SELF". Perhaps, some of you will ask: is SELF related to Human Communication? Aren't communication always involves individuals?
Unfortunately, the answer is YES, so we have to study one more chapter for our exam. it is because the SELF can be also deemed as the way in which communication and interpretation of messages take place within the individual. That's why we have intrapersonal communication (which is part of the content of Chapter1)

SELF can be widen into 4 areas:

1. Self-concept
2. Self-awareness
3. Self-esteem
4. Self-disclosure

Self-Concept

Self-concept is about how you define yourself.

 Self-concept could be affect by 4 aspects. The brief explanations are given below.

•   Social comparison: Humans always compared themselves with others in the society.
•   Others’ image of you: Humans always care about their image and people’s comments.
•   Self-interpretation and evaluation: It is about how you think and evaluate about yourself
•   Cultural teaching: Different cultures may have different beliefs and values which result in different thinking.

Self-Awareness

Self-awareness is an ability to consciously discover your actions, personality, character etc. It’s often related to the Johari Window.

Ø  Open self (also known as open arena) is the SELF known by yourself and others
·         For example: You like to joke with your friends, so both you and your friends will notice about your humour

Ø  Blind self (also known as blind spot) is the SELF known by others but unknown by yourself
·         For example: You like to help the others without thinking much, so everyone will notice about your helpfulness but you yourself don’t notice about that

Ø  Hidden self (also known as façade) is the SELF known by yourself but unknown by others
·         For example: You are homosexual and you keep your sexuality as a secret.

Ø  Unknown self is the SELF unknown by yourself and others
·         For example: You are talented in music, but you didn’t get chance to learn any musical instrument, even you yourself didn’t noticed that you have such potential, of course others won’t know about your potential.

      There are several ways to develop high level of self-awareness, such as listening to others’ comments, introspecting to yourself, having monologue to yourself etc.

Self-Esteem

Self-esteem is how much do you trust on yourself. It has similar meaning with self-confidence.

To be a higher self-esteem person, we should be friend with nice and nourishing person take actions only when you are confident enough and avoid negative thinking and self-destructive thoughts.

Self-Disclosure

Self-disclosure is an act that reveals your hidden self. It could be understood as telling your secret to the others.

Your character, personality, religion, culture, gender, the topic you are going to reveal, the person that your secret to be revealed are the factors that having influence for disclosing yourself.

There are 2 effect after disclosing yourself:

1.       Positive effect (Advantages/Benefits)

a.       Gain more confidence

b.      Be more truthful to yourself

c.       Gain happiness

d.      Strengthen friendships/relationship among each other

2.       Negative effect(Disadvantages)

a.       Gain additional burden, pressure

b.      Life becomes stressful

c.       Life is filled with unhappiness

d.      Living with regret

And before the end of the lecture, we had a small class activity. It's about how do you define your friend. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to  be called on stage, if not it would be fun because i want to tease my friend haha...

Human Communication: Week 3 - 17th Sept 2014 (Wed)

Seems like i misunderstood what does the lecturer want us to do with our blog... We need to update our blog only after there's a lecture given, which means we have to write about what we learnt during the lecture.
Well ,that's quite boring for me.. Coz everyone will write almost the same thing in their blog... Whatever lahh
I think i will still write something about my personal life rather than just explaining the lecture given.. It's a good platform for me to train my writing skill.


Okay, the class on 17th sept was a happy class because no lecture was given on that day.
Our nice lecturer claimed that the progress is too fast, so he would not teach on that day.
Good then, no lecture then not so stressful.
He played some video clips in the class. Those video clips are the group assignments done by the students from previous semester.

The first one is about interviewing for a job. It's quite creative and it brings out the contrast between the 2 candidates who are going for an interview. The message is clearly conveyed.

There's a video clip is talking about culture. It states the importance of knowing different culture before communicating to each other to avoid misunderstanding. For example, the "OK" sign means 'okay ' in Malaysia, but it means 'money' in Japan and 'asshole' in Brazil. A gesture or posture may have different meaning in different country, so we better communicate well to avoid conflicts between different cultures.

Another group is doing a similar topic, which is related to culture too. Although both of these groups are doing the similar topic, the message conveyed by this group is slightly unclear compared to the previous one. The storyline is, however, quite interesting. Some of the stories are quite notable, to name a few, it is impolite to request for shaking hand with middle-east ladies or slapping a japanese girl's shoulder etc.

There's a group that discussed about the car park issue. However, the quality of the video produced is disappointing. I couldn't even listen what they are talking about even though i tried hard to do so.

Well, there is a great group which presented a well-organised video that conveys their message and interprets their topic completely. The story lines are amazingly attractive and there's a narrator who concludes the messages and value for each stories. They presented about conflict between a pregnant-woman and her husband who had just lost his job, the hardworking employee that complete his job with high efficiency etc.

