The Role I Play in Communication Subject - Essay Example

Introduction:(about 150 words) My is and I am a Chinese citizen. I have a simple personality with a positive mindset. I am fond of eating tastyfood to stay fresh and healthy and like to do physical exercises to avoid obesity. As far as my educational status and professional goal are concerned, I am doing Master’s degree in Professional Accounting at present and aim to become an entrepreneur in future. Conflicts occur almost every other day in life. However, one should have the skills to manage those conflicts and resolve them successfully. My personal desire is to get an in-depth understanding of conflict management because: 1. Conflicts are a part of every business. I want to be able to learn the way to manage conflicts in order to become a successful entrepreneur. 2. I want to learn all types of conflicts and the way to resolve them. 3. I want to learn all conflict management theories to apply them where necessary. There are some things that I need to do in the role play I have chosen. (about 800 words) Enough confidence: In this role play, I should have enough confidence to overcome fear and perform my topic. As a presenter, confidence is vital in presentation. It can influence many things. For example, with enough confidence, the presenter’s volume becomes louder and the pitch becomes confident. Similarly, the behaviour of the presenter becomes more natural. I would play the role of a manger in the role play. Therefore, I should have confidence in myself to manage conflicts with customers. Besides, the audience or receiver would feel more comfortable and the messages from presenter would go more efficiently to the receivers. Consequently, it can influence the feedback from the receiver to the messages. Confidence is a kind of reflection from presenters’ psychological status. There are some factors that result in decrease in the confidence level of a presenter. For example, fear to talk in front of lots of people, particularly, in second language. Whether the audience understand what I am talking about? Whether they like my overall performance in the presentation? These are some questions that every presenter has in mind during and after the presentation. The presenters who do not have enough confidence feel anxious about these things. Another reason that leads to decrease in confidence is lack of preparation for the presentation. The presenter needs to become familiar with the speech and should practise the speech again and again before going for the final round. Secondly, the presenter should know his/her audience very well. It can be a virtuous cycle when people present confidently. The receivers give a positive feedback to the presenter, which is a very positive response for the presenter. Consequently, the presenter becomes more confident for the rest of the presentation and delivers the speech more confidently and smoothly. Thus, having enough confidence and good preparation would be the keys for me to do my role play successfully. Appropriate speaking volume and pace In this role play, adequate speaking volume and pace are two other things that I should consider in my role play. This role play is not a formal presentation; rather it is like a small drama. This means that I would not have any eye contact with my audience. Thus, in my role play, I would speak louder to my partners who would be there to assist me to do the role play, and at the same time they would let the audience know what I am talking about. In addition, I should slow down the speaking pace in the role play to make it more natural. I should not let the audience feel that I am going through the role play carelessly. So, speaking would be a major aspect to reflect my role in my role play. In other words, appropriate speaking volume and pace that I would adopt in the role play would influence whether the messages are being delivered to the audience effectively or not. Thus, it would make me pay more attention to my speaking. According to Derwing and Munro, learning the way to control speaking volume and pace appears to be harder for international students whose first language is not English. As most classmates in our tutorial are non-native, the speaking volume and pace should be appropriate when I do my role play to make them comfortable. In addition, appropriate speaking volume and pace could make the role play’s story more logical and clearer. It is a fact that nobody wants to talk and listen to a person who speaks too fast and unclearly. To avoid this, I would try to put myself in my audience’s shoes. Thus, I think I should speak in appropriate volume and pace in my role play to let the audience feel enjoyable. Appropriate non-verbal language: Non-verbal language is necessary in face-to-face communication. When people commutate verbally, non-verbal language can influence the effects of your words. In a role play, both verbal and non-verbal language should be used appropriately. As mentioned above, speaking in a verbal language would be a major aspect when I would be doing the role play to explain and manage the conflicts. Non-verbal language is like an assistant to improve the efficiency for the face to facecommunication. Non-verbal language is as important as verbal language in face-to-face communication. As the topic is managing conflicts, the customers can be unhappy with my goods or services. The appropriate non-verbal language can help me to deal with the bad situations easier. I should do some body posture and nodding, hand movements, and smiles in my role play to give appropriate reflection to my assistant partners. As I am a woman, I can use as much gentle hand movements as possible and elegance posture to express my sincerity. Consequently, I can deal with the conflicts easier. Method (about 150 words) 1. Define the purpose of the role play: The role play aims at communication skills we want to develop or improve. I choose conflict management as my role play topic. The reasons for this are as mentioned before. 2. Gather content and ideas for the role play: The scenarios in the role play would be the ones I have experienced in my part time job. 3. Prepare the role play: I wrote script, the stories, and the characters in my role play. Such as, the time the play happens, the problems the customers complain, and the number of assistants I need in the role play. 4. Rehearsals: I found my classmates to assist me in performing my role play. We found a day to discuss the script and we exchanged the ideas for the role play with each other and at the same time. We also played our characters to rehearse the role play. We also discussed some unexpected situations. 