Carlos de la Peña



             

                                                             Presentations


      On Wednesday, we did presentations for our Speech and Communication class. Mrs Sherri, our teacher, gave us the opportunity and the challenge of taking her place for a class by corresponding topics to the rest of the students. As a shy guy who has always had stage fright, I was intimidated by the idea and my expectations were not very positive. But it was way easier and interesting than I thought. It was a good approach to what the essence of this class and a nourishing experience for our communicative skills. 

                            

                     Image that shows how communication puts the gears together to make things work




          I was put into group 1, which was in charge of presenting chapter 3. It was about intercultural communication. This is a very important topic for our community, which is composed of people from many diverse cultures. However, this chapter contains concepts that are applicable to areas outside of intercultural communication, such as quantitative and qualitative social research methods. Ana, our group leader, did an amazing job organizing the presentation, distribuiting the tasks, and making sure that each member of the group knew what to do. I think my other mates did an excellent job except for me. I wasn't prepared for the presentation and I was even late to the class because I fell asleep after doing my slides, so it was something improvised. But fortunately, Professor Sherri was satisfied with my presentation.


                                             
                                                People from different cultures together




          Group 2 presented chapter 9, which is about communicating in groups. And the coordination that I observed in them working as a group shows that they truly internalized their content. I really wasn't very concentrated on the content, but more on their way of talking, body language, and their general ways of exppressing themselves. Their presentations were mostly direct and practical, but well prepared and presented. To me they seemed very fluent and confident presenting. An they didn't lean so much on videos or any kind of resources to teach their things, which shows great domain of the content.

         

                                                   A group of people having communication



          Group 3 had to teach chapter 10: "Group Leadership and problem solving". Their style was very similar to group 2. But I think they were very even more direct and concise. Using simple, but illustrative images and graphs. Leaning on a concrete and effective communication, they exposed the essential components of a healthy and effective group, as well as the meaning and implications of being a true leader that carries the group forward. As a mere observation, and clarifying that I know they had covere their chapter as it was on the book, I think the book is missing one crucial concept in this topic. We should never forget that every group is made up of individuals in first place, but it completely focuses on their functioning orientated to the group. Each individual should work on themselves and assure their correct individual functioning in order to integrate to the group, and not the other way around. This specially applies to leaders, given the fact thet they are in charge of guiding the group. Anyway, they just did what was assigned to them, and I think they communicated their job pretty effectively.

                         
                                                   
                                                Picture that shows how a leader guides the group
  


           This presentation was a new experience for me. Mainly because it was online and in group. It ended way better than I expected, and it leaves me with the impression that this class won't be as boring as I thought. I'm a math major pursuer and I've always liked natural sciences. Adding the fact that I'm an introvert and I have social anxiety, I have bias against this kind of classes. But I will see this as an opportunity to develop new skills and have more appreciation for what we are as humans.





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Alexandra Quintero

Image
  My Reflection Photo of two men communicating.     In my speech class, we were separated into three groups and were delegated a chapter to present to the class. This meant that we would be in charge of teaching the class. This had initially made me nervous because this was something out of the ordinary. In all my college experience, it was always the professor who lectured while I would eventually doze off. However, my spunky professor, Sherri, had flipped the roles and I can honestly say this approach was far more interesting.  This picture depicts different languages around the world. My group was in charge of teaching the class chapter three, "Intercultural Communication". I can confidently say that I am grateful for my group. There were no problems and everyone was able to agree on things easily. We all chose to make Ana our group leader and she was able to equally divide the chapter sections for us to create our  slides and present. Now, when it came to th...
Read more

Angela Vargas

Image
This was our first class presentation, and we were all split into groups with assigned chapters 3, 9  and 10. Since this was our first time presenting in the class, I was extremely nervous to present  because  I am very shy and I don't like being the center of attention. Just having the feeling of  knowing all my classmates and professor are watching, and analyzing my presentation, was very  nerve-racking. I was part of group one, which focused on chapter 3: intercultural communication.  After we presented, I felt relieved that I got past the hardest part, which was speaking in front of  the class. That was one thing that I did not like, which was present, but since this is a speech  class we all are learning how to properly speak in public and overcome our fears. Other than  that, I was fascinated by everyone's amazing work and I really enjoyed seeing their  creative slides. This project was an opportunity to practice my public speaking...
Read more

Ana Urquiza

Image
Thoughts on Presentations   In my Speech class for Summer 2021, we were all divided into three groups and were supposed to present a certain chapter; I was in group 1 and in charge of Chapter 3. Before even presenting the chapter to our Speech class I was already nervous and stressed. I had a lot of responsibility being the group leader, I was in charge of giving instructions and answering many questions, that I did not know and made me a bit stressed. I was also afraid that my classmates were not going to do their work and I was going to look bad in front of the professor, however, I was more than surprised; when I checked the PowerPoint and saw that everyone did their respective part, I was very happy and content that I got them to work with. After that, was the anxiety about the presentation and hoping that everything went as planned.       Chapter 3 was Intercultural Communication in which I learned a lot while doing my part of the work. Communication is som...
Read more