Knowing oneself Essay Example

Knowing oneself Essay Example Knowing oneself Essay Knowing oneself Essay Knowing oneself is the first step in becoming a fully functioning individual and recognizing that we have strengths and weaknesses that help us become better persons by building on what we are good at and by improving what we are not good at. As a worker and as a human being, we are required to interact and relate with other people. In any relationship, may that be of boss and subordinate or between parents and children or friends, we must be able to communicate effectively, and thinking that I am pretty good at this aspect, I was excited to take the assessment tests on communication to maybe validate what I believe is one of my strengths or to find out weaknesses that I may not be aware of. Moreover, we also took motivation skills assessment to test our level of motivation and our motivating skills in the workplace. The results are very important to me since I know that motivating others is not one of my greatest assets. What follows  Ã‚   is a presentation of my assessment result s in communication and motivation identifying my strengths and weaknesses and a plan of action that I would accomplish to become a better person, enhancing what I have and developing what I don’t have. Communication The communication assessment consisted of three subtests including communicating supportively, my personal use of supportive communication and my communication styles, as well as a role playing exercise that presented a communication dilemma. I discovered that I have a number of strengths in this aspect and have a few weaknesses as well. Strengths My communication style uses more of probing responses (86) which is an indicator of an effective communicator. I tend to ask people about what they feel and think about a situation or views on an issue and in the process clarify or gain a better understanding of other people. I do not use many advising responses (2) which actually may sound condescending to others and would make them feel incompetent. I try to let people know that I know that they are thinking individuals and I do not have to offer them any suggestions. In my supportive communication assessment, I tend to be problem-oriented, consistent, descriptive, validating and owned my statements (1a, 2b, 3a, 4b, 5a). I generally try to say to others what I mean and mean what I say, in the most diplomatic way and one that tells them that I understand their situation but that things have to be done and their cooperation is needed to get it done. Weaknesses I am not adept at reflecting responses (1), I seem to concentrate more on asking questions that makes the employee elaborate or clarify more on the issue or topic. I admit though that I do not make use of reflecting responses seems it feels redundant to me or just like repeating what the other person said. Generally though, it seems that I don’t have very good supportive communication skills. My total score is 69 which is almost half of the ideal score (120) and it places me in the bottom quartile. When I think about it I realize that I do lack the skill on coaching and counseling and I don’t know how to give negative feedback, I more often try to concentrate on the problem and what is to be done and usually end up doing it myself. In the role-playing exercise, I had difficulty communicating what I wanted to say and was also not attentive of my partners responses, hence I think I should develop more on this skill. Action Plan Based on the assessment results on my supportive communication skills and communication styles, I would strive hard to learn more about effective communication by reading books and following some of the tips in the lectures. I also need to work on my reflecting responses skills because I realize that this is the most effective style for supportive communication and yet I rarely use it. I also need to make a distinction between counseling and coaching and evidently I do not have any idea of how to do it properly, instead I might end up hurting other people’s feelings. Attentive listening is also a skill that I fail to use and must learn to use more often. What I learned from this experience is that no matter how good a communicator we are, but to actually b effective in it is a difficult to do, on that takes an honest assessment of my communicating skills and us it as a basis for further improvement. Motivation The second part of our assessment exercises involved measuring our level of motivation and our performance problems and our motivational skills. The results indicate that I do not have broad-based motivational problems at work but there are those that need to be looked into. While in motivating others, my score of 87 falls in the third quartile compared to the mean group and is not that far from the ideal score (120). Strengths I found out from the result of the assessment that I am good at motivating others by telling them that they are good at what they do (aptitude) and I expect them to successfully accomplish their tasks (expectations). It seems that this two approaches usually work for me and hence I repeatedly use it to motivate others. In the role-playing exercise I was able to reach a compromise with my subordinate, that when she shows an improvement in performance for the next week I will not put her under disciplinary action. This shows that I can actually settle conflicting views by being diplomatic about it and yet reaching an acceptable resolution to the issue. Weaknesses I had difficulty in motivating others by facilitating improvement of skills and by linking rewards to performance. I usually think that everybody is intrinsically motivated to become at what they do because it is self-gratifying, but I did not account for the fact that some people are not as driven as the rest of us. In the role-playing exercise, I realized that I did have a short patience for arguments and was almost becoming irritated thankfully I had the idea to reach a compromise rather than to insist in what I think should be the right solution. Action Plan I realized that there are more ways in motivating others and that I can learn it to become an effective motivator. There are a number of self-help books and the readings that the professor gave us can help me learn more about motivation and its many uses. I am also curious at how to Use effective punishment and reward because I might be unknowingly contributing to negative attitudes and behaviors in others. I also would like to learn more of my own levels of motivation and where it comes from and how to develop it more. I did understand that sometimes not getting what I want done is not a sign of failure, but finding ways to resolve and issue in the best possible means is more important.

