Reread pages 37–78 in your Speech Communication text. Then, demonstrate your understanding of this content by composing an MS Word document in which you provide clearly articulated, well-reasoned, appropriately documented answers to the following questions.

CHAPTER 3

1.      Read the following poem and contemplate what it says about human origin, nature, purpose, or destiny:

Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise

From outward things, whate’er you may believe.

There is an inmost centre in us all,

Where truth abides in fullness; and around,

Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in,

This perfect, clear perception—which is truth.

A baffling and perverting carnal mesh

Binds it, and makes all error: and, to know,

Rather consists in opening out a way

Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape,

Than in effecting entry for a light

Supposed to be without.[1]

—Robert Browning (1812–1889)

Using directly quoted, properly documented terms from this chapter, write a 150–250-word essay in which you describe this poem as a worldview statement. State in your own words, in a short, simple sentence, Browning’s thesis as you understand it—the main point of the poem. Then, answer the following questions. Does this poem express autonomous or theocentric thinking? Which of the truth standards highlighted in the textbook does it seem to embrace? Be sure not only to state your answers to these questions, but to present well-reasoned, amply supported explanations of your answers.

CHAPTER 4

1.      See the Apostle’s Creed or the Nicene Creed in Appendix 1, toward the end of the Alban textbook. Analyze their individual statements. Then, compose a 150–250-word response in which you explain how the wording in these historic statements of Christian faith implies God’s interest in communicating (connecting or reconnecting) with humans.

CHAPTER 5

1.      Read Donelson R. Forsyth’s “Group Dynamics Overview” document (see the Module/Week 5 Reading & Study folder). Then, list and briefly explain the 5 reasons why he says groups matter. Next, using relevant ideas from chapters 4 and 5 of the Alban textbook, write a 150–250-word essay in which you support the idea that groups also matter because God values them. Strengthen your case by citing Bible passages that indicate God values groups in general or specific types of groups. You can find this type of information in the textbook’s list of things God values according to Scripture (see pages 72–76).

2.      Read one of the chapters in pages 84–259 of the Alban textbook (the section titled “Redemptive Communicators: Profiles from across the Job Fields”). Then, using the list of things God values (see pages 72–76), write a 150-250 word analysis in which you explain, in a story-by-story sequence, how each person profiled in that chapter uses or used his or her vocation in a platform for interacting with other people in a way that promotes something God values as an expression of apparently authentic love for Him. Be sure to explain your thoughts clearly and completely.

[1] “From Paracelsus.” Bartleby.com. Web. 22 June 2011.