An Analysis of H.G. Wells’ Short Stories “Mr Skelmersdale...

Linkà ¶ping University Department of Culture and Communication English I Have Dreamed a Dream†¦ An Analysis of H.G. Wells’ Short Stories â€Å"Mr Skelmersdale in Fairyland†, â€Å"The Door in the Wall† and â€Å"A Dream of Armageddon† Lars Wallner C Course: Literary Specialisation Autumn, 2008 Supervisor: Helena Granlund â€Å"I have dreamed a dream†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Lars Wallner, Autumn 2008 Table of Contents Introduction.............................................................................................................. 3 Chapter 1: Failing to Recognise What Is Right in Front of You..............................5 Chapter 2: Knocking on Heaven’s Door.................................................................. 12 Chapter 3: The Beauty of the Dream and the†¦show more content†¦This essay consists of three chapters: chapters one and two deal with â€Å"Mr Skelmersdale in Fairyland† and â€Å"The Door in the Wall† respectively, not following the chronology of their writing. The last chapter deals with â€Å"A Dream of Armageddon† which is the most different and complex story. Much has been written about the immense productions of H.G. Wells. Multitudes of famous writers and critics have had their say about the novels and short stories, and even Wells himself has commented on his own work in letters and diaries. However, these three stories h ave for some reason been neglected by many critics, and not much has been written about them. Richard Borden and Laura Scuriatti are two among the very limited number of critics who have made an effort to analyse â€Å"The Door in the Wall† and â€Å"A Dream of Armageddon† and what these critics mostly consider is the person H.G. Wells; his political views as well as his personal life, and how this appears in the stories. Some of these interpretations also suggest psychological, mostly psychoanalytical, readings of the texts, something that has been taken into account in this essay but not to any great extent. More than anything, these critics make superficial comments on the stories, and not much more. For â€Å"Mr Skelmersdale in Fairyland†, however, it was difficult, even after considerable effort, to

Conflict Reflection Free Essays

University What makes an effective, moral, and efficient leader? Over the last several years in the workforce I have tried to learn what it takes to have strong leadership in the workforce. The way I see it leadership is made of many different parts which have been taken from many different areas. Things such as reading, training, and various programs that we have taken part in while in the workforce that are meant to enhance our leadership capabilities. We will write a custom essay sample on Conflict Reflection or any similar topic only for you Order Now Leadership from my perspective is made up of any different things such as being open minded, how we work and interact with others, being open to lifelong learning from any meaner, being a collaborator, having vision, and you must be willing to take risks when necessary. I have been working hard to become a better leader and feel like I make more and more progress all the time. I have learned that a key part of this is how you work with others. I have also learned that a definite key to to success it having characteristics such as integrity, education, knowledge, skill, and determination. I am still learning and want to learn and improve more every day. Introduction: While preparing to do this paper I used a few different sources to complete the research that allowed me to complete this paper. I first read the text from the course, which lead me to the web sites kissers. Com and outfielders. Com/big five. I was able to take the information from these three sources to make a pretty accurate assessment of my leadership style, my strengths, and of my weakness. This information will help me to better understand and make a plan for me to become a better leader for the future. Test Result Kissers Style Sorter: When took the personality on the Kerrey website, my personality type was labeled as n idealist. I was not really sure that I agreed with this until I really sat down and read the assessment. When I reflected on what I though this meant I was not sure that this was a good or bad thing. I really though that this was not necessarily a good thing and was really beginning to doubt my abilities as a leader. After reading the assessment I realized that this was much more me that I ever really thought it could be. I believe that being an idealist can be considered and amazing strength. Being an idealist shows that I not only strive to develop myself but that I strive to be the best that I can be. In striving to be the best this also meaner wanting to help others. Others, and they want to help them reach their full potential in many area such as learning, counseling, social services, personal work, Journalism, helping others find their way, and helping them to reach their maximum potential. Idealists are also very ethical. In today’s business environment all to often ethics continue to be an issue. It is very hard sometimes to determine the difference between right and wrong and choosing the hard right over the easy wrong. Idealists’ still find a way to hold themselves to the highest standard of personal integrity. Idealists are also very kind people who show love and good will to most all people. They believe in being warm and giving to others, this leads to good friendly and loving relationships. They are one of the smallest populations and a very rare group only making up 15 to 20 percent of the population. Big Five Personality Test When I took the Big Five Personality Test, one of the strengths that I found was in the area of conscientiousness. When I scored a 78 in this area and was very proud of that. There are many things that I would love to say that I have strengths in, and this is definitely one of them. I would to think that I and reliable and self-disciplined and this assessment showed me that I truly am. As I went through these assessments I realized that there are many areas that I could use some growth in. I will not say that I was not shocked by some of them but seeing as how I answered the questions very honestly I figure that they must be pretty honest results. I really had in some of the areas sort off hard pill to swallow but I have done so and hope to use forward and use this to my advantage. On the Big Five assessment the score showed I was extremely closed minded, and his came as a shock to me. I always considered myself to be a person who was open to new ideas and new experiences. I now can see with the way that answered these questions that that must not be the case. I now know that I need to start looking at things and thinking about them before I make a final decision. I need to learn that I should not Just have the attitude that it is my ideas or my way or nothing. This attitude can be a big turn of to all of those who I work with, whether they are above or below me. I also was truly shocked to find out that this assessment show me to be an introvert. I had always considered myself to be an extrovert, this is the third time I have taken an assessment that has show me to be Just the opposite. This is something that I definitely need to work on and I am not even sure how to fix it, as I don’t really see it. I guess how I can grow in this and the previous area is Just to sit down and talk frankly with those that I work with. I can pose the issue to them and assure them that I would like them to address this subject freely so that I am able to correct the issue and move forward. If I do not find away to address and correct these issues it will have a great impact n how effective that I am in my Job. If people think that I am closed minded and introverted they will never want to approach me. If I people perceive me to be unapproachable and closed off this could lead to issues that need to be address being put on the back burner. This could lead too lack of productivity and an unhealthy work environment. Overall I found these results to be shocking. Some of the areas on the assessment ultimately I am happy with the results because I may have otherwise never seen where these weaknesses lie. This helped me to see that I have both strengths and knees and how I can impact both sides for the positive. How to cite Conflict Reflection, Papers

