The Process Of Finding My Discourse Communities

Before I started my first semester at Sacramento State, in my last high school year, I had known I would not see most of my friends and peers who had the same interests, languages, and goals as me. They would walk to the different path where they could join their academic discourse communities, the communities where peers from different cities and states share their same interests and goals as others. As for me, I tried finding my discourse communities. In “Discourse Communities,” by Gary D.

Schmidt and William J. Vande Kopple define discourse community “as a group of people who share ways to claim, organize, communicate and evaluate meanings.” As I observed the college campus, there were some discourse communities where they would introduce new students to their discourse communities. I have participated in the Communication Studies (COMS 5) and the Plane and Topographic Surveying (CE 9) which are the two examples of the college academic discourse communities.

As I began my first semester at Sacramento State, I decided to add Communication Studies (COMS 5) to fulfill one of my graduation requirements.

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I choose this class because I was interested and knew it would help improve my speaking and writing skills. On the 1st day of class, I had no idea what to expect and the people I will be working with as they were new to me. Professor Gale handed us the syllabus that listed the assignments we would be doing as a group and listed the days of our examination, presentation, and writing assignments due dates.

As I get used to the routine of the class which was getting into your group, work on the chapter exams and planning our class presentation, we were confident from speaking to a whole class in front of them. We use everyday communication in our life as an everyday conversation but when it was a formal communication, we have to be respectful of talking to them in a professional setting. We practice and assess our communication competency in public speaking and in areas of personal communication with our peers and to the authorities. We had to performed speeches in front of the class as well as present our topic to the class. We also have to get over our fear of public speaking in front of the class while giving presenting to the audience and making eye contact with the audience most of the time. Professor Gale assists us in improving our speaking and writing skill as she was also afraid of public speaking. However, she was able to face her fear of public speaking. We learned from other persons’ perspective of their own public speaking.

In TED Talk “How Language Transformed Humanity,” Mark Pagel explains that “We can learn by watching other people and copying or imitating what they can do. We can then choose, from among a range of options…” I used Pagel’s idea of “visual theft” to helps me improve my public speaking. It helps me look at my peers’ communication skills which help me improve and adapt to new types of communication skills in a conversation. We learn from each other to help us improve our public speaking and our way of communicating making us a discourse community. Before becoming a college freshman, I had to pursue my career in the Engineering major during my high school year. I had not thought about what type of engineering I would choose until my college year which would be the major of Civil Engineering.

In my first step of major Civil Engineering, I take Engineering Graphics and CAD (CE 4). In this class, I do not communicate with my peers because we were busy with our projects and focusing on our lessons. However, in the Plane and Topographic Surveying (CE 9), we have to work together to complete our assignments. This class was different compared to the engineering classes I had taken in high school. In high school, we get to our lab and work our projects individually. In CE 9, we get in groups and work as a team to apply data from the construction layout and estimating of earthwork volume. We use surveying to help us adapt our measurement of distance, direction, and angles and elevations. My CE 9 class was in a large lecture classroom but in my lab class, it was a small classroom with few students. The only communication we had in the lecture classroom was the end of the class where we have questions about homework or the lesson that the professor gave us. However, in my lab class, we were able to communicate with each other to help us how to survey from the data we took from the field.

Although I met some hardships from a lack of understanding of the professor’s teaching style and evaluation methods, my peers and I were able to analyze and construct what was the professor was explaining about. Schmidt and Vande Kopple explain that an academic group “usually skilled in the art of rhetoric, an art that enhances communication both within and between discourse communities.” We both have goals and values to be able to understand from one another. As this was to communicate effectively as a team to understand and find ways to help our self with our discourse community.

Because I plan to major in Civil Engineering, communication is an important aspect to my peers and my professors. From my Communication Studies, I was able to adopt new skills and relate to my peers. I was able to make use of my communicating skills and apply the terms to my career discourse community by communicating with my peers and being able to use new communicating skills to help us understand each other from one another. Both of my discourse communities assist me in finding my discourse communities.