Critical Reflection on SEM2902

After receiving the list of modules we have to take in the second trimester, i was kind of scared for the COM 150 as my English language was not as strong as compared to my mother tongue. At first, I thought that i would be struggling to get through this course. Apart from having the disadvantages at minor things such as grammar and spelling, i'm also not a good reader and a listener. The thought of having to just listen and read during my past English classes made me unexcited about COM 150. Apart from that, i also thought that this class was going to be pointless, similar to all the other English related modules i have taken during my polytechnic days.

However, i started realizing the importance of the module or more precisely, the things that were taught in the module after attending a few classes. For instance, one of the things covered in this module was on active listening. Referring back to my background, i was and never am a good listener. Reflecting back, this module has helped me in improving myself in a few areas without knowing. For example, the way i present myself to someone more superior, my writing skills and language and etc. On top of learning new things, this module have also given me the opportunity to discover myself such as the type of listener i am and etc. To strain the importance of things taught in the module, we have also decided to do our project based on the things taught such as active listening and resolving conflicts. Therefore, my biggest takeaway for this module was when we learnt about active listening.

Critical Reflection on Project Learning

For the project, my group and I have decided to talk about "Active listening and resolving conflicts within a family". Why active listening? As a student, we feel that many of us are able to relate to it easily. Apart from that, we as team also feel that we should strain the importance of the things taught in class such as active listening and conflict management or resolving conflicts. As for the project, we were given specific time requirements such as the 5 minute presentation and the 3 minute video.

Coming from the engineering field, I rarely had the chance to practice my language and also my oral presentation skills. Previously, my idea of a presentation was to read out everything from the slide clearly and get it done and over with. From there, I have gotten a lot of feedback about eye contact and other non-verbal cues. However, my perception of a presentation changed after attending this module called “Interpersonal and Work Communication” taught by Brad. Through this module, I have learnt a lot of things that applies to our presentation skills such as verbal and non-verbal communications and etc. With that, I would like to take this opportunity to reflect on my oral presentation skills.

In this module, we were given two chances to present. Firstly the mock presentation and next, the actual presentation. Referring back to constructive criticisms that was given to me on the actual and mock presentation, I realized that my posture and non-verbal cues has always been an important factor affecting my presentation. For example, not making enough eye contact and the position of which I was standing at. Apart from that, I also have the tendency of repeating a few word which may be very annoying to the audience. Despite the criticisms, I have managed to improve on my verbal articulation and voice projection. As a whole, I am very pleased to be given this opportunity to explore more about myself and also learn more on how I am able to improve my language and oral presentation skills. Thank you Brad (:

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Edited on:
11th April 2016
18th April 2016