Effective Communication & Research

Question : What is effective professional communication? Answer: Professional communication is emerging as an area of investigation in various discipline like applied linguistics, study of communication, educational fields and the field of psychology as well. The approaches to these fields are almost similar but it still has lot of sections where the line of aproach is different from each other. The approach to speaking, listening, writing and reading part of communication is different and for all professional form of it keeps changing with the basic idea of sending across the right message. The basic line of communication is simple. It has to be vivid, it has to be clear, it has to be natural and the person needs to be prepared for the speaking ability. There are different forms of situations which might pose problem to the communication. Presentation are basically formal form of speeches and they usually get involved with lots of visual form, graphical data based information along with audio aids, and might involve more than one speaker for such presentation in order to work as a team. These from communication angle point of view are something which involves recieving praise and criticism and these are obvious when one is attending a interview. The effective communication skill is also evident when one speaks in a group or is giving speech in a team meeting. The personal skill become evident when one attends such communication activity. Research Question and Purpose The purpose of professional communication Wartella (1994) along with Zarefsky (1993) acounted the underlying the basic characteristic of the course by a very descriptive model of the intellectual pattern of the human discipline of learning communication. Good professional communication requires careful planning and hence requires comprehensive plan of action. Research is definitely something which has systematic inquiry into a subject. These are points to the need to examine topics in a systematic manner instead of hapazardly running into the sources. Need to understand how profession and discipline is organized. Discipline of communication The field of communication discipline has grown in popularity from mere general description to descriptor of theory and research. Both journalism and speech agree that communication basically is a discipline which is practical in characteristics but the stream of journalism has focussed a lot in the educational part of professionals whereas speech professors have got themselves accustomed to the liberal forms of arts and also understood as well as value the idea that communication could be approached from numerous traditional forms such as humanities, science, social science and arts. The key issue in this era is of course convergence. The media and technology coming together with each-other and finally produce newer forms of communication but they are increasingly making use of the existing tools of communication and form new set of communications. The phenomenon of communication discipline has basic four different types of properties. Different process the people usually practice or use to complete a task of communication with each other The various forms and types of communication that we come across in everyday life. The characteristics that are essential to complete a communication such as style and verbal codes that a communicator uses for creating message How a commmunication process changes depending upon a relationship that the individuals build and maintain throughout Methodology Types of professional communication Communication skills are considered to be very very important in business to ensure success. The workplace and global market place changes has gone through drastic evolution over the decade and any business that can maintain their level of awareness will survive and anyone who fails to recognise a good perspective of the value and cultural difference of the employees and their esteemed customers may face failure. Communication could be either verbal or non verbal and any employee who does not make use of effective communication with their superiors and ofcourse his juniors may not progress well in his career. Functions and advantage of non verbal communication: According to Thill and Bovee the aspect of non verbal communication has six specific functions: It provides conscious and unconcious information It helps in regulating the flow of conversation It helps in expressing emotion It helps in controlling or influencing others It also helps in facilitating specific task or simplify it Advantages of non verbal communication Most important of all fact of non verbal communication is its reliability. Ideas can deceive but words cannot and hence written communication is considered to be more reliable Non verbal communication is efficient from bot the senders and recievers point of view and the level of understanding is considered to be more effective Non verbal communication is more credible and plays a big role in business too and it establishes the leadership role as well. These form of communication is also considered to be more accurate and has better attitude interpreting the information Limitations or disadvantages of non verbal communication Lack of secrecy is one of the biggest shortcomings The written part is useful only for small piece of information The gestures are hidden in words and can cause wrong interpretation Limitation of non expression of past events and ideas Verbal communication