Communications

LaTifah Pratt

Com 119 N1

Prof. Parker

April 18, 2006

Application of Concepts Paper

Listening

A. Skill: I wish to improve my ability to listen in order to understand people better.

B. Why Selected: I tend to send off the wrong message to people when I fail to listen to what they have to say first before jump to any hasty conclusion. I often jump in and give an answer before the person has a chance to finish say what is on their mind. I have a tendency to cut them off before they have a chance to finish. The lack of listening has often gotten me into trouble both past and present.

C. Goal: My goal is to improve my listening ability so that I can maintain a healthy and strong conversation without jumping to the wrong conclusions; or without trying to cut in when the person is not finish speaking. This will help me tremendously.

D. Procedure: I will evaluate my listening ability for about four months. The reason chose four months is because I'm giving myself up until my birthday. It is time for me to grow up. I will have my significant other help me to evaluate myself. I will tell him to write down on a sheet of paper my improvement without telling me. I don't want to get to overwhelm and start slacking off, and not doing what I had set out to do.

E. Test of Improvement: On my 20th birthday I will have my significant other present me with the evaluation of my listening skills and see how well I have progress or see if I hadn't progress at all.

Handling Conflict

A. Skill: I wish to increase my ability of handling conflict by ignoring certain situations that I can try to avoid.

B. Why Selected: I tend to find myself blowing things out of proportion. This gets me into a lot of unnecessary confrontations. If I knew ho to handle conflict, certain confrontations I find myself in, I wouldn't be in.

C. Goal: My goal is to try and avoid as much confrontations as possible.

D. Procedure: I will choose three of my closet friends to evaluate the way I try to avoid confrontations. Every time that they tell me that I'm making a progress; I will try to jot it down in a book that I am going to call Handling Conflict book. I will give myself three and a half months.

E. Test of Improvement: When my three and a half months span is completed I will evaluate my journal and also ask my friends opinions on how they think I did. By that time I would see if I got better, worse, or keep the same old attitude.

Perception

A. Skill: I would like to decrease my perception of people. The reason is because I judge people before I get to know them.

B. Why Selected: As stated in part A. I have a tendency of judging people before I get a chance to know them. That is not good because I have lost what I think could have been a good/great friendship. And lost friendship that could have been saved, had not been for my wrong perception of them.

C. Goal: My goal is to improve the way my perception is of people, by stop being so quick to judge.

D. Procedure: I will evaluate my