Chapter 1
Communication: Begin Right Here!
ABOUT CHAPTER 1
This chapter is designed to set the scene for your students’ study of communication. By
introducing them to communication in general, we help them understand the nature of the
communicative act as well as how interpersonal, small-group, and public interactions fit into,
reflect, and affect the total environment of which they are a part.
Chapter 1 sets not only the scene, but also, the tone for the entire book. We have written the text
so that students are not merely passive recipients of information, but active participants in
processing the data they receive. We hope you will reinforce this premise in class. The keystones
of our writing style are interactive inquiry and involvement; the outcomes of our approach are
motivation and knowledge.
LEARNING OUTCOMES AND CONTENT
Outcomes and Content Activities and Resources
LO 1. Define communication. In the text:
Pages 3-5
Skill Builder: Contacts!
Review, Reflect and Apply
Recall
Understand
Create
Skill Builder: Rate Yourself
In the Instructor’s Manual:
Worksheet: Contacts
1.1 Skill Builder: Names, Names
1.2 Skill Builder: How Are You Doing?
1.3 Skill Builder: People Research Game
1.4 Skill Builder: A Moment of Silence
1.5 Skill Builder: Effective Communicators
1.13 Skill Builder: Put Down the Cell!
DVD
How Smart are Animals? PBS. Nova
Science Now. Students especially enjoy the
opening segments on Dogs and Dolphins
It is an interesting way to launch the
course.
I’m No Hero. Charlie Plumb. DVD. Plumb
was a Prisoner of War during Vietnam. He
discusses the need for effective
communication to keep the American
prisoners alive. Great opening for the
course.
On the Online Learning Center:
Video Clip—The Social Animal
Self-Inventory
LO2 In the text:
Pages 5-10
Review, Reflect, and Apply
Recall
Understand
Create
Skill Builder: Rate Yourself as a
Communicator
Work It Out: Models of Communication
Media Wise: Does Reality TV Reflect
Reality?
Sidebar Discussion Starters
In the Instructor’s Manual:
1.6 Skill Builder: Receiver—Source—
Receiver—Source
LO 3 Describe the core principles of
Communication
In the text:
Pages 10-12
Discussion Starters
In the Instructor’s Manual:
1.7 Skill Builder: Can You Send an Un-
Message?
LO 4 Analyze how digital media are
transforming communication in ways good
and bad.
In the text:
Pages 12-16
Media Wise: Does Reality TV Reflect
Reality?
Cartoon: Internet and Isolation
In the Instructor’s Manual
Skill Builder 1.9: Exploring the World of
the Cyber-Communicator
Sidebar Discussion Starters
Sidebar Group Activity
LO 5 Evaluate the benefits of
communicating effectively.
In the text:
Pages 16-18
Thinking Critically: Reflect and Respond
LO 6 Apply guidelines for improving your
communication effectiveness.
Additional Activities
In the Text
Pages 18-21
In the Instructor’s Manual:
1.10 Skill Builder: A Pat on the Back
1.14 Culture Cure
1.15 Skill Builder: Service Learning
1.16 Skill Builder: Listen/View
Self Analysis Scale
OLC: Key Term Flashcards
OLC: Key Term Crosswords
OLC: Self-Quizzes
OLC Instructor’s Area PowerPoint Files
LESSON OUTLINE FOR CHAPTER 1
You may want to include some of the Review, Reflect, & Apply questions.
I. The Importance of Communication
a. What Is Communication?
b. Who Is a Communicator?
Incorporate activities from the text and the instructor’s manual.
II. How Good a Communicator Are You?
Incorporate activities from the text and the instructor’s manual.
III. Elements of Communication: Picturing the Communication Model
a. People
b. Messages
c. Channels
d. Noise
e. Context
f. Feedback
g. Effect
Incorporate activities from the text and the instructor’s manual
IV. Models of Communication
Incorporate activities from the text and the instructor’s manual
V. How Good a Communicator Are You? Understanding Core Communication
Principles
A. Communication is Dynamic
B. Communication is Unrepeatable and Irreversible
C. Communication has no opposite
D. Communication is affected by culture
E. Communication is influenced by ethics
F. Communication is Competence-Based
Incorporate activities from the text and the instructor’s manual
VII Media and Technology are Transforming Communication
G. The Medium is the Message
H. Technopoly
I. New ways of relating
J. Is the internet addictive?
K. What does your time online reveal about you?
L. How many emails do you receive daily?
M. How much time do you spend on face book? Why
Incorporate activities from the text and the instructor’s manual
VI. Why Do We Communicate?
N. To Gain Self Understanding and Insight into Others
O. To Form Meaningful Relationships
P. To Influence others
Q. For Career Development
Incorporate activities from the text and the instructor’s manual
VII. Communication Skills
R. Practice Effective Communication
S. Become actively involved in the study of communication
T. Set and track personal goals
U. Believe in yourselves
Incorporate activities from the text and the instructor’s manual
VIII. Summary: The Wrap Up
Incorporate activities from the text and the instructor’s manual
TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION
1. What is communication? What essential ingredients are at work during any
communicative act?
