Final Reflection on Learning

I always dread getting out of bed for 10am lessons, but not when it comes to attending ES2007S lessons. This is one of the most interesting and beneficial modules I’ve ever taken in NUS. This module exposes us to job interviews, presentations and peer teaching, which prepares us well for the workplace. After numerous self-practice and dry runs, I have sort of overcome my nervousness and have become more conscious of both my verbal and non-verbal cues when speaking in front of a group of audience. I have also learnt to be more outspoken as we were given opportunities to share our thoughts freely during lessons and I must say that I really enjoyed listening to the different perspectives brought up by my peers, especially on the topic of fostering intercultural behavior. I’m really lucky to be in this class as I have peers from different cultural backgrounds and I am able to hear first hand experiences from them.

Throughout this course, I was also given the opportunity to work with different groups of people. I experienced different working styles and managed to adapt well to them. I have made friends who jitter just like me when giving a presentation and it was really commendable to see how each one of us have improved from the very first dry run up till the last oral presentation. I must say that the most valuable takeaway from this course are the feedbacks I have received from my peers. Sometimes when we are too nervous, we tend to be unaware of the little actions we do or the fillers we add into our presentation. I’m glad that my peers pinpointed out my flaws, so that I can be more aware in future and not make the same mistakes again. However, my biggest fear is that I may not be able to adjust myself to speak well when it comes to speaking in front of a different group of audience.

For all the speeches and presentations I have done for the past few years, one of the greatest challenges I faced was the delivery of contents. Usually, I will make the effort to memorize the script so that I can maintain eye contact with the audience and look more professional. However, I tend to forget my lines when it comes to the actual presentation. I am still trying to overcome this problem by rehearsing in front of the mirror, or by asking my friends to be my audience. This method has aided me in remembering my lines, and at the same time, to speak more confidently. Sometimes, I do record my voice so that I know if I am speaking monotonously or too fast. I hope these are some useful tips for all of you as well.

Last but not the least, I would like to thank Dr. Radhika for her guidance through this course, and for making lessons engaging and enjoyable.

Reflection on Team-based Research Project Proposal

In a short span of nine weeks, our team has worked together on the issue of improving the recycling culture in Singapore. Recollecting what we had went through as a team, I must admit that it wasn’t an easy one, but the experience was rather fulfilling.

At the beginning, I was quite hyped up for this project as many interesting topics were brought up. Moreover, I’m working with friends whom I’m not familiar with, and I thought that this would be a great opportunity to for me to experience different working styles and thought processes.

I felt that meeting on Google docs was rather effective as we all shared our viewpoints and disagreements openly. As such, we were able to manipulate our ideas immediately and made better progress. However, typing out our ideas has its limitations, as we were unable to express what exactly we want to say. A way to overcome this problem would be to clarify our ideas through phone calls or to talk face-to-face after lessons. 

On the other hand, meeting up face-to-face was less productive as the three of us are rather soft-spoken people. Personally, I tend to keep opinions to myself for the fear of offending other’s ideas. However, because of our quiet personality, I felt a need to break out of my comfort zone. I started to voice out my opinions and took the initiative to instruct our next course of action. Initially, I felt rather uneasy doing so as I was afraid that my teammates might see me as a bossy person. (I hope that my group mates understand where I’m coming from.) As time goes by, we became more vocal and contributed our ideas openly.

Writing of proposal was the most challenging part of this project. Due to our different schedules, we were unable to find suitable timeslot whereby we can meet and clarify our doubts on the parts which we were assigned to do. Thankfully, before splitting the work, we did a rough outline on what information should go into which sections and we were able to refer to this outline whenever needed. We also utilized the time given to us during lessons to discuss on how we can make improvements to our proposed solutions and to ensure that all of us are aware of the changes made in our proposal.

We decided to split our work based on our strengths. For instance, as Jacob has a strong command for English, he worked on the conclusion, which was one of the most important sections of the report, as it has to sound impactful and convincing. Also, since Vivian was well informed about the current affairs in Singapore and other parts of the World, she took up the challenge to write the background of our proposal. After each of our sections are done, we read through the whole proposal together to ensure that our report has met the 7Cs in writing - Complete, clear, concrete, correct, concise, courteous and coherent.

Overall, working as a team has taught me both soft skills and hard skills that will prepare me for the workplace. It is important that we voice our opinions and be receptive to feedbacks because, we will be working with people who are more experienced when we step out into the working world. Their feedbacks will definitely help us improve our performance at work as well as the quality of work we produce.