Communication

1. Evaluate this chapter’s definition of communication. What are its strengths? What are its weaknesses? If you were asked to improve it in one way, by adding subtracting, or modifying something, what would you change? Present your answer and explain the reasoning that justifies it in a 100-200-page response. One of the strengths of communication is that we can utilize it on so many different levels. Many think of communicating as talking, of course recently that would be replaced more and more with texting and typing on the computer. What makes communication strong is not the ways in which it shifts, but in the ways it remains the same, such as human touch, looks, body language. None of these can be duplicated in the less contact-based forms of communication mentioned previously. The main weaknesses are a barrier to the sender’s message getting received properly by the recipient, such as language or possibly gender. If I were to implement something to alter communication for better or worse, I would be a minor class in early education, preferably before the third grade. This class would be a communication class of sorts, preferably something geared more towards reading body language, as I believe much of our communication efforts are lost or misconstrued. If children were made aware of how to see the subtle cues sent by those they are communicating with in person, I believe this would help foster a more tightly knit unity within our culture.
2. Recall an incident in which you or an acquaintance experienced a communication breakdown because of a verbal linguistic barrier. Chronicle this incident in a 100-200-word response. My wife and I work in a hotel in our town part-time. Here in Arizona, many workers in a number of jobs are bilingual because of the obvious need. Unfortunately, many of those who work housekeeping jobs at our hotel speak fluent Spanish and do not speak more than a few words of broken English. I have worked with some of these people for