Mini Paper Guidelines

You will complete four mini papers worth 25 points each.  Each paper will require you to do something different and they cover a variety of topics.  In each case, you are expected to answer the question(s) posted by the paper description as well as apply concepts you learned about the subject from the textbook.  It is important that you Justify and explain your answers.  Remember, you are “teaching” me something or attempting to convince me about your point of view.

Click on each Mini Paper link below to submit your paper.

Paper Format Requirements:

· Must be typed, 12 point font, Times New Roman or Arial, 1 inch margins

· Single or double spaced – your preference

· Minimum of 2 pages and maximum of 3 pages

· Grammar and spell check required

· Logical flow and structure of argument

· Avoid excessive “spacing” or “indentations”

Mini Paper #1

#1  What does communication mean to you?  In your own words, describe your personal definition of communication.  Make sure that you explain why you feel this way.  In doing so, however, keep in mind that your professor makes a big issue of communication and control/power.  Is she correct about this?  Do you see communication as something more or something less than participants’ efforts to control the communication contexts in which they find themselves?

Textbook:  Chap 1 The Communication Process

Mini Paper #2

Be a listening ethnographer!  Using any listening event* of 20 minutes or more, conduct a deep analysis of the listening environment it exhibits.  For example, what barriers to effective listening did you identify?  Were there different forms of noise; how did they manifest themselves; how did they interfere with successful communication?  What different kinds of listeners were in the room?  What characteristics did they display that clued you into their listening styles?  How did they influence that day’s communication?  Were you able to identify different types of listening from different people?  How did these folks aid or hinder effective communication that day?

*An acceptable listening event would include a sermon, a class lecture, a TED Talk, You Tube.  There should also be an audience.

Textbook:  Chap 5 Listening

Mini Paper #3

Your text provides a definition of culture.  Take its individual parts and explain how they manifest themselves in your everyday life.  Here it is expressed in those individual parts:

· Culture is the world made meaningful

· It is socially constructed and maintained through communication

· It limits as well as liberates us; it differentiates as well as unites us

· It defines our realities and thereby shapes the ways we think, feel, and act

Textbook:  Ch 9 Intercultural Communication

Mini Paper #4

What are the seven media literacy skills?  Describe each and examine your own media consumption behavior in terms of each.  Discuss whether you are media literate or not and why you feel that way.  What would you do to either become media literate or stay in your present state.

Textbook:  Ch 11 Media Literacy