Talia Casado

We’ve had the pleasure of seeing 3 well done presentations by our peers on chapters from our textbook in the last few classes. All of them were slightly different but the premise for all of them was on communication. Although forms of communication have grown and evolved in the last decade or two, it remains a vital skill that I would recommend anyone to hone in on. Whether we are receiving information, presenting it, having a conversation, in person, texting, on social media, literally anything, revolves around communication. 

Group 1

    I’ve been living in Miami since 2006 and I’ve never traveled anywhere like it in my life. It truly is a melting pot of people and group 1’s presentation on intercultural communication is not only very interesting but incredibly helpful for all of us that reside in a city so rich of culture. “Culture is a way of living” like group 1 said. It is the system of shared values, beliefs, attitudes and norms that guide what is appropriate among an identifiable group of people. 

    During their presentation they went over tangible and intangible aspects of cultures. They used pictures to show some examples of tangible aspects like statues of Buddha and intangible aspects like dances. I wish that they would’ve been a bit more detailed when going over the examples because I think that would’ve been interesting and would have caught the attention of the class. Values is a part of the presentation that I think was important because they were able to showcase the difference between ideal values and real values with something we are a familiar with, the constitution and society in the US. As far as the constitution states, equal rights and opportunity is offered to everyone regardless of gender, race or class. However, the reality is that, even in 2022, there is still a pay gap between the sexes and hate crimes are primarily race motivated. They also mentioned that in 2020, when covid first made its grand appearance in the US, there was a surge of Asian hate and I think this was an excellent example that we can relate to and have witnessed first-hand. 

    They mentioned culture shock which is extremely relevant in Miami since we have so many Hispanic people immigrating here. When I was 7 years old, I came to the US from Cuba and the culture shock was so intense that I essentially wiped most of my memory of Cuba. I am sure many people have felt culture shock in some way, shape, or form so I think it is crucial to talk about it. They talked about dominant culture which refers to the learn the norms held by the majority group of empowered people in society and I loved that they mentioned people hard of hearing because we hardly ever consider a group like that as a culture. 

    The slides on traits, low and high context cultures, and chronemic and monochronic cultures were excellent. They hardly had any writing on the slides but rather used a lot of visuals to get their point across. In my opinion, this is a much better way at keeping the audience entertained and listening. Masculinity, femininity and gender roles were also touched on during the presentation and the presenter did a great job by asking the class, after she was done presenting the information, which characteristics were masculine, and which were feminine. By making the presentation interactive, the information is more likely to stick to the audience and it becomes less likely that we forget it. 

    Overall, I think they did an exceptional job of presenting the material from the chapter to the class.

Group 2

    Group 2 goes into communicating in groups which is essential to a healthy process and a good outcome. Whilst in a group, each participant must trust each other to keep up with a certain amount of workload and feel comfortable enough to communicate when an individual is falling behind or not holding up their end. 

    They went over families as different types of groups such as protective, consensual, pluralistic and laissez-faire families, which became very interesting since they used examples like The Simpsons or Full House. These are shows that we grew up watching so to tie this into the lesson is a great technique for the audience to grasp the information they are presenting. Social groups were also explained in a similar way by comparing them to shows like New Girl and Scooby-Doo. It is much easier to remember that communication in these groups should encourage quieter members to participate in conversations, protect members from playful harassment, and provide opportunities for friends to disclose problems and receive support when you link it to a show like Scooby-Doo that everyone has watched. Support groups, Interest groups and service groups were presented in a similar fashion. This group did a great job at keeping me focused and engaged through their many examples and it was much easier to digest. 

        Work groups and teams was an easy topic to cover considering this project was divided into 3 groups. We all could relate since we had just experienced working in groups and all had to do our part to communicate with each other, split up the tasks and hold each other accountable for doing our parts. Same applies to virtual groups. Ever since covid we have all had to go to school through online classes and experienced how different communication can be through a computer than in person. Professor Sinkoff mentioned before that her some of her coworkers make their students turn on their cameras but that she leaves this optional which I think reflects different ways people like to deliver or receive information. Her coworkers need to see the students during class to present their information but on the other hand our professor mentioned that although she prefers it, she ultimately leaves it up to us to decide. We learned that healthy groups are cohesive. What are the factors of cohesion you may ask? We must ask ourselves what the purpose of the group is, is the presence voluntary, are you free to express yourself, do members provide feedback, and are accomplishments celebrated. They once again had great examples to keep us focused on their presentation. 

Overall I believe their slides were coherent and flow nicely, they also did an incredible job at presenting examples and keeping the audience engaged. 

Communication is what allows us all be able to work together cohesively and make all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place.