CHAPTER 1: FOUNDATION OF HUMAN COMMUNICATION

We are always aware of the fact that communication is essential in our life, regardless for our personal or professional life. However, we just don’t seem to use the right way to communicate with others. Fortunately for us, we are able to take up a course on Human Communication to improve our skills in this matter.

Introduction

Basically, human communication is a field of study which focuses on how people communicate in different ways. From the first lesson, we learned that the language in communication is not restricted to spoken words only. Our body language, facial expression and emotions are also forms of language in communication.

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 It also dawned on us that communication skill is not only significant as a platform for us to create a first good impression as it is also important in other aspects of our life. For instance, we use communication skill when we are ordering food, asking for direction and discussing an important project.

 COMMUNICATION IS USED IN…

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AND MANY MORE ASPECTS OF LIFE!

Areas of Human Communication

 We learned that there are five areas of communication.

Areas of Human Communication	Description
Intrapersonal communication	It involves talking to ourselves whereby we learn and evaluate ourselves. It also involves making decisions by ourselves.
Interpersonal communication	It involves interacting with others whereby we will learn about ourselves and others. We also reveal ourselves to other.
Small group and organizational communication	It is where we interact with other people to solve problems, develop new ideas and to share knowledge and experience.
Public communication	It involves informing and persuading others to do, buy or think in a particular way. Sometimes, it is others who inform and persuade us.
Mass communication	We are entertained, informed and persuaded by the media such as the television, radio and magazine.

Culture and Human Communication

In this lesson, we learned that culture affects the way a person communicates. As there are many cultures in this world, there are various forms of communication. The variety of culture leads to co-culture which is a collection from many different cultures. The main purpose cultural perspective is to influence and communicate effectively with people around the world.

The components of human communication are divided to two parts:

1.     Communication context

Socio-psychological context

It includes the relationships among participants and the roles that people. Besides that, it also takes in account of whether a   situation is serious or humorous, friendly or unfriendly, formal or informal.

Physical context

It is the place and environment where communication takes place.

Cultural context

It has connection with the culture values of the people.

Temporal context

It is related to the time of day and the time in history where the communication takes place.

     2.  Components of Human Communication

           

The Components	Description
Source - Receiver	Source encodes message and receiver decodes message.
Message	Included words, body language, text etc.
Feedback & Feed forward	Listener gives feedback to speaker while feed forward is the pretext to the context.
Channel	Words, Vocal, and Body language
Noise	Something disrupt message, including physical noise, psychological noise, and semantic noise.
Effects	Intellectual/Cognitive, Affective, and Psychomotor.

     Communication Models

      Linear communication model involves only speaker to listener whereas if the listener        response to the communication, it is known as interactional view of communication.  

     

The Purposes of Human Communication

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Activity :

     In class, we were divided to two groups whereby one group represents the deaf and mute people and the other group represents the blind people. Well, in this play-pretend situation, we were asked to communicate with one another. Through this activity, we learned that communication channels are essentially significant for people to communicate with one another. This activity managed to wrap up the lesson for chapter 1 in an interesting manner. Now, it's time for you readers to take a moment and think how would you to communicate with a deaf and mute person if you yourself is blind :)

Enough of brainstorming for that activity. Relax and take some spare time to watch this video which shows us the barrier of communication between a deaf and mute person with a normal person.

That is all from us for Chapter 1.