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