Final Reflection on Learning

Being in my third year of school, I figured learning some resume-writing and job interview skills would come in handy. That was how I ended up taking ES2007S. I took the class not knowing what to expect, except having heard that the workload is really heavy. It turned out to be a great experience as I realised that there was still a lot more room for improvement in terms of my communications skills.

The open discussion style planned by Ms. Lim, who often chipped in with her own experiences and knowledge, was extremely conducive to learning communications skills. The environment encouraged people to give their opinions and this was evident as people in the class started to open up and soon every class was a lively sharing on the topic of the day. The various activities from the peer teaching to the mock interviews to the oral presentations were all good activities to put what we learnt into practice. What was best about this module was the fact that we got plenty of opportunities to speak. Contrary to my prior expectations, I learnt a lot from everyone in the class and not just from Ms. Lim alone. The open feedback and criticism were refreshing as they served as constant reminders that there was always more to learn and improve on.

My first major takeaway from this class is on writing resume and application letter. I realised how important it is to use keywords and a “you” approach in writing formal documents. I learnt that writing a formal document - be it a resume, a cover letter or a proposal- is not merely presenting the facts. Rather, it is more important for the writer to write it by considering the expectation of the reader(s).My second important takeaway is the oral presentation. I have revisited the basics of holding a meeting, building the team dynamics, liaising with external agencies, proposal writing and presentation management. It is very rewarding to synthesize a project that could really worked in the actual cooperate environment. My final takeaway is the interpersonal skills I may have inadvertently acquired through the formation of great friendships with everybody in the class. I am really glad I met all these people and I hope everyone had a great experience just as I did.

Reflection on Oral Presentation

Preparation

My team mates and I prepared our slides few days before the presentation. We reviewed and commented on each other’s slides for any mistakes before rehearsal. We have the luxury of having several rehearsals before the presentation and it helps in familiarizing me with the flow of presentation. I prepared supplementary slides as I foreseen that the audience might need me to clarify some of the parts in a clearer way, which I thought I would not be able to do it during the 5-minute presentation due to time constraint.

Delivery

For this oral presentation, I believe I appeared to be less nervous. I refrained myself from reading out from the cue cards, unlike my peer teaching session. Although my speech was not really very smooth, I have more eye contact with the audience and was able to pay attention to and observe their response and facial expressions. I was focused during Q and A session, and was able to answer questions tactfully with my team mates.

As I am a more Mandarin speaking person, my English proficiency has to be improved. I tried to be persuasive and assertive in giving speech and answering questions as well as to end the presentation memorably, but my speech could be more fluent and impressive if I improve on this area.

The non verbal cues that I transmitted during the presentation could also be better. Although I feel my gestures, expression and enthusiasm were better this time, there is still room for improvement. Probably because I am very introverted since young, I used to be more rigid when I am standing in front of the audience.

Use of slideware

We tried to use simple layout so as to keep our slides easy to be digested. Fancy layouts were minimized to avoid disturbance to graphs in the slides. I was really bad at handling the “clicker” and it must be distracting to the audience during my presentation. However, I carried on explaining to them without the slides while my supportive team mates were busy solving the problem for me at the back. After all, the slides are supposed to aid my presentation or my speech, but they should not be the main focus (I hope).

All in all, I did improve on some of the areas that I discovered and Ms. Lim pointed out after peer teaching but I believe I still need to improve on those areas. I feel that our presentation was generally okay and it is certainly an invaluable experience.