This involves the use of symbols that usually have universal meanings for all and anyone who is taking part in discussion. Verbal communication could be either oral or written Oral communication Oral communication is the channel of communication in which the message is transmitted in spoken forms and the term oral actually relates to anything that points to mouth. The two components of oral communication are words and manner and in the way these words are pronounced. Advantage of oral communication: It has the advantage of quickness in exchange of ideas and equally quick response. Oral communication helps in understanding the extent to which a reciever has understood the message through his feelings during the entire course of exchange. It has other advantages of flexibility, economic resourcing, personal touch, removal of miscommunication and along with that motivation. Disadvantage of oral communication These are basically unfit for lengthy message, usually also not fit for policy matters, lack of written proof is another short comings and finally is considered to be expensive as well. Usefulness and forms of oral communication Oral communication is found to be useful when the information is needed to be kept secret. It is very useful when information needs to be given to a large section of people. This is useful when the receiver is illiterate. Forms of oral communication: Depending upon the situation oral communication could be of various forms. Face to face conversation Lecturing in presence of moderate crowd During meetings and conferences Interviews Telephonic conversation Social and cultural affairs Seminars Radio and television The other form is written or printed form of communication. Planning and organisation Models of communication Communication system uses two basic general models and they are the media systems while the other is oral systems. In media systems the flow of information is activated through communicators who are professional which are for specific media channel transmission and they are printing media, radio transmission, satellite television, the mass media and film, the streaming video media, telecom based exchanges etc. These messages are in a descriptive form as well as not very personal in nature while in oral system the exchanges are pin-pointing in nature and arising from sources which are allowed to speak by the hierarchy in society. These messages are found to be prescriptive in nature and they are transmitted to very segmented different kind of audiences in oral channels. The primary groups completes the pattern of diffusion by acting for a relaying channel of communication within and also between the groups. The basic direction of change is found to be from the system of oral to media systems in almost every societies but they still co-exists and each of them are supportive of each other. Basic models of communication: the basic way to understand the principles and processes that would define the nature of communication is by modelling and these are descriptive tools meant to approximate these things. Shannon weaver model of communication Shannon weaver model speaks about a mathematical model of communication. In 1949 Claude Shannon from Rockefeller Foundation propounded this to explain electronic communication which attempted to explain two things. The process of communication is reduced to a set of pure mathematical formulas The problems are discussed in a manner that could eventually be handled with the help of a model Lasswell communication model Lasswell proposed a model of communication in the year 1948 which was found not to be very different from what philosopher Aristotle and this model suggested that the message flow in a society which has many aspects of a multiple social dictums. These revolved around control, content, media, audience and effect analysis. Narula in 1994 discussed about the noise distortions in communication transmission says that channel noise has various connotations. It could be stated with state of technology along with physical and social access to these channels and peoples actual exposure to these messages. Barriers of communication: Any activity will probably suffer from setbacks if the condition are contrary to the smooth fucntioning of the process emerge. The barriers are either sender oriented or reciever oriented. Sender characterized barriers could either be voluntary or may be involuntary and hence efforts are taken on the part of the sender to isolate and finally remove them. The sender is considered to be the originator of the communication and hence extreme caution should be taken not to create barriers. Receiver oriented barriers could also be held responsible for putting up barriers during the course of the interaction and although the role in initial phase is found to be passive, it results in more and more active as the assimilation and absorption of information goes on. Some of these barriers emanating from receiver side are tendency to evaluate, poor retention and improper listening. Conclusion: The art of communication is essentially a practical one and includes skills such as speaking, writing and reading and these basic skills could be improved by the conscious effort of applying the five principles of good speaking or better known as principles of communication which states that we need to be clear, be prepared, simple, vivid, and also be natural. These instances goes a long way in creating effective communication channel which helps in allowing better resultants.