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1.
Define the term communication.
2.
What are the three primary reasons that human beings communicate?
3.
What is the difference between encoding and decoding a message?
4.
Provide an example of a co-culture to which you belong.
5.
Briefly describe a time when your unintentional behavior contradicted your intentional
message.
6.
Define what is meant by communication channel, and provide an example of a channel
you have used to communicate today.
7.
Contrast the difference between appropriate communication and effective
communication.
8.
What term do we use to refer to a person’s ability to have a number of communication
behaviors at his or her disposal and the willingness to use different communication
behaviors in different situations?
9.
What term is used to refer to anything that interferes with the transmission of a message,
changing it in some way from what was originally encoded?
10.
In your own words, what do the authors of your textbook mean when they say that
communication is transactional?
11.
What is the difference between cognitions and behaviors?
12.
Why does your relational history with another person help determine what is appropriate
in a given situation?
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13.
Identify one element of the situational context of the classroom in which you are taking
this course that can create a challenge to the communication between you and your
instructor or among the students in the class.
14.
Define cultural identity.
15.
Explain what the functional perspective on communication means. What does this
perspective say about the reasons why we communicate?
16.
List and describe the six characteristics of communication.
17.
What are the essential features of competent communication? In what ways are process
and outcome related, and in what ways are they distinctly different from one another?
How about appropriateness and effectiveness?
18.
Describe how a person’s cultural identity influences his or her communication behavior.
19.
Consider a time when you and a communication partner failed to communicate
competently. Describe what happened in the situation and what went wrong in both your
communication and your partner’s communication. Based on what you have learned so
far about competent communication, what could you and the other person do to
communicate more competently if you could go back in time and redo the interaction?
20.
Using classroom interaction as the source for your examples, illustrate the
characteristics of communication as being symbolic, requiring a shared code, being
linked to culture, being both intentional and unintentional, occurring through various
channels, and being transactional. Explain how understanding these characteristics can
help a teacher communicate more competently with his or her students.
21.
Compare and contrast the essential features of the three models of communication
discussed in your textbook: the linear model, the interaction model, and the competent
communication model.
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22.
Describe a recent conflict you had with your roommate, a close friend, a family
member, or your significant other. Apply the model of competent communication to this
interaction to illustrate the elements of the model. How does considering the interaction
through the lens of this model help you understand the interaction differently than you
might have before engaging in this analysis?
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Answer Key
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