Social Groups

In social science, a social group is defined as two or more people who are joined together by some shared bond or affinity. Different types of groups may overlap with one another. Also, a given individual may belong to more than one group, although he may identify with one group more deeply than another. Group status can be acquired or lost instantly or assigned to an individual by outside observers.

Purpose of social groups

Your social groups may vary in size and type, but they all have one thing in common: their purpose is to aid you in your growth as a person. Your primary social group's purpose is mostly to provide a supportive social network as you physically and mentally grow up or face difficulties in life. Your secondary group will provide you with the means of growing professionally or academically and to develop more as a citizen of your city and state. But it is your reference group that will undoubtedly help influence you and help you to adjust in life more, since the members that belong to this group have the most influence on you.

Types and Size

Your social group will consist of three basic types: primary, secondary and reference. Your primary group may just be made up of two people (you and your spouse/child), or it could be much larger. The secondary type will consist of bureaucracies, like universities and labor unions, and it is much larger in size. But your final social group type (known as reference groups) can actually be any size, since it is defined as any entity in which "two or more persons have an influence on your opinion, your tendencies, or your behavior," according to SociologyGuide.com.

Features

Your primary social group will include your family, your child's play group of children, and your neighborhood or community. Your secondary group will consist of bureaucracies. Therefore, the features that define this group are: your home state, your city or state's major corporations, factories, and labor unions, as well as your area's universities and national political parties. Your final social group type, the reference social group, is any entity (including those from the primary or secondary groups) that influence your opinion, tendencies or behavior in life.

Team
A team is any group of people organized to work together interdependently and cooperatively to meet the needs of their customers by accomplishing a purpose and goals. Teams are created for both long term and short term interaction. A product development team, an executive leadership team, and a

departmental team are long lasting planning and operational groups. Short term teams might include a team to develop an employee onboarding process, a team to plan the annual company party, or a team to respond to a specific customer problem or complaint.

Purposes of team
The purpose for creating teams is to provide a framework that will increase the ability of employees to participate in planning, problem solving and decision making to better serve customers. Increased participation promotes:

better understanding of decisions, more support for and participation in implementation plans, increased contribution to problem solving and decision making, and more ownership of decisions, processes, and changes.

In order for teams to fulfill their intended role of improving organizational effectiveness, it is critical that teams develop into working units that are focused on their goal, mission, or reason for existing.

Types of social groups

1. Categorical group - Member of this group share particular characteristics and a common identity. 2. Aggregate group - An aggregate is any collection of people who are together in one place without interacting with one another. 3. Collectice groups - These are temporary groups which are not generally governed by established norms of the culture and are composed of people who share some kind of belief which motivates them to prepare for action. 4. Association group - This group is composed of people who join together in an organized manner to pursue a common interest. From the groups that have been identified, these groups may be classified on the basis of social boundaries between members and non-members and adherence to a special set of norms

Concept of society
In the same way that the mathematical concept of triangle helps to calculate some properties of natural objects that are similar to a triangle, our concept of society will permit us to calculate certain properties of natural societies. Since we are most interested in human societies, we will define "society" in such a way that it may be a useful concept for understanding these societies. The way we define a concept has effects on what we can possibly predict from that concept. A concept has to have a relationship with the object in the environment, but a richer or poorer concept can say more about the object or only very little.

Social Interaction
Social interactions refer to particular forms of externalities, in which the actions of a reference group aect an individuals preferences. In the presence of strategic complementarities, social interactions help reconcile the observation of large dierences in outcomes in the absence of commensurate dierences in fundamentals. I survey the theoretical literature and discuss dierent approaches to estimating social interaction.

Role of language
Language is an essential from of communication. It allows people to convey and elaborate their perspective. However, there are many forms and styles of language. Different counties and religions have different ancestral languages and styles of speaking. I personally, am learning a second language to allow me the opportunity to communicates to a broader audience. Imagine what the world would be like if there was no talking or signing of any words. There would be panic, and mass confusion, the world would struggle to survive. Communication between individuals can occur in many ways, but the skill of communicating depends not only on the strength of ones vocabulary , but the ability to express one's thoughts and ideas clearly. People have always had the need to share their stories. From cave drawings, drums, and smoke signals, to the speed of the technological age, people have found many ways to entertain and converse. Sharing ideas has brought information , as well as "soul-to-soul" contact. As our world grows , expands, and becomes increasingly more interconnected by various technological advances, the need for effective interpersonal communication among different cultures has become crucial. We communicate not only with words, but perhaps even more forcefully by our body language and facial expressions. I have become influenced by the role of language, as it shows many faces in my life. Gestures, motions, and batting eyelashes, can be interpreted in different ways by different groups of people. Without the exchange of words we would not be able to interact with others. For me personally, the role of language has helped to get me through the rough and tough times of the sport I love; soccer. As a young child I developed a love for this sport and knew that this is what the future held for...

Patterns of interaction
In ELT interaction patterns are the different ways learners and the teacher can interact in the class. Using the right interaction pattern is a fundamental factor in the success of any activity and the achievement of aims. Example The class are doing a dictation activity. The interaction pattern is teacher to the whole group (T-Ss). Other patterns include pair work (S-S), and group work (Ss-Ss).

In the classroom Different interaction patterns can support the aims of different kinds of activities. For example, if the learners are doing group writing then small Ss-Ss groups are best, but for elicitation of ideas the interaction pattern could be Ss-T. Changing interaction patterns can help vary the pace and choosing an appropriate pattern can help achieve learning aims, for example, making learners take the place of the teacher (S-Ss) can be very productive.

Collective behavior
People make social change happen in groups. Group actions are either not organized (collective behavior) or very organized (social movements).Collective behavior is to when people engage in social interactions in response to unstructured, ambiguous, or unstable situations.

Explanation of collective behavior

Over the years, sociologists and other scholars have proposed many explanations of collective behavior. Most of these explanations have focused on crowds, riots, and social movements, rather than on rumors, fads, and other collective behaviors that involve less social interaction

Types of collective behavior

. Relatively spontaneous means that the behavior is somewhat spontaneous but also somewhat planned, whilerelatively unstructured means that the behavior is somewhat organized and predictable but also somewhat unorganized and unpredictable. As we shall see, some forms of collective behavior are more spontaneous and unstructured than others, and some forms are more likely than others to involve individuals who act together as opposed to merely being influenced by each other. As a whole, though, collective behavior is regarded as less spontaneous and less structured than conventional behavior, such as what happens in a classroom, a workplace, or the other settings for everyday behavior with which we are very familiar.

Social movement
Social movements are any broad social alliances of people who are connected through their shared interest in blocking or affecting social change. Social movements do not have to be formally organized. Multiple alliances may work separately for common causes and still be considered a social movement.

Social consequences
For most of human existence we've lived in hunting packs of sixty to one-hundred fifty people. Depending on where you place the dawn of the homo sapien, 95% of our history has existed in this state. It wasn't until farming and trade that populations began to steadily grow for the last ten-thousand years. With new technologies society grew from dozens of millions to nearly six and half billion in less than four hundred years.

In the earlier communities, people were very familiar with each other because they only had to know a hundred other faces, including enemies. Today's modern society has forced people to relate to thousands of other individuals. As the population increases, the role of the individual is rendered virtually invisible. Even a person who lives in a small town does not escape this phenomenda, for the television is a constant reminder that incomprehesible masses live beyond the air waves. A person has shifted from an identifiable member of a community to a passing cell in the horde of other cells. This has drastic social consequences when people feel disconnected from their society.