Assignment task:
The purpose of this assignment is to help you reflect on your experiences with oral communication conducted in English. You will be asked to keep an ongoing journal of "critical incidents". These are events in which you communicated with someone orally and experienced some challenges or surprises that helped you learn something new relating to communication. They can be conversations, long or short in which you had some problems which you resolved or didn't resolve. The conversations can be conducted in class, on the phone, at home, and/or in the virtual learning space. Reflect on these conversations and how they connect with concepts or skills covered in this class.
You need to produce five journal entries in which you answer the following:
- When and where did this oral communication occur?
- Who were you speaking with? What is your relationship with the other speaker/s?
- What were you talking about? What was the purpose of the interaction?
- What level of formality was used and why? What linguistic features indicating degree of formality were used? Were any idioms or speech routines used?
- What challenge/s or surprise/s did you experience? What did you do or not do in response? What did the other person do or not do? What kind of strategies did you use or could you have used?
- What did you learn about communication through the experience and how could you apply your understanding to future situations?
For each oral communication incident that you writ e about, connect and combine the answers into a cohesive paragraph or two. Make sure to give examples where appropriate.