What i've learnt from the class is that i knew some basic concept about the group assignment, such as how should we conduct, edit and produce our video so that it is effective in expressing what we are going to present in the video, what are the elements should we include in our video etc. It's a fruitful class!

Human Communication : Week 3 - 16 Sept 2014 (Tue)

Well, since it is Malaysian Day today, i'll write something about my beloved country.

For those who don't know where is Malaysia located, you may search it from Google Map... It's one of the countries of South East Asia. It's divided into two main parts, the Peninsular Malaysia(also known as West Malaysia) and the East Malaysia. To be more specific, Peninsular Malaysia is located between the north of Singapore and the south of Thailand, whilst West Malaysia is located at the north of Borneo, which is an island located near the South west of Philippines.

Well, my country is a really special country. Unlike the other countries,  Malaysia is a multiracial country which consist of different races, such as Malay, Chinese, Indian etc. All of us respect each races although we have different beliefs, cultures and religions. Therefore, we managed to live together harmonically.

Let's talk about the formation of Malaysia.
Before that, i would like to clarify about the Malaysia Day to those who are non-Malaysian.
Malaysia Day is NOT Independence Day.
Well i'm quite sure that the some of the non-Malaysians couldn't differentiate the Independence Day and Malaysia Day. They usually ask,"Aren't they are the same? What's the difference between these 2 days? Why do your country celebrate them separately?" That's actually a quite confusing concept for them. To explain this, i have to relate to the historical facts.

The Peninsular Malaysia and the East Malaysia are separated by the South China Sea. Because of the geographical factors, they were ruled by 2 different governments previously(around 1400A.D.). Peninsular Malaysia was ruled under the Malacca Empire while East Malaysia(to be more specific, it is known as Sabah and Sarawak at that time) was ruled Brunei.
The Peninsular Malaysia was occupied by Portuguese(1511-1641) and Dutch(1641-1824) after the fall of Malacca Empire. After that, it became a colony of British from 1824 to 1957. Federated States of Malayan is formed on 31th August 1957. Therefore, the 31th of August is our Independence Day. Note that two states which is located at the North Borneo were not involved in the formation of Federated States of Malayan.

In 1963, The Prime Minister of the Federated States of Malayan proposed the concept of Malaysia, which is a country that combines of Federated States of Malayan, Singapore, and the 3 North Borneo States(which is Sabah, Sarawak and Brunei). Generally, the leaders of these states agreed the formation of Malaysia. The people of Brunei, however, refused to the concept of combination and causes mayhem in Brunei. Therefore, government of Brunei withdrew from the concept and the become another independent country which is located in between Sabah and Sarawak at North Borneo whilst the others formed Malaysia on 16th September 1963 and here comes the formation of Malaysia Day. However, Singapore quited Malaysia on 1965 due to some political factors.(Well, it's a sensitive issue in our country, if you are interested in this topic, you are welcomed to do some research and collect some information about that particular topic)

Well, these are the difference between the Malaysia Day and the Independence Day, and I think these information is well enough for those who couldn't distinguish Malaysia Day and Independence Day.


Last but not least, Happy Malaysian Day and  have a nice HOLIDAY hoorayyyy

3rd Post

It's the end of the 2nd week of the semester, i was forced to update my blog will just randomly talk about one day of my college life lah... It's a long post, so i will divide them into 2 posts.

It was a Thursday afternoon, as usual,  I drove to the campus, but this time, I set off at 1.30pm, which was one hour earlier than the time I usually start driving. It was because one of my coursemate who stayed at hostel requested me to drive her to the Cempaka International School at Cheras(which is located not far from the campus) to do something. As i said, it is not far from the campus(well, it is very far if you walk there ), it won't cost me a lot of petrol so i promised to give her a ride.

On the way to the international school, we talked about the recital held on the evening. She reminded me that I am one of the ushers which was going to help out the recital. 
OH NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!! I totally forgot that i'm  one of the ushers!!!! I FORGOT TO BRING ALONG THE UNIFORM FOR THE USHER!!! WHAT SHOULD I DOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!

Alright, the problem won't be solve by blaming yourself...
SO NOW, THINK ABOUT THE SOLUTION!!!!

THINKING
THINKING
THINKING
THINKING
THINKING

*bulb lights up on my head*
DING DING!! YOU RETARDED IDIOT!! WHY DON'T YOU BORROW IT FROM YOUR FRIEND??

Then, i called a friend... (LESSON: using handphone when driving is illegal, please don't do so even though you're an experienced driver)

To be continue...

