Discussion 1:

Conduct a self-assessment of your personal values, attitudes and communication styles and compare them to the results of your Meyers-Brigs Typology test.

Determine your communication style and discuss whether that style is effective or ineffective in your future career and why?

 

My Communication Style:

 

ENTJ Communication Skills

ENTJs respect and maintain the manners and order accepted in their circle. They may often come across as demanding, but as a rule, not when it comes to minor issues. ENTJs are ready to share their opinion with those around them and to find out theirs. At the same time, they often strive to ensure that their opinion be the one recognized as the right one. Their objective, business-like, confident and at times bossy conversation style can be upsetting to people of a more feeling type or result in counteraction on the part of others who are also disposed toward leadership.

ENTJs can encounter difficulties when communication requires finer soft skills, such as being very tactful or particularly patient, or involves the finer feelings of the soul. The topics of love or lyric poetry can fail to elicit a strong emotional response in them. At the same time, they often take an active part at events or gatherings related to expressions of feelings, for instance, in organizing charity or other public events.

ENTJs usually have a large social circle including their friends, colleagues, and contacts made at parties, gatherings, during time off work or entertainment events they might be attending.

Business communication of ENTJs tends to be pretty intense. Their colleagues (or others who work in the same field) often find it important or necessary to get their authoritative and/or expert opinion on professional subjects. For ENTJs, communication usually includes opinions, ideas, discussing organizational management aspects and practical solutions.

 

ENTJ

“I don’t care to sit by the window on an airplane. If I can’t control it, why look?”

ENTJs have a natural tendency to marshall and direct. This may be expressed with the charm and finesse of a world leader or with the insensitivity of a cult leader. The ENTJ requires little encouragement to make a plan. One ENTJ put it this way… “I make these little plans that really don’t have any importance to anyone else, and then feel compelled to carry them out.” While “compelled” may not describe ENTJs as a group, nevertheless the bent to plan creatively and to make those plans reality is a common theme for NJ types.

ENTJs are often “larger than life” in describing their projects or proposals. This ability may be expressed as salesmanship, story-telling facility or stand-up comedy. In combination with the natural propensity for filibuster, our hero can make it very difficult for the customer to decline.

TRADEMARK: — “I’m really sorry you have to die.” (I realize this is an overstatement. However, most Fs and other gentle souls usually chuckle knowingly at this description.)

ENTJs are decisive. They see what needs to be done, and frequently assign roles to their fellows. Few other types can equal their ability to remain resolute in conflict, sending the valiant (and often leading the charge) into the mouth of hell. When challenged, the ENTJ may by reflex become argumentative. Alternatively (s)he may unleash an icy gaze that serves notice: the ENTJ is not one to be trifled with.

(ENTJ stands for Extravert, iNtuitive, Thinking, Judging and represents individual’s preferences in four dimensions characterising personality type, according to Jung’s and Briggs Myers’ theories of personality type.)

 

Discussion 2:

 

What marked changes in tone, style, and theme do you see from the earlier readings? How does this reflect on the showcase the rich oral and literary storytelling traditions in America?

Discussion expectations defined: You will be asked to select a quote from the reading each week to incorporate in your first discussion post. This means that you will also include an in-text citation and reference for each quote (Author, year, p. X).

 

Supporting Data and References:

 

What is true of art is that when suppressed it rises up and the Harlem Renaissance is a perfect example of that movement. When we think about the suppression and the beat down ways we discussed before, we will now experience writing that moves toward a rising passion in America It’s a passion that grew out of the pavement of the backstreets of the USA, and it was a movement that soaked into the soul of a nation, through words and music.

 

Think about how this period was made possible thanks to the efforts of writers who came before them. Think about this as the achievement of these writers and how they carved a path for those to follow. Really hear these writers. Read them aloud when they share a poem. Think about shifts in tone, style, theme, and rhythm, and its exciting change.

Celebrating an Explosion of African American Literature

The Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance marked an explosion of African American arts: writing, visual art, music, theater, and critical-theoretical production. Some of the most influential artists rose up from poverty to enjoy notoriety. The movement geographical center was Chicago and Harlem, New York in the 1920s. This was a time when Broadway was booming and modernist art had great currency, both in the United States and elsewhere. The Blues and Jazz were big influences during this period and we hear this influence in the work we will read.

Zora Neale Hurston

Born to a Reverend father, Hurston lost her mother at the age of nine, attended school very little, and petitioned her way through prestigious schools until she won a scholarship to Barnard College, a division of Columbia College. The story we will read “The Gilded Six-Bits” was published in Story magazine. This publication caught the eye of an editor that urged her to write a novel, and her career was launched.

Pay attention to the repetition, rhythm, and exciting word choices Hurston uses. “It was a Negro yard around a Negro house in a Negro settlement that looked to the payroll of the G. and G. Fertilizer works for its support” is an example of repetition. “The front yard was parted in the middle by a sidewalk from gate to door-step, a sidewalk edged…” is an example of great word choice with a repetitive beat as “sidewalk” serves up a nice visual for her reader.

Consider how authentic the dialogue in this piece is as well: “Whew! dat play-fight got me all worked up,” Joe exclaimed. “Got me some water in de kittle” (Bryant, 2010, p.64)? Think about why Hurston chose to do this over simply saying, “Got water in the kettle?”

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes, a prolific and important artist of the Harlem Renaissance, shaped literary modernism. He wrote poems, plays, novels, short, stories, articles, and essays, and made a passionate effort to further the views about humanity and equality. Hughes, seen as both an acclaimed novelist and gifted poet, “believed that if poetry was to be an agent of social change it must appeal to blacks of all classes, not simply the upper reaches of the black intelligentsia. The art the movement generated should draw on black vernacular materials-jazz and folk tales and spirituals-in order to grant African Americans a sense of racial identity and shared experience that would prove a powerful political tool” (Bryant, 2010, p. 85). His poem, The Weary Blues is shared with music on YouTube.com.

Claude McKay

Claude McKay , son of a Jamaican farmer, was an invited speaker abroad and poet/writer who “contributed to literature and politics helped to change American and international conceptions of race, class, and colonialism” (Bryant, 2010, p. 92). His first novel, Home to Harlem, featured rare glimpse of African-American life, World War I realities, and a picturesque journey through the United States. Listen to Claude McKay’s America set to music and images on YouTube.com.

Alice Walker

Alice Walker , best known for her novel and Steven Spielberg’s film adaptation, The Color Purple, brought many issues to the forefront: “race and gender oppression, physical and emotional abuse, relationships between individuals and among families and communities” (Bryant, 2010, p. 105). After losing sight in one eye from a childhood BB gun accident, she feared losing her sight in the other eye and began “storing up images against the fading light” (p. 105). In this YouTube.com video, she talks about the freedom rides to Gaza.

Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison , Nobel laureate and Pulitzer Prize-Winning author, is known for her characterization, creative genius, thought-provoking storytelling, and rhythmic prose. She is seen here speaking about her “Society Bench by the Road Dedication” project, which dedicates benches along the road to commemorate the history of African American people. She may be best known for her novel, The Bluest Eye. Listen to an excerpt from a play based on the story on YouTube.com, which reminds us that we universally want to be loved.

Activities: Listen & Learn More

Toni Morrison, The Future of African American Literature.

Nikki Giovanni reads Langston Hughes’s poem, “Let America Be America Again”.

Reference

Bryant, J. (2010). The Pearson Custom Library of American Literature. Rasmussen College English Department. New York, NY: Pearson Learning Solutions.