Final Reflection on Learning

Time flies, and now the first semester of my second year at NUS is going to end soon. Firstly, I would love to express thanks to Brad, who makes this course possible, and all of my classmates, who go through this short yet long journey together and always help each other’s.

Through this course, I have improved in my communication skills, known how to ace an interview, learnt to work with different group mates and so on. In this blog, I would love to illustrate my improvement in my presentation skill, which I consider the most important as it is a way to convey and sell our ideas.

My presentation skill was very bad. I still remembered my second day in ES2007S when I stood up in class and presented what my own group had read. My voice was trembling and my heart was beating like crazy. I felt excited and scared to speak up in class. I could not deliver my message and almost all of my classmates could not understand me. To tell you the truth, I felt so depressed that I almost cried when others said that I was the one who was hardest to be understood. However, thanks to those straight comments, I realized that I must overcome this problem and CHANGE myself.

Thanks to this course that teaches all necessary skills for communication and all of my classmates who are all good presenters and inspire me to work harder, now I can present more confidentially! My presentations in peer teaching and oral presentation were much better than those before. However, from my thinking, I have to practice more and become even better as there are still some flaws in my presentation and other communication skills.

Last but not least, this course not only teaches professional communication skill, but it also teaches me to CHANGE. If we only listen to the lecture and never try to change, we will never change. Remember, you have to fake it, until you become it!

Below is the quote from Paulo Coelho, the Brazilian writer, which I hope can inspire you all (as it did to me).

“You must be the person you have never had the courage to be. Gradually, you will discover that you are that person, but until you can see this clearly, you must pretend and invent.”
― Paulo Coelho






What about you? What are your changes after studying this course?

Reflection on Oral Presentation

After all of our hard work, the presentation ends well. So far, this is one of the best presentations I have ever done. It is also the presentation in which my team, Trailblazers, has put more effort than any other presentation.

This great presentation cannot happen without any preparation. Trailblazers prepared a lot for this presentation. There are countless times that we met to discuss about our project proposal and to practice together to make the presentation consistently without any brake, and to provide each other’s feedback. These meetings help me a lot during the real presentation as it makes me feel more comfortable to speak in front of other people.

Why did I say that this is one of the best presentations? The reason is that we, Trailblazers, are able to use all of our energy in the presentation, to show our belief in our proposal, to be able to engage and deliver our contents to our audience. Our slides also accompany well with our styles as we would love the audience to focus on us and be less dependent on the slides and we wanted our presentation to be more like talking rather than formal presenting.

Everything in our presentation seems good; however, there are some rooms for us to improve. I did my best to engage the audience by asking questions and put as much energy as I could, which is one of my strengths. I thought my method was correct; however, after receiving feedback, I realized that some kinds of questions should not be asked as they may be considered rude and they may be unnecessary to do so. Therefore, in the next presentation, I will think more about the outcome of each action. Another improvement I can make is to improve my pronunciation and my own accent, which I am now trying to work on. With better pronunciation, I believe that people will understand more when I do the presentation!

Although the oral presentation has ended and I do not have to present any more in ES2007S, I would like to continue improving my presentation skill as it is both necessary in life and fun! Should you have more feedbacks about my presentation, please let me know! J