Week 2 Blog Posting
The program I watched for this week blog assignment is a local drama program here that my daughter loves to watch. I chose a drama program because I believe it will give me a good opportunity to really understand the concepts of verbal and non-verbal communication and be able to grasp the differences between the two. I watched the program, the same episode on two different channels, in the first channel I watched with the sound turned off while at the second channel, I watched with the sound turned on.
True to my expectation, the activity helped me to fully understand the differences between the two. While verbal communication is the use of actual(spoken) words in communication non-verbal communication refers to sending and receiving messages without words. The first time I watched I tried to understand what messages the actors passing across, the feelings they are expressing, and the basis of the relationships between the actors through their non-verbal behaviors such as eye contact,facial expressions, hand gestures, body distance, and body positioning. My second time of watching the program, I turned on the sound and was able to hear what they were saying, the voice tone and quality, and their silences and pauses.
Most of my assumptions and interpretations while I watched without sound were right when I watched with the sound turned on, however, some were wrong and were outright misinterpretations. Though I believe this could (largely) be as a result of my not knowing the show very well, there are many lessons that I learned from this experience.
I discovered that sometimes the messages convey verbally may be different, contradictory, and inconsistent with that convey through our gesture and such. For instance, I misinterpreted the nodding of head in the drama by one of the actors to mean yes but actually the guy was doing it while he was saying "no I am not going to do what you are asking me to do." Notwithstanding the fact that non-verbal communication, such as the use of eyes, can convey emotions more effectively than words can, the meaning it conveys at times may be ambiguous (Carnes, 2011).
Resources:
Carnes, D. (2011). The differences between verbal and non-verbal communication. Retrieved from http://www.livestrong.com/article/166482-the-difference-between-verbal-nonverbal-communication/
Reality shows and drama is the new TV series for this decade. I am still stuck in the old days when the soap opera drama is all that is on. Every one talks about the reality shows that shows all the drama. You can easily misinterpreted the meaning if you are not paying close attention. Listening without sound will really be difficult to understand just by observing.
ReplyDeleteIt is amazing the number of television shows that we have to choose from. I found it difficult as I do not watch much tv during the week, but found it interesting that what I thought was happening due to the facial expressions were not really what was going on , it was the persons personality to look serious even though she was being comical. This exercise has reminded me that is is so esy to misinterpret nonverbal and verbal cues and we must be mindfuk on how to handle both.
ReplyDeleteThis activity really was an good way to get an understanding of non verbal and verbal skills. After listening to the show my preception was changed but not totaly. Nonverbal skills are sometime clearer than verbal.
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