Reflective Essay On Conflict

• I have grown tremendously as a communicator, especially in facework and conflict situations. Before this course, I loved to argue and I always felt the need to be right. I was the type of person who didn’t think before speaking and would say whatever I pleased. After this course, I have learned to communicate in a collaborative way, not threaten the face of others by considering what to say, and realized conflict is not necessarily always bad because you can learn from it and use it for the next conflict you encounter.

• The factors that were most influential in these changes were realizing the way I communicate will affect my identity and those around me, we make positive communities through constructive communication, and I needed to be face conscious and person centered.

• My perspective of conflict changed through this semester by realizing conflict doesn’t always have to be seen in a negative connotation. Even though there can be some

Face is how you want to be seen, want to be treated, and how you treat others. Alternatively, facework is a set of coordinated practices in which communicators build, maintain, protect, or threaten personal dignity, honor and respect. To simply put it facework is managing the needs of communication. These concepts were key to me because face and facework are involved in any communication act. Throughout the course we focused on face and facework by how it can be built, threatened, saved, or supported.

• I liked the instructional format and structure of this course because it helped me learn in a more productive way than in my other classes. I really liked how we were required to do four reflection papers on the chapters and integration essays because I learned a lot more having to write about the subject in-depth. In addition, the role plays gave me a sense of what the chapter was about in real life situations by us having to act it