Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Communication

Talking with our mouths isn't the only way that we can communicate.  There are a variety of other ways that we can use to communicate.  Body language is one way you can use to communicate instead of talking.   Tone and pitch are also important when interacting with others.

Body language is an essential part of communication.  When not using words to speak, people are still able to read your body language.  If when in class and you're slouching and maybe even burying your head in your hands, the teacher may pick on you even though you aren't talking.  Chances are, she's/he's reading your body language and getting the vibe that you're not paying attention to what they're teaching.

The tone and pitch of your voice is also an essential part when interacting.  This is a very easy way to tell how someone is feeling.  An angry teacher would use a high pitched and toned voice to maybe growl someone off as opposed to someone who is perhaps sad and instead of using a high pitched and toned voice, would use a more low pitched and toned voice.  Tone and pitch are important because if you use the wrong tone and pitch in a conversation, misunderstandings could arise.  For example, if you're trying to prove a point to your mum and/or dad and an argument ensues, this could be because you used the wrong tone and pitch with them.

For the subject of Physical Education (PE), communication skills are important because you need them to communicate with your fellow peers and your teacher.  If you have body language that suggests that you don't want to do PE, then that's going to lead to low self efficacy, and low self efficacy leads to having a boring time.  Same goes for the tone and pitch of your voice.  Using a low pitched and toned voice could imply that you aren't having fun so, as mentioned previously, this leads to low self efficacy and low self efficacy leads to a boring lesson.

So, in summation, body language and the tone and pitch of your voice are essential life skills to learn.  With these skills, you will be able to avoid conflict and build better relationships (with others).

Self Efficacy and Self Esteem

Self efficacy and self esteem are important when working with other people and taking on challenges.
Efficacy is your judgement on your capability to complete or achieve something and esteem is your view on your self value/self worth.  In PE it's important to have both high self esteem and high self efficacy as it (PE) is a physical subject and thinking that you're not capable of doing anything and you're not as useful to the team as your peers, is going to get you absolutely nowhere in the subject of PE and also in life.

To improve my efficacy and esteem I can become more optimistic and have more positive conversations with myself.  I myself am a person who is, majority of the time, a pessimistic thinker and with this kind of behaviour, I am limiting myself.  Becoming a more open-minded and optimistic thinker will have big effects on my behaviour.  I'd most probably become more confident and will be open to more options, trying out new things that I haven't wanted to do in the past, such as the trust fall.  I was never quite a big fan of doing the trust fall but by thinking optimistically, I was able to.

The effect of having high efficacy and esteem on my group is a better and more fun learning environment.  I've been taught that nobody wants to be around a person who thinks like a pessimist.  They always think the worst and would just be a drag to be around.  However, those with high self esteem and efficacy are always fun to be around as they are always thinking optimistically.  PE is always a fun lesson when everyone is like this and from what I've seen, a lesson full of happy people gets more done in the time span of 45-50 minutes.

Active Listening

Active listening is a useful skill in communication.  It is, as the name suggest, listening actively.  This means that you are actually listening in to and perceiving what the person/speaker is saying rather than just hearing it and letting it in through one ear and out the other.

With active listening, you use your ears, body language and your words.  When someone is talking, it is important to not only face them but to also let them know that you are listening (actively).  You can do this by nodding your head a few times, asking some questions and also to rephrase what they have said.  All this shows understanding.

In life, there are many situations in which active listening comes in handy such as working things out when there's a misunderstanding between you and maybe a close family member/friend or listening to instructions.  Active listening can also be applied in PE.  Being the physical subject that Physical Education is, there's bound to be a lot of talk and with talking comes listening.  An activity that would require actively listening is the blind obstacle course.

This is a regular obstacle course except you do it blind-folded while being guided by a friend's voice.  The blind obstacle course is a good exercise to practice your active listening because as you are blindfolded, you can't see where you're going so you are forced to listen carefully to your friend's words.  In the activity, whilst guiding my friends along, they asked many questions and repeated what I said, evidence that they were indeed listening actively.


Self Esteem in Touch

In our touch team I have low self esteem.  I don't think that I have much worth or much to contribute to my team.  I never really liked playing touch when I was younger and so as I grew older, I always had a negative attitude towards the sport.  At lunch time all my friends would be playing touch on the field and I'd just sit there watching them because I just hated the sport.

The effect this has on the team is pretty big.  I have some very experienced touch players in my team and they like to come up with some very strategic plans to outsmart the opposition and score tries.  I like to avoid getting the ball when these strategies are being played out because, as mentioned before, I don't think that I can contribute much to the team.   We played touch on Friday and I dropped the ball numerous times because I kept believing that I was of no worth to the team.

I could help my team by trying to become more involved.  By becoming more involved, there's a higher possibility that my team could score more tries.  I think that the more involved I get, the higher my self esteem will become.  Another thing that could help me boost my confidence/self esteem could be to take in the compliments that my team members pay me.  Being someone who mucks up a lot in touch thanks to low self esteem, I tend to block out the compliments because I don't think that I deserve them.

Fairplay in Touch


This is a video blog I have done on how I've played fairly in touch and the effect that playing fairly has had on our touch competition.