2. Why is communication considered the essential human connection?
3. In what ways will improving your communication skills help you succeed in your
career?
4. How do you know when you are sending messages to others?
5. Give examples of private, public, purposeful, and accidental messages you have
recently sent or received.
6. Consider the extent to which different environments cause you to alter your posture,
manner of speaking, or attire.
7. How can you use models of communication to enhance your communication
effectiveness?
8. In what ways are communication technologies altering the nature of our
communication experiences? For example, in what ways have technological devices
such as cell phones changed the way we stay in touch?
9. In what ways do you feel that communication technology will change in the future?
Will the changes make us more effective communicators?
10. Why should you take the time to improve your interpersonal, small group, and public
communication skills?
DISCUSSION STARTERS
1. Identify people you know personally or people you know of who have attained their
positions because of their social capital and/or human capital. Which form of capital do
you believe is more important? Why?
2. When has insensitivity caused problems for you or others on the job or at home?
3. Which type of communication do you use most? Least? Which do you enjoy most?
Least? Why?
4. Inventory each message you receive during a two-minute period, and note the channel
through which it came.
5. What positive and negative feedback have you recently given to others? What positive
and negative feedback have you received?
6. Can you think of an interpersonal, small group, or public communication encounter you
had that affected a later encounter?
7. Can you describe a work-related or personal situation in which the irreversibility of
communication caused problems for you?
8. Can you cite an example of how improving a specific communication skill enabled you to
resolve a problem in your personal, academic, or professional life?
9. Describe communication experiences in which you were confirmed, rejected, and
disconfirmed by another person. How did you respond in each case?
MORE DISCUSSION STARTERS
1. Supply adjectives describing the communication environment in which you live.
Compare and contrast the adjectives provided by others in your class. Work with a
group to determine what your chosen adjectives suggest about the nature of
communication in this century.
2. Taking your cue from the quotations on page five, work with others to create an
original quotation describing the group’s attitude toward communication.
3. Inventory each message you receive during the next two minutes. Note the channel
through which it came. Compare your list with those of your team.
4. Bring to class a variety of materials with which to create an original model of
communication. Give the model a name. Demonstrate the model to your class.
Explain what your model suggests about the state of communication today.
5. Work with a team to share your thoughts and answers to the following questions: Is
technology increasing or undermining social contact? Are we becoming the tools of
our tools? Are technological innovations overwhelming us with information or
underwhelming us with a lack of credibility. Are they freeing us or complicating our
lives? Are they bring us closer or keeping us apart?
6. Describe the ways that online interaction is affecting offline communication
activities. Work with a team to identify how you believe the internet is affecting
society for bettor for worse. For example, to what extent if any, has internet use
affected the time you have for family or friends?
7. Compile a list of the communication activities you engaged in yesterday together with
the functions(s) served by each one.
Models of Communication.
Have students look at each of the models presented in the chapter. Ask them questions such as
the following: What functions do models perform? How well does each of these models fulfill
these functions? Why is it impossible to create a perfect model of the communication process?
Cartoon
Have students look at the cartoon in the text. How does the attitude depicted in the cartoon affect
the instructor-student relationship? Would it also affect relationships on the job? If so, how?
Photos: Interpersonal, Small Group and Public Communication
Ask students to examine the photos in this chapter. In what ways do they help summarize the
chapter’s content? What other areas of person-to-person communication would the students like
to see incorporated into a course like this? Why?
Video/Film
Select an interesting film such as Crash, Traffic, The Matrix, Castaway, When a Man Loves a
Woman and The Truth about Cats and Dogs. Show a segment of one of these films, a film of
your choice, or one suggested by your students. What do the main characters in the film reveal
about the nature and impact of communication?
Are animals smart?
ADDITIONAL SKILL BUILDERS
1.1 SKILL BUILDER: Names, Names, Names
Do you ever play some type of “name game” at the beginning of a semester, only to find later
that you and your students still have trouble recalling the names of class members? Next time,
try this exercise. Ask each student to think of a positive adjective that begins with the same letter
as his or her first name: Mighty Mike, Magnificent Maureen, Clever Carl, Intelligent Inez.
