The first lesson: Organizational Communication

Finally, I came back to the classroom. Everything was conversant and everything was strange.

Org Comm is one of hottest areas in the discipline of communication. In fact, the market demand for org comm. majors has triggered additions of various org comm curricula to many communication programs worldwide. However, in this class, the focus is only placed on INTERNAL communication processes and effects in organizations.

The class, much like a MBA class in my opinion, is taught by a Doctor who can speak Putonghua very well but can not read Chinese. Everything was talked in English and I can fortunately understand all. But I find the abuse of the Chinese English education system. All the students from mainland can not speak English as well as the local students. I must admit that the local students’ English speaking ability is very excellent.

We used one and half hours to understand the class rules such as APA 5th and used another one and half hours to learn the basic management theory of the company. It is bored to me. I have ten years working experience and been a manager for 5-6 years. I would be much interested in the lesson several years ago, but now, I lost interest. I only care about the theory itself. As for the application of theory, God, I carry out every day! Leadership, I do not want to anyone to tell me how to become a charismatic leader, I just want to know what the leadership is. Maybe the upper lessons will be useful for me, I do hope so.

There were several interesting things in this lesson. I found little students know the company indeed. We have been divided into 6 groups. Every group shall finish a business plan about how to open a company. My associates thought an organization with purchasing and selling is a company! Quite interesting, isn’t it?

Now, today’s 5 words:

Bureaucracy 官僚
Mandatory 强制性的
Descriptive 叙述的
Prescriptive 说明性的 （who can tell me the difference between these two words?）
Metaphor 隐喻