Human Communication: Week 2 - 10 Sept 2014 (Wed)

We talked about perception yesterday. As a human being, we tend to percepts, but our perceptions are not always the correct or it doesn't always conform to the real situation: It could be a wrong information. So how we are going to ensure that we could receive the correct information? That's the topic we had learnt in our lecture today-- listening!!

Listening is the process that allows you to receive messages from others including both verbal message and non-verbal message. Constructing the meaning of the message received and giving response to the speaker are also parts of Listening.

Listening is divided into 5 stages

1. Receiving: You hear something from the speaker, the message conveyed could be verbal or non-verbal.
2. Understanding: The process of decoding the speaker message.
3. Remembering: After you understand the message conveyed by the speaker, you have to remember what did he tell you in order to get to the next stage.
4. Evaluating: You will judge the message given by evaluating it before you give response.
5. Responding: After evaluating the message, you respond to the speaker. It could be happened during the speaker speech or after his speech.

There is, of course, some ways to increase the effectiveness of all these 5 stages.

To RECEIVE message clearly, we should

1. be focus
2. avoid distractive environment
3. not interrupt the speaker
4. refrain from thinking about how do we respond to the speaker

To UNDERSTAND the message, we should

1. relate the information to your knowledge
2. ask question to clarify something that you don't understand
3. rephrase the idea

To REMEMBER the message, we should

1. Identify the main idea and also supportive evidence during his speech
2. Summarize the main idea of his speech
3. Repeat the main concepts to yourself in your mind

To EVALUATE the message, we should

1. evaluate only after the end of the speech
2. assume the speaker is a good-willed person
3. avoid prejudices in the speaker's speech

To RESPOND the message, we should

1. express your support to the speech given using backchanneling cues(yup, i see, uh-huh,ya , true etc.)
2. express your support of the speech in your final response

However, we will face some difficult situation in listening when we are communicating with different culture. Therefore, we should study the following topic because of the diversity of culture.

LISTENING and CULTURE

1. Language and speech: Difference between culture may result in different language as as well. So, we have to be aware of it because there will be some different definition for certain words.
2. Non-verbal behavioral differences: It is about the body language. Sometimes, the meanings of some certain gestures vary by different culture, so avoid using certain gestures may reduce the misunderstanding.
3. Direct and indirect style: Sometimes, we could not express some messages in a too direct way but in an indirect manners so that our speech doesn't hurt a person. For an example, from 2 of the speech below, which sounds better? (In a direct manner)"Aiyo, why you wear so short? This is so informal and unrespectful to others, go and change another set of clothes" or (In an indirect manner)"Hmm, perhaps you should wear something with sleeves and collars so that it seems to be more formal."
4. Balance of story versus evidence: In some culture, people prefer listening to the evidence than the story(could be the theory or the idea too) and vice versa. Therefore, our speech would be varied by the listeners
5. Credibility: The reliability of the message is also varied by different cultures. Some cultures take morality as their main concern while others would take knowledge as their main concern.
6. Feedback: Feedback from the listeners with different cultures may be given in various ways. Some cultures tend to give feedback in a very direct way but some may not. 

We had known the difficulties faced during listening, so now we are going to learn some ways to overcome these difficulties. How do we listen effectively? There are some suggestion below:

1. Participatory and passive listening: We may participate the listening to enhance the listening experience. While passive listening represents the acceptance of the speakers' idea.
2. Emphatic and objective listening: We should avoid listen some general opinion very subjectively. However, we might need to consider the feeling or meaning against the objective opinion sometimes, and that's what we called emphatic listening.
3. Non-judgmental and critical listening: We should be open-minded when we listens and think critically about the idea conveyed whether it is true. Sometimes, we might have to listen without considering or judging the value itself is good or bad. 
4. Surface and depth listening: We have to identify the literal meaning and the depth meaning of one's speech. For an example, "You look beautiful today." seems to be praising in literal meaning, but it hints to the listener that the speaker wished to have a dance with her.

Conclusion, listening skill plays an important role in human communication. It helps you to receive one's messages clearly in our daily life and act as an preparative duration for us to decide what we should respond  to the speaker.

Human Communication: Week 2 - 9 Sept 2014 (Tue)

Today, we had a lecture about PERCEPTION

Perception is one's first impression given to others. It is the first image u think about in your heart.

Well, there are 3 process/stages to take place when perception happens

1. Sensory stimulation occurs
2. Sensory stimulation is organised
3. Sensory stimulation is interpreted-evaluated

These can be explained in a very scientific manner.

For an example, u saw a girl screaming at a guy on the street.

When you saw them, you were undergoing first stage. (The light travels into your eyeballs)

Then, your brain would start gathering and organizing the information based on various principles. For example, according to proximity principle, you will automatically categorize are a couple or something else because you see both of them as a unit.

