Final reflection: Is it really the final or just the beginning?

Finally, the ES2007S module is over and I am writing the last post of the blog.  I am glad that I decided to take this module as I’ve gained valuable skills, knew thirteen new friendly friends and a benevolent teacher. Thanks to all of you for your collaboration, feedback and helps.

I’ve improved my interpersonal skills a lot, throughout peer teaching, writing proposal, and oral presentation.  Public speaking can be said as one of my weaknesses. I am afraid of it so much. Before the start of this semester, I only encountered two presentations- one lasted for only one minute and the other only 5 minutes. Before I came to NUS, I never had a chance to do presentations. That is part of the reason I decided to take ES2007s in order to overcome public-speaking-phobia. I spent my time carefully whether I should take this module or not. I read through and skim all the materials, previous blog posts and everything I could access to make the final decision to take. As an engineering student coming from a non-English-speaking country, I find myself weak in English. I was afraid that I could not be able to cope with the module. After analyzing the module’s description, I realized myself that this was the module I were looking for. So I made my decision to take and try my best.

After going through various skill builders, I enjoyed the module. My communication skills improved! I have my confidence to do presentation. Increasing my confidence is one of the greatest benefits. Throughout various projects and assignments, I’ve improved not only language skills but also people skills such as team building and some creative /artistic skills. Resume writing and mock jobs interview helped to prepare to expect real-time situation.  I am glad that I decided to take the module.

So, is it the end of the module? I believe it is not. It is just the initial step to learn and apply various communication aspects integrated into our life. The module itself ends but the content we learn will never end and it is just the beginning to explore, to improve and to apply more!

Reflection on oral presentation

The very first thing I realized was the term “oral presentation”. In my engineering modules so far, we just use the word “presentation”.  But here, the word “oral” made me pay attention more to focus on delivery.

Preparation

Normally, I prefer to do first when there is a choice. But having a chance to do last mad me benefit a lot. If our team were the first one, I could not do as much as I did on Monday. Then I had a chance to learn the first two teams’ experiences, their way of presenting their delivery of content. These were valuable face –to-face tips for me to prepare, besides my research for presentation. Brad mentioned to keep slides simple, type less word and speak out more. When the first two teams applied these, I just understood the difference between theoretical knowledge and real experience of these presentation tips. These are very effective! And it was nice working with my teams and during rehearsal they pointed me out some errors and mispronunciation. Thank you my teammates for the correction.

Before it was about to start

Brad gave us 10 mins to prepare before we started. That period was the most restlessness time for me. I wanted to start and be over as soon as possible. I realized myself how impatient I was. I need to improve to calm my mind down. The plausible reason was I had another heavy presentation immediately after the class. That could make me restlessness.

While presenting

I got the feedback that I could have more connection with more eye contact. That is my weakness. During presentation, I might be looking at you. But in my eyes, I did not see you most of the time. What I saw were the words and sentences of what to tell next.  My conscious mind reminded me to look at the audience but my subconscious and unconscious mind sometimes controlled over me to think of what to say next. This could be the base of the problem for doing some rocking motion in stance or pacing a bit rushed at times. I did not realize my behavior during the time.

After

I reflected on myself after the presentation. I think this problem could be due to my lagging process of speaking English. Since my first language is Burmese, I have used to think in the following way. I think in Burmese, I translate it, and before speak out, I need to check grammar and sentence structures and then finally speak in English. Listening even lag more since there is one more step of translating into Burmese first. I was afraid of Q&A session. Fortunately, I managed to understand all the questions being asked. After almost 3 years in S’pore, I think in English and speak in English without translating first for most of the daily life sentences. But I still need to improve a lot.

What I learned

From the oral presentation, I learned a lot about how to attract audience, how to use visual aid carefully, how to project your voice affectively, so on and so forth. I believe I have much more confident in presentation after Monday. It was nice learning experience throughout the process. Now I have 13 more nice friends!