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

Evaluating Intercultural Behavior

Wai – a Thai air hostress 

greeting customers.

Last Monday, I had a chance to do role-playing. I was invited for dinner with people from different countries. Each person had to represent their own culture. For example, when greeting the host, others used a handshake, while I did the wai (pronounced [wâːj], a Thai greeting similar to Namaste). The dinner displayed intercultural communication among those from different backgrounds.

The role-play reminded me of my first year in Singapore when I had problems adapting to a new environment where I could not wai. Therefore, this post will tell you about intercultural communication through my own situation and illustrate how this affected my communication.

Wai is one of the most beautiful cultures in Thailand. It is used in many occasions such as greetings, receiving blessings, and so on. It is important in Thailand for showing respect as Thai people highly value seniority. Every time people meet a senior, they must wai; otherwise, they will be considered rude.

I, being from Thailand, always respect my seniors. Whenever I meet a teacher, I wai. Moreover, I do not call a teacher by his name but by his title “Ajarn” (which means teacher.)

However, the world has a wide variety of cultures. When I came to Singapore, I found a lot of cultural differences. Although Singapore has so many cultures, wai is not among them. Should I wai in Singapore, I will look weird. Moreover, seniority in Singapore is not as strong as that in Thailand. I do not have to greet teachers so formally anymore and I can call teachers by their names.

Some may think that my life became easier as some societal rules are lifted. Nevertheless, this new culture completely confuses me. I could not greet teachers or others by using wai. It makes me curious as to what I should do instead. Should I wave hands, bow, or …? Not knowing what to do, I was irritated and could not communicate well with teachers, especially during my first semester. I felt so uncomfortable approaching them since I did not know how I should greet them, or how I should show respect to them and I was also afraid of being rude unconsciously.

Above is one example of intercultural communication. There are still a lot more as the world has so many different cultures. We should respect the culture of the place we live in. Take Ronald McDonald as an example. He wais people in Thailand!

Resolving Interpersonal Conflict

Human beings live together in society and, despite community, it is possible people have differences, which is sometimes a source of conflict. Conflict is “a serious disagreement” ^[1] and interpersonal conflict is “an expressed struggle between at least two interdependent parties who receive incompatible goals, scarce resources, and interference from others in achieving their goals.”^[2] No person can avoid conflict. This post illustrates my interpersonal conflict concerning my family and a gang of youths in my neighborhood.

My house is located in a commercial area where teenagers always hang out after school. Next to my house is a narrow street which was a clean and quiet place until it became a meeting place for young gangsters. Now they come here, hang out every day, strew the floor with rubbish, deface the wall, take a leak on the wall, and sometimes even defecate on the floor. These actions result in a dirty environment. They also make my plants die by throwing trash into my flowerpots. They completely change our peaceful and beautiful morning with green plants and clean surroundings into disgusting mornings with trash and unpleasant smells.

These kids study at one of the most famous private schools in my neighborhood. Generally, those studying at private schools are from a good and rich family. Therefore, they should be able to find a more suitable place for meeting and should not act like mentioned above. One of the assumptions is that they may want to meet without wasting money on renting a place (so that they can spend more money buying liquor, cigarettes, cool skull sweaters, and so on.) 

All my family wants is the area to be clean. Were they not to dirty the place, we would be fine with them coming here. Therefore, we decided to turn conflict into collaboration by letting them use this space and asking them to keep it clean. My mother talked with them politely, explaining what we expected from them. They nodded; however, until now everything is still the same.

After finding out collaboration would not work, we decided to use harsher methods. My brother yelled at them, which put oil to the fire. They left more rubbish intentionally. We told their school but the school ignored the issue. Then, we created an online forum concerning this problem with the hope that someone in the community might see this problem and try to solve it. Again, nothing happened. We also thought of telling the police. However, after thinking of the consequences that the gangsters may hold a grudge against us and, in the end, hurt us, we did not tell the police. We have tried a lot of methods to solve this conflict between the gangsters and ourselves so that we can live happily together in this community. Now we have been enduring this for more than two years.

How can we get back those clean and beautiful mornings and be on good terms with those boys again? Moreover, it is not just about the environment but it is about their future as well…

References

[1]Conflict,http://oxforddictionaries.com[Internet].Available at http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/conflict [Accessed 6^th September 2012]

[2] Wilmot & Hocker (2010), Interpersonal Conflict, p.11

A Big Stage Called “World.”

Yesterday, during ES2007S class, my teacher, Brad, told us that life itself is a bit stage that we have to fulfill our own role and take it seriously. His speech reminded me of the song “The show”, by Lenka.

This song, the Show, represents our life. We are all in the big stage called “the world.” Everybody occupies his own role and has to do his best for each moment as we do not know what will happen in the future. Should we not take our role seriously, we may regret later and “want to take my money back,” which means that we want to go back into the past and spend that time again. This is not possible in reality.

Therefore, use every moment of your life wisely so that the world become a successful stage and that you do not have to say “I want to take my money back” later.

Let’s work hard on ES2007S and make it our successful show!

Effective communication

“Man is by nature a social animal.” – Aristotle, a Greek philosopher.

This quotation means that human cannot live alone and he must have interaction with and communicate to others in the society. One of the most common problems in the society nowadays is conflict and it is often originated from misunderstandings. Therefore, to solve this problem, people should develop and practice effective communication.

Effective communication is the communication that receivers understand messages from senders precisely and clearly. The lack of such skill could lead to misunderstanding among one another and, in the end, a conflict.

For example, there was once when my friend argued with me because of an ambiguous message. We planned to go out on Saturday, and she had sent a message which read “meet me at 3”. On Saturday, I came to the meeting place at 3pm and found nobody. Later, I found out that she was back at her home angrily saying that I was late for 6 hours. I was very confused because she told me to meet at 3 but not at 9. After a few minutes, I realized that she used Thai timing system which 7am, 8am and 9am are 1 o’clock, 2 o’clock and 3 o’clock respectively.

Supposed that I had asked “Does 3 mean 3pm or 9am?” and that she had not assumed that I understood her perfectly we would have not misunderstood. Instead of becoming angry at each other at home, we would have had fun traveling on Saturday, only if, we had communicated effectively.

From my own experience, I learnt that effective communication is very important as it can help people live together more peacefully. To develop this skill, we must eliminate barriers, such as, our own assumptions, ambiguous words and so on.

What about you? How do you find effective communication crucial? Moreover, do you share the same opinion that effective communication can reduce conflict?

My inspiration to begin this blog.

This is the first post of my blog… Although every student from ES2007S, which is “the effective communication,” is required to set up his/her own blog and to post articles written by him/her, this post is not compulsory but it is the result of my inspiration that I gained from the classroom.

I would like to express my thanks to Mr. Brad Blackstone, who gives me an inspiration. Without him and his course, I would never try being a blogger. Moreover, during my second class in ES2007S, he said that this course provides many opportunities to speak, to write, and so on, and we should take these chances to start doing something new. It really inspires me and makes me realize that I should take advantage of these wonderful opportunities. I promise myself that I will speak and write more so that I can develop a communication skill.

Therefore, I am going to write a lot of posts from now on. Please do NOT get bored with me! :D Moreover, Supposed that you have any suggestion, feel free to tell me because it will help me a lot on improving myself.

See you again in the next post!! J