Have each student introduce himself or herself using the adjective. All class members should
then repeat each name and adjective. Finally, each student in turn should name everybody who
has gone before him or her. You will be amazed at the number of names you and your students
now remember.
After this exercise, ask students how they can use this tool in interpersonal situations. They will
point out that mentally adding an adjective to the name of a new acquaintance may make it easier
for them to retain that person’s name in both social and business situations.
1.2 SKILL BUILDER: How Are You Doing?
Compile a list of feedback messages you receive during the next eight hours. List each message
under one of the following categories.
Positive messages I sent to myself
Positive messages I received from others
Negative messages I sent to myself
Negative messages I received from others.
In general, how alert were you to feedback? Did the exercise make you more aware of the
feedback that you normally would have been? To which kinds of messages were you most
responsive? Why? Least responsive? Why?
1.3 SKILL BUILDER: Conversation Starters—People Research Game
How often do you or your students enter a room full of strangers and immediately wish you
could leave? To feel more comfortable in such a situation, have everyone try this system.
1. Walk up to a stranger and introduce yourself: “Hello. My name is . . . .” Shake hands
with that person.
2. Ask a non-threatening, closed question that can be answered with a yes or no: “Nice
party, isn’t it?”
3. Ask open-ended questions as if you were a reporter. Focus on the W’s—where, what,
when, why, who, and how. “What kind of work do you do? When did you graduate?”
4. Be positive and act suitably impressed.
Your job in this game is to find out, in one hour, as many details as possible about as many
people in the room as you can. Set yourself a goal, and keep working your way around the room
to meet that goal.
Students often report that approaching a group of strangers with the goal of finding out as much
as possible about each person in a limited time produces extraordinary results. When you have a
research job to do and little time in which to do it, there isn’t time to be frightened of meeting
people.
1.4 SKILL BUILDER: A Moment of Silence
Chapter 1 focuses on the universal need to communicate. Illustrate this concept for your students.
1. Ask for a moment of silence.
2. Simply look at your students. After 30 seconds or so, they will begin to look at one
another and at you.
3. Do not respond. Just wait. Eventually, people will begin to chuckle and ask what you are
doing.
4. Ask your students about the experience: How did they feel after the moment of silence
became quite lengthy? At what point did they feel a need to say something to someone?
At what point did they begin checking the reactions of their neighbors? What motivated
them to do this?
5. Let students discuss why they felt the need to interact verbally.
1.5 SKILL BUILDER: Effective Communicators
It can be helpful for students to consider effective communicators they have met.
1. Have each student think of a man and a woman whom he or she knows personally and
would describe as an effective communicator.
2. Either in writing or in a presentation to the class, the student should describe each
person’s effective communication techniques, and give specific examples of what that
person does to be perceived as an effective communicator. What elements of the
communicator’s techniques would the student like to incorporate into his or her own
communication repertoire? Why?
1.6 SKILL BUILDER: Receiver-Source-Receiver-Source
Choose a partner and role-play one of the following situations: a quarrel between lovers,
a conversation between two strangers waiting for a bus during a storm, a controversy between a
teacher and a student over a grade, a discussion between friends about the rising cost of tuition.
After enacting your scene, explain how what one person did and said influenced what the
other person did and said.
1.7 SKILL BUILDER: Can You Send an Un-Message?
1. Describe a situation in which you tried to avoid communicating with someone. In your
description, identify the person with whom you did not want to communicate, give your
reasons, describe the strategies you used to try to avoid communicating, and describe the
results of your efforts.
2. Describe a situation in which someone tried to avoid communicating with you. Again,
identify the person involved, give your perception of his or her reasons for not wanting to
relate to you, describe the strategies the person used to try to avoid communicating, and
describe the results.
1.8 SKILL BUILDER: Confirm, Reject, Disconfirm
1. Working with a partner, improvise three scenes. In Scene A, one person confirms another
person’s self-image. In Scene B, one person rejects the other person’s self- image. In
Scene C, one person disconfirms the other person’s self-image. Note the verbal and
nonverbal behaviors that are involved in confirming, rejecting, or disconfirming the
person.
2. Describe the communication experiences in which you were just confirmed, rejected and
disconfirmed by another person. How did you respond in each case?
3. Describe communication experiences from your life in which you confirmed, rejected,
and disconfirmed another person. How did the other person respond in each situation?