Grammarian Definition and Examples

Grammarian Definition and Examples A grammarian is a specialist in the grammar of one or more languages: a linguist. In the modern era, the term grammarian is sometimes used pejoratively to refer to a grammatical purist or prescriptivistone whos primarily concerned with correct usage.According to James Murphy, the role of the grammarian changed between the classical era (Roman grammarians seldom ventured into the field of prescriptive advice) and the Middle Ages (It is precisely on this issue that medieval grammarians strike out into new areas) (Rhetoric in the Middle Ages, 1981). Observations Edward SapirThe man who is in charge of grammar and is called a grammarian is regarded by all plain men as a frigid and dehumanized pedant. It is not difficult to understand the very pallid status of linguistics in America.H.L. MenckenMore than once, plowing through profound and interminable treatises of grammar and syntax during the writing and revision of the present work, I have encountered the cheering spectacle of one grammarian exposing, with contagious joy, the grammatical lapses of some other grammarian. And nine times out of ten, a few pages further on, I have found the enchanted purist erring himself. The most funereal of the sciences is saved from utter horror by such displays of human malice and fallibility.Umberto EcoWhen the writer . . . says he has worked without giving any thought to the rules of the process, he simply means he was working without realizing he knew the rules. A child speaks his mother tongue properly, though he could never write out its grammar. But t he grammarian is not the only one who knows the rules of the language; they are well known, albeit unconsciously, also to the child. The grammarian is merely the one who knows how and why the child knows the language. Donatus, Roman GrammarianThe discipline of grammar developed parallel with that of rhetoric during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, and the two often overlapped. Grammar schools provided training necessary for a student before he entered a school of rhetoric . . .. The most famous Roman grammarian was Aelius Donatus, who lived in the fourth century after Christ and whose works were the basic grammatical texts for the Middle Ages...The Ars Minor of Donatus, his most read work, is limited to discussion of the eight parts of speech... but his fuller Ars Grammatica goes beyond strictly grammatical subjects to discuss, in Book 3, barbarism and solecism as faults of style as well as a number of ornaments of style also discussed by rhetoricians...Donatuss treatment of tropes and figures had great authority and was substantially repeated in handbooks by the Venerable Bede and other later writers. Since grammar was always more widely studied than rhetoric, and often out of Donatuss text, hi s discussion insured that these ornaments of style were known in later centuries even to students who did not study rhetoric as a separate discipline. Robert A. Kaster[In late antiquity, the] grammarian was, first, the guardian of the language, custos Latini sermonis, in a phrase of Seneca, or guardian of articulate utterance, in the description of Augustine. He was to protect the language against corruption, to preserve its coherence, and to act as an agent of control: thus, early in his history, we find the grammarian claiming the right to limit the grant of citizenship (civitas) to new usages. But by virtue of his command of the poetic texts, the grammarians guardianship extended to another, more general area, as guardian of tradition (historiae custos). The grammarian was the conservator of all the discrete pieces of tradition embedded in his texts, from matters of prosody (to which Augustine refers in his characterization) to the persons, events, and beliefs that marked the limits of vice and virtue.The two realms of the guardianship thus answered to the two divisions of the grammarians task, the knowledge of speaking correctl y and the explication of the poets...