Blog 9

Language is of huge importance in our daily lives. Language is used to express ideas, feelings. It is described in the book as being very powerful and I find this to be very true. The book mentions a situation where you are walking past a group of people and you think you hear your name. Our names are very important to us and so if we hear them spoken, we are going to want to respond to that in some way. Verbal language can easily be misheard and therefore misunderstood and can cause problems. There are many instances in my daily life where I hear someone wrong and I am appalled by what they say and then I confront them and they didn't really say what I thought. When you aren't sure if you heard something right, you should always ask to be sure that you have the correct information. Words are a major part of language. The words we use describe things, explain situations, and just help us to get a point across. Every word has a different meaning and some words even have more than one meaning. This can make learning a language difficult for many people. Words in some languages have different meanings then the same words in other languages. It is important to realize this especially when you are traveling in other countries. I like how the book talks about how there are gender differences in how language is used. The book talks about language causing stereotypes to become worse. If people watch the language they are using, some of theses stereotypes could be not so harmful to the different genders. The language that we use that is sexist or racist can be so harmful to others and we may not even realize it. This is the main reason why we need to watch the language we use. We need to be considerate of other people.

**Have you ever been in a situation where you didn't watch your language and you hurt someone's feelings because of it?

Blog 8

This chapter does a great job explaining self-concept. Self-concept is a really important thing to think about because it plays a big role in how we communicate. As communication is something that we do every day, we need to be good at it. One thing that the book says we can do to better our communication is to enhance our self-concept. There are six guidelines that the book lays out for the reader to get them started in enhancing their self-concept. The first one is to decide what you would like to change or improve about yourself. This is very important because you can't really do anything to improve your self-concept without first deciding what needs to change. Another guideline is that you need to make a commitment to change. When you make a commitment, you make yourself more determined and then you can move to the next step which is setting goals for yourself. Once your goals have been set you should then decide how you are going to reach them. It is great to have goals and make a commitment, but you really need to put the effort in to make the changes you want. You should realize that making a change will probably take time. It is not something that can just happen overnight. One other guideline that the book talks about is how you should associate with positive people. When you surround yourself with positive people you will usually have a better attitude and a better outlook on life. When you have positive people around you, it is easier to discuss problems that you have and get them solved . It is also easier to get support. Positive people are more likely to realize that you need help and give it to you.

**Can you think of any other guidelines that you would suggest for improving self-concept?

Blog 7

The way in which we perceive things can greatly differ from the way someone else perceives them. Why is this? Well, there are many reasons why, and chapter 2 explains some of them. Culture is a major reason why people perceive things differently. People from different cultures are raised and taught in different ways and this causes them to have very different views on everything. In certain cultures some sort of gesture might be perceived as disrespectful, while in others it means nothing at all. These perceptual differences can really cause problems for people while travelling throughout other countries. A tourist might not even think about the differences in perception and do something to really upset someone that would not have caused any problems in their own country. The other major reason why people perceive things differently is gender. Men and women are completely different in the way they think and act and this causes many perceptual differences. The book talks about the "gender gap" which is described as men and women not understanding each other and really not even speaking the same language. This can be a huge problem when trying to get your point across to the opposite gender. Many males have a hard time perceiving things in the same way as females and vice versa. Perception can often be very wrong. Someone might get into huge trouble just because of a little perception error. I think that when you get into trouble because of how you perceive something, it makes you really think harder about things. I know that I definitely have tried to reconsider the way that I perceive things because I have been in trouble a few times for incorrect perceptions.

**Have you ever perceived something a certain way and it was a wrong perception of that thing? Did you get in trouble for your incorrect perception?