Oriana Dos Santos

Oriana Dos Santos 

Professor Sinkoff

SPC 1017 MWF 8 AM 

23 May. 2022

Blog

   Communication and problem solving are skills that we use in our day-to-day life, for example, when we do not understand a task. Personally, I use communication when talking with my family, coworkers, and friends about my day or about a specific topic. I also use problem solving when doing my homework and at work. For example, a few days ago a lady wanted to pay with her card that she did not have a chip or swap. To solve the problem, I decided to use the option to write the card data manually.

    Group one presented on Intercultural Communication. Culture is the ideas, traditions, and customs of a people. The culture may be different in its beliefs, attitudes, and values. Although that does not mean that you can have similarities or get to communicate well with other cultures. In my experience, you can feel identified with other cultures because of their traditions or festivities. An example of this is my culture, Venezuela, with the Colombian culture. As we are geographically close, similarities can be found in culture. One of them is one of the best-known foods, the arepas, whose origin is not exactly known to this day. Another similarity that can be found in Spanish-speaking countries is that you can find a very varied religious system, but especially Catholic or Christian. Religion is viewed with admiration and appreciation by most of the population. You can also find differences between the same culture. Both in my country and in others it is very common to find the male figure as the figure of power in society and families. While the female figure is the helper or the caring. Lately, in the United States and in other countries, women are being given more recognition and their "power" is being highlighted. These are some of the topics that were named in the first presentation. They managed to talk about these issues with the respect and appreciation that some people do inappropriately.

    The second group talked about group communication. Communication is the way to exchange information. This can be done in pairs or in a group. The more people are in the conversation can be more difficult to communicate. This occurs because of the variety of opinions that can be found in a single group. In the presentation, the group discussed some questions that can help make communication easier. For example, What role does communication play in groups? or what different types of conflicts can arise in a group and how can you solve them? These questions can help the group focus on the goal and how they can get there. Group communication can be found everywhere. The family, social group, support groups, and service groups are groups where it is important to have good communication to be able to achieve the same goal and not want to kill each other. For example, my family often has trouble communicating. This makes it difficult to make decisions, such as where we can go out, what to eat that day, or communicate information about our schedules or day. This is a situation that can happen both in a family and in a work area and at the same time cause a toxic or uncomfortable environment. To avoid this type of behavior, the members of the group must have good communication, respect others, and work as a group. In this way they can carry out activities such as brainstorming or groupthink. These are topics that were mentioned during the presentation and that are very important to take into account when working in a group. Group work must always take into account the opinions of others and the communication between the participants to do a good job.

   The third and last group presented on group leadership and problem solving. Problem solving can be defined as determining the cause of the problem. As I mentioned earlier, problem solving can be found everywhere, at school and at work. Some solutions may look a bit more complicated than others. For example, a few weeks ago I had an assignment that I did not understand in my physics class and the explanation was not understood by the teacher. Some friends tried to explain to me with the same method that the professor used and I didn't get any results. After the failed attempt, I decided to search the internet for other methods to perform the same problem; I found another way that I found easier to understand and that helped me do my homework and pass my exam. Other occasions that problem-solving can be found is in group work. As I mentioned before, group work can bring about conflicts due to the lack of communication between the participants. Also, it can cause participants to feel stressed or in a bad environment, taking away their motivation or inspiration. To prevent this type of problem, there must be a leader in the group to help the group meet its goal. The leader is the person who influences the group and helps everyone to be on the same page. It does this by giving different tasks to group members and monitoring that everything goes as agreed. At the same time, he helps members help each other and all assignments are completed on time. An example of this can be when in my Portuguese class they sent us to look for information from a text and present it in a group. To carry out the activity in the given time, each one looked for one of the corresponding questions and presented that same question. In this example I could appreciate the skills that I mentioned earlier about leadership and how to work as a team. In addition, a good group and oral communication can be appreciated. Between all of us we were able to divide the work and coordinate ourselves in the presentation. During this performance the members, including myself, managed to demonstrate a good separation of task and group cooperation.