My Interpersonal Communication Class

I, myself have learned a lot along the way during this Interpersonal Communication class. I have learned how to communicate effectively with those around me by using the information along with tips presented within this class and textbook. In this paper I’ve chosen two communicative behaviors from chapters four and five to improve my skills in; they are making prejudice opinions/judgments toward others and listening. The first area of interpersonal communicative behavior I want to improve is my usage of prejudice opinions/judgments toward others. By being prejudice myself, and others form judgments or opinions of someone, on the basis of stereotypes or before we know all the facts or the background of that particular person. I tend to

A second example is when I see someone using food stamps, and they are of a different race than myself I assume they are just using the Government, and taking advantage of the money earned by hard working individuals. The reason these individuals use food stamps could be they lost their jobs, and have no money to buy food and need help to get through this tough stage in their lives. Also, I tend to repeatedly make prejudice opinions/judgments about certain friends of mine on Facebook. When they post a status about something going on in their lives; I automatically assume they think their lives are more important than anyone else’s and that we want to hear all about it. I need to realize that by using these prejudice opinions/judgments toward others not only affects the person I place my judgments and opinions upon, but those prejudice actions affect myself because people see my wrongful opinions and not my caring personality. I can alter my behavior and enhance my interpersonal interactions by becoming more knowledgeable, motivated, and skilled. I can develop more knowledge about a person by asking questions and establishing

Listening is the process of selecting, attending to, creating meaning from, remembering and responding to verbal and nonverbal messages. I tend to not listen well when I’m angry or tired, and also when my mom tells me something she’s already told me before. I think sometimes I don’t listen to my mom because I experience listener burnout which means being weary of listening to other people. I believe I experience this because she has already told me something several times and I grow weary of hearing the same thing over and over. This affects me because my mom is my elder and I should listen to her because she is older and has obtained more knowledge about situations and events than I have. Also, I need to listen to her more because she is not going to tell me anything that would hurt me. My plan to alter my listening skills is to use the three steps presented in Chapter 5, stop, look, and listen. To stop I should not attend to off- topic self-talk by putting my own thoughts aside and make a mindful effort to listen; second I should look by examining nonverbal cues of those involved in the communication; I also need to accurately interpret nonverbal messages to help note what someone is saying verbally and nonverbally. I can also interpret nonverbal messages to receive the Meta message which is a message about a message. Finally, I should listen, and not only