Blog Post 2

Active listening and/or Non-verbal communication 

Observe the interaction between 2 or more people

In this blog post, I will talk about how people interaction may be affected by culture, gender or age.I still remember about the time when I traveled to Paris for my year-end vacation and an incident happened at Charles De Gaulle Airport. I witnessed this group of mainland china tourists. They were loud and could be heard clearly in the midst of this busy airport. One of tourist pointed out to the exit sign and shouted "那个"(ni ge).  The word held a very similar pronunciation to the English word “nigger”.However, in the vicinity, there was an African American man waiting for his baggage. On hearing the word he felt offended and proceeds to scold and make rude gestures to the group of the Chinese tourists. Confusion among the Chinese tourists arose. The eldest man among the group joins for a verbal argument with the American. I remember the Chinese man rebuke the American man by saying "In my country, people treat the elderly with respect unlike you!"

Let me pause the story here and explain their lack of active listening and non-verbal skills. Culture barrier may have played a part in this chaotic situation. As the elderly Chinese man was blocked by his culture of younger generation treating their elderly with respect, his is blinded to make any good judgment. The American man fails to clarify his doubts with someone, which is part of active listening and proceeds for an argument. The American man also made rude gestures to Chinese group as his non-verbal skills to further display his unhappiness which is a good use of non-verbal skills but for reasons. 

Resuming the story. A Malay lady managed to break off the argument. She explained about the misunderstanding in their respective languages. Even though her spoken Chinese were choppy she managed to diffuse the situation. The situation ended with both parties apologizing to each other. It only reading the news about this incident that I realize the lady was from Singapore! Now we will analyze how she manages to resolve the situation taking the fact her knowledge of the Chinese language was poor. The main reason is because that she has the good cross-cultural understanding which helps out during the explaining. She used hand gestures, pointing at the exit sign and explaining the meaning of "那个" and how it offended the American man. From this, we can recognize lady is using her nonverbal skill to further complement her explanation. 

Blog Post 0 : End goals for the course

Blog post 1

Importance of developing effective communication skills and 2 goals 

Hi, I will first start off with that effective communication is one of the most basic factors to succeed in the many aspects of life. As we require communication skill to better understand what your friends and families are trying to say instead of listening to reply. You should play close attention to the speaker and change for any change in tone or their body languages and take a moment to think about how you are going to reply. That is effective communication when done well. 

As for the 2 goals that I set for myself to accomplish at the end of the course, my first goal is to improvement my self-awareness so that I will not cause anyone trouble unknowingly. My second goal is to improve my communication skills as I belong to the group that listened just to reply. Moreover, I do not give much thought when replying which in turn, inflicting stress and pain to others. Therefore these 2  goals need to be achieved by the end of the course in order for me to be a better communication and a decent human being.