Then, you would think of something like "wow, this guy is so handsome!! He is a nice and polite person." or "eww, this ugly girl so ugly and unrespectful to his handsome boyfriend. She is a bad girl, don't even know how to appreciate her boyfriend". When you are doing this, you are trying to evaluate and interpret them in your mind. Perception happened.

Perception could be affect by 5 factors. They are called process influencing perception:

1. Implicit Personality Theory: We tend to categorize people into positive and negative. So, if one shows positive characteristic or personality, we tend to think they would possess the other good traits and vice versa. this effect is know as Halo Effect(positive traits) and Reverse Halo Effect(for negative traits). From the example above, we tend to thinks that the handsome boy is a good guy(Halo effect takes place) while the ugly girl is bad inconsiderate girl(Reverse Halo Effect takes place).
2. Self-fulfilling prophecy: It is also known as Pygmalion effect: Basically, it is something you predicted to be happen, and you unconsciously acted as if it is true, therefore it happened as you predicted because you are the one who fulfilled it. For an example, you thinks that your lecturer don't like you (but he is not in the beginning), so you keep disturbing him when he is giving lecture, and because of your annoying disturbing action, you lecturer don't like you at the end. Your are the one who causes the situation happens.
3. Primacy-recency: we tend to percept something by experiences or early information. For an example, you heard that Kuala Lumpur is a very polluted city from somebody else. When you come to Kuala Lumpur, although the air is very clean, you will feel like "Eh how come the air so dirty one? everyday haze.. oh my god i cant breathe well at here lah, how come KL people can survive here ah?"
4. Consistency: We tend to have consistency among perceptions. Eg. if somebody always get full marks in exam, we will tend to think that he is very good in this subject, and we will expect him to get full marks in the next exam too.
5. Attribution: It is an process to discover why and how people do something.

However, perception is not always correct. Let's get back to the first example. you might think the girl is being arrogant to the handsome guy, but in fact, the guy might be a stranger who molested the girl and the girl is trying to catch others attention in order to stop the guy from being impolite to her.

So, how do we make perception precisely instead of keep making wrong perception?

There are few ways suggested:

1. Analyze your impression towards the matters you making perception
2. Look for more information to reduce the uncertainties
3. Increase sensitivity in different cultures to reduce misunderstanding
4. Always check your perceptions with the reality

Well this is all for today. Hope you enjoy reading them.

Week1- 2nd post

Had a great day with my ex-piano teacher!

Both my ex-teacher and I went to a cello and piano recital this evening.

The concert was fantastic, the last piece is one of my favourite! 

I wish i could play as well as the pianist, his playing skill is marvellous!!!! He probably is one of the best pianist in our country.. Well, I started to love Bartok's music too (I don't really like his compositions, especially his mikrokomos, i have no idea what he is trying to express in his music )

After the recital, my ex-teacher and I planned to have dinner before going home. I think both of us had had a really tough situation.. You know what, the worst situation is always not that you have no choice, but there are too many choices and you don't know which is the best that is the most suitable for you among the others. There are too many restaurants there, so we really had a difficult time to make decision about which restaurant to go. We ended up having our meals in a normal restaurant since both of us totally had no idea what to eat.

(For those friends who love eating, you may search some info about Puchong Jaya, somewhere near IOI shopping mall, i'm sure you will get excited if you all went there, there are a lot of restaurants there)

We share our childhood experiences while eating. Both of us had some really special and memorable childhood experiences that seldom experienced by the others. There's not much people who experiences their childhood by playing around with the small animals, although i think we are not just playing around with them, but torturing them sometimes. I'm quite surprised when she herself admitted that she was a tomboy when she was a kid.

Of course, we talked about the teaching and learning experiences in our music journey too. We talk about lecturers in my college, and some of my course mate, and the experiences with different lecturer etc (Don't worry i won't write about that topic, it would be very boring for some of you.) It was a great time to chat with her, she is willing to share everything that she know with you.

We had a wonderful evening, glad to have such a nice and caring yet helpful lady as my teacher. Looking forward to seeing her soon.

I'm still suffering in illness..

and i don't have mood and time to work on my Etude. 

arrrgggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Stressful life... 

First post loo

Today is the first day of my second semester of in University..

The first class was major instrument(oh yeah, i'm a music student),it was a very packed, torturing and fruitful class. Luckily the lecturer is very serious, strict and nice, so i didn't get scolded today.. By the way, i don't know why he is so serious kind. A lot of work have to be done for the etude... goshh i don't think i can finish everything before the next lesson.. luckily the lecturer is very nice

oh ya, forgot to talk about why i create this blog. It is because this is one of the assignments of the course in my college, and i was force to do so, or else i will fail the course i love writing and sharing my life/experience with others mahh... LOL why i'm so hypocrite 



Well, i'm not feeling well today, haven't recover from illness.. that's all for today, goodnight