5. Relax myself before the actual role play. Results (about 200 words) I collected 16 questionnaire feedbacks from my classmates and one that I filled myself after viewing the recording. I analyzed the 17 feedbacks to draw 3 charts. I would like to analyze the results. Discussion (about 800 words) Enough confidence: Confidence can be a base for the whole presentation or role play. In the role play, I do not think I had enough confidence. Both recording and feedback from my audience show that I have lack of confidence and showed nervous and overcautious. For example, when the customer asked me why the beer is flat, I was a little bit quavering and my face turned to red and I stayed for 5 seconds without saying any word. In addition, I always took deep breath during the role play; it showed that I was nervous and confused. There are some reasons I did different from what I should do. Firstly, this was the first time to do the role play. Role play is more focused on your overall look. In other words, it is like a drama. I was an actress to perform my role. However, a presentation might be easier for me because I did presentation with the PPT for many times. But the role play was my first try, so I did not have enough confidence to do it. Second, a rehearsal is different from real play. Even though my friend and I rehearsed the role play in advance, in the real play we have some audience. We had to play this role play in front of the audience. It would be assessed by them. So, when I played the role play timidly, it showed that I did not have enough confidence. Lastly, it is the essential problem. I do not have confidence in my English so when I did the role play I not only played my role in the scenes like emotions, facial expression, and so on but also I had to say lines without notes. So, I did the role play without enough level of confidence. Appropriate speaking volume and pace Speaking volume and pace always has a direct influence on the message you present to your audience. It is like the pillars that are based on your confidence. I also do not think that I performed good in my role play after I watched the recording and saw the audience feedback. There are some reasons why I did them different from what I should have done. Firstly, as I mentioned before, it was due to lack of confidence. I was nervous during whole play. It shows that I speak quicker and the volume is lower than as usual. For example, when I explained why the beer was flat, my voice was going lower and lower. Some audience reflected that they nearly could not hear what I said. Secondly, I think I wanted to finish the role play as soon as possible at that time. I really wanted to deal with the conflicts with customers. Consequently, I ignored the volume and the pace of speaking. It challenged me to focus on both dealing with conflicts and speaking appropriately. The poorest feedback from the audience was that I speak too quickly for other to hear clearly. So, they cannot measure whether I can deal with the conflicts successfully or not. Thirdly, the level of my English could not reach the level that could help me to express successfully what I think and what I want. Thus, in the role play, I just spoke simple words and sentences structures. So, it was hard for me to control the volume and the pace of my speaking. I spoke what I can speak in the role play. So, I failed to pay attention on the volume and the pace of my speaking. Appropriate non-verbal language: Non-verbal language is as important as verbal language both in presentation and role play. They are almost supplementary to each other. Even I did not do well in my verbal language (speaking). From the recording and feedback, I think I used appropriate non-verbal language in the role play generally. But it is just one thing that I need to consider in the role play. A small amount of feedbacks from the audience showed that although the use of non-verbal language by me was ok, but the smiling on my face is a little bit more to make the audience uncomfortable and confused. Because they hardly thought that I should use too much smiling when dealing with the conflicts in the role play. Even though as the servicers, good attitude and smiling can be the effective ways to resolve problem with the customers. It does not mean that I was smiling all the time during the conversation. There are some reasons why I did different from I what should have done. First, I felt nervous all through the role play. I thought my facial expression might stay on stiff smiling all the time. Second, as the manager in the role play, I needed to smile to every customer. However, I failed to use my smile appropriately because of which it became counterproductive. Recommendations (about 400 words) Through this role play, I found that I have special skills to improve in the future. There are five recommendations as follow: 1. Overcome fear in front of the people I think I should attend more speeches and presentations in front of people to overcome the fear. In addition, I should speak more in the teamwork to increase my courage in front of people. 2. Pay attention to speaking clearer and louder Speaking is the worst aspect in my English skills. I need to practice to speak clearer and louder. There are two ways I would like to try to improve my English speaking in the future. Firstly, the easiest way is reading books or newspaper clearly and loudly as much as possible. In addition, singing English songs would be a more interesting way to improve my English speaking skills. 3. Practice the ability to deal with unexpected situation We cannot predict what would happen in the future. But we can prepare and train the methods and emotions to deal with some matters that we cannot predict before. There are three ways I would like to try in the future. First, I would find some classic cases from MBA to learn how those people dealt with customers’ complain. Second, I would like learn this ability from the hosts of talk shows. The hosts deal with many famous person and they know the way to control the atmosphere of the stage. Third, I need to learn such skills from my friends and family by knowing how they deal with unexpected situations. 4. Learn to listening to others carefully Learning to listen to others is very important in communication, especially in face-to-face communication. I think I should pay attention to listen to others carefully when I talk with others. for example, while dealing with customers, I should listen to them carefully to give appropriate reflection to them. 5. learn to be more patient to others Our attitude and emotions change easily when we talk to others. For example, if someone talks with you rudely or unclearly, you will feel uncomfortable with him/her. I think I should learn to be more patient in communication. I should understand that different people have different statuses and characters. Especially as I mentioned before, I want to run a small business by myself in the future, therefore, good patience would help me to deal with my staff members, customers, and partners effectively and efficiently. Read More