• Make a list of skills, abilities, interests, beliefs, and roles that compose your self-concept. From this list, identify three adjectives (examples: kind, funny, practical, family-oriented, etc.) that most accurately reflect who you think you are most of the time. Use this information to compose an introduction for the essay.
1. Explain who influenced aspects of your self-concept. Apply communication theories such as reflected appraisal, self-fulfilling prophecy, and/or social comparison to explain how you perceive yourself (as discussed in Chapter Three). Be sure to include the textbook definition in your response. You can apply additional references to specific theories of self-concept development in the text, where appropriate. All materials must be cited to avoid plagiarism.
2. Write a comparison distinguishing your public self from your perceived self. In your comparison include a description of the context for the public self.
3. Provide concrete examples of communication challenges that you have with other people and explain why.
• In the concluding paragraph(s) of your essay, summarize your main points and provide advice or strategies to yourself and others to be a more competent communicator (see Chapter One).