Presentation Reflection

“A sign of relief”

That’s the only phase that best describes how I feel when I finished my presentation. I feel that my presentation was not the best and there is still have room for improvement.

Overall, I think my presentation group met our objectives of conveying what we wanted toour audience. I think the flow of our presentation was relatively satisfactory considering the fact that we did not have the time to rehearse with each other beforehand. As a result of this situation, Gillian and I had a little discussion at the back about our slides when Hong Ting was presenting as we both did not want to mess up the presentation. However, I did acknowledge that it was wrong of on our part to do that before pointed out by Prof Brad.

Individually, I feel that I was nervous towards the end of my presentations as there was a last minute addition of a new slide which made me present in a different way from what my group wanted.

I think I made a mistake during the presentation by turning and told my team mates that I did not know what I was saying. I think at that point of time I just wanted to express my thoughts but forgot that I should not be making comments like that during a formal presentation. Another part which I did not well was that I stumbled on quite a few words during the presentation.

My strength might be I was not fidgeting around and was standing pretty stand throughout the whole presentation. I was also happy with myself that I was able to answer the questions posed out by the audience as it indicated that I know my work.

My Reflections

Reading my first blog post again, I suddenly feel that time passes really fast. It seems like only yesterday that I step into our ES2007S classroom. Well, back to the topic, I still uphold my belief that effective communication is like going to the restroom; essential and beneficial.

Being able to communicate effectively allows me to maintain good lasting relationships with people and brings my messages effectively across to others. However, I would like to add on one more point after attending this module and that is active listening. I realised that being able to listen actively to others is also important for messages to be brought across. If I am able to speak effectively to someone but the other party pays little attention to me, then the message will not be brought forward effectively.

In addition, I still believes that being able to present confidently and clearly in presentations allows my audience to understand my speech and what information that I wish to convey to them. This skill also widens my job selections when I step into the working industry as I believe that regardless of what company, an employer would want to hire a more vocal and confident employee rather than a reserved one.

Regardless of what I believe and learn from this module, I feel that there is no end to learning and skills must be constantly polished and upgraded. This thinking also applies to communication skills.

Just to mention, I really enjoy learning from Brad and everyone in this module. I hope you guys feel the same way too. Do keep in touch!

Biodata

Zoelyn is a second year chemistry student in NUS who aspires to be a forensic scientist. She wants to learn how to be a good forensic scientist and helps those who died unnaturally and cannot speak up for themselves. Her second ambition is to teach in special schools to help the disabled children.

Zoelyn is also an active volunteer and has been with Nee Soon East CC Youth Executive Committee since she was in junior college. She has since then organised many meaningful events such as bringing the less fortunate children to pony rides, bring the disabled children to zoo and pay monthly visits to old folks’ homes.
Being a youth volunteer, she is often exposed to different kinds of community events which make her more mature and passionate in what she is doing. She enjoys helping people, serving the community and she has made many good friends that share the same passion as her.

Zoelyn is also is very concerned with matters involving her friends and family, such that she always makes it a point to spend them with them even if she is tied up with volunteer and school work. She values kinship and friendship and always lends a listening ear.

Open Topic: Other Communication Issues

Active listening is an important form of communication which I feel is necessary and may affect us in our everyday life. Many a time, people tend to misinterpret or misunderstand some things due to the lack of listening attentively.
Here is one scenario that I would like to share with all of you.

It was a meet-up with my project group mates to discuss about the details of how we were going to present our ideas to the audience through a presentation. As usual, ideas were brought up and different opinions were discussed before reaching to a final decision. After which, we split the workload and everyone was allocated with different parts of the presentation slides. I was nominated to compile all the presentation slides on top of my workload.

As this was a big group that consisted of eight people, not all of us were present during the discussion. We then got Ben, a good friend of Jason to inform him of his allocated slides, the next meeting time and venue. The next meeting was to edit all of our slides before the actual presentation.

However, problems arose when it was the due date for all the slides to be sent to me for the final compilation and I failed to receive Jason's part. Feeling frustrated, I called Jason to find out what was wrong and was shocked to hear that he did not get to know of any updates from the meeting much so his part of work. I then told him the necessary information he need to know before calling Ben to confirm his side of story.I was quite pissed with his response when he merely said,”Sorry, I didn’t catch that part of information”. It then dwelled on me that Ben had not done his part of informing Jason, resulting in me having to take a longer than expected time to compile all the slides and Jason having to rush out the slides.

This scenario that I have mentioned is a problem of inactive listening that every one of us will face in one way or another. It is very common for us to missed out important parts of the information if active listening was not practised which may result in problems and inconvenience for the rest of the group.

In my opinion, this is the most common scenario of lack of active listening and I believe every one of us here will have experience it. Do you agree with me?

Evaluating Intercultural Behaviour

In different countries, there are different practices and cultures. This is what makes every country unique from each other. Within each country, many different kinds of ethnic groups can also be found. For my post today, I will evaluate on a culture that is practiced in by one of the ethnic groups in Southern China.

Well, so much for the introduction, the ethnic group that I am going to talk about is 女儿国 (Daughter of the country), which is found in Yun Nan. Like the name of the group suggests, only women live in their society there are some people that hailed this place "the mysterious daughter of the East country," The interesting practice that women in this ethnic group do is that they will spend seven nights with seven different men on the bed and all they do is chit-chat for the night. They believe this is a good way to know a man.

This culture practice is something totally different from Singapore. In Singapore, we have a different mode of meeting the opposite gender. There are a high percentage of women that are working and sometimes their only way that get to interact with men are during work or even going on blind dates (though not common) that might have been arranged by match-making agencies or even parents.

This culture was what I find very interesting and totally different from the culture in Singapore and they also have a special dance that both men and women will dance together to express their love for the opposite gender. Women in Singapore do not have difficulty knowing people from the opposite gender considering the fact that they are more independent, out-spoken and given the fact that they have more opportunity to meet the opposite gender. Perhaps, the women in女儿国 will have this practice as they might have difficulty getting to know men or they may be generally shy since they are constantly in the company of women.

However, I feel that a culture is what makes the group or a country unique from one another. Therefore, even if I may feel that such a practice in女儿国 is not necessary because I feel that they are a lot better ways to know a guy, nevertheless, I must still respect the culture that they have.

Business Correspondence Critique---Email

Dear fellow friends,

My names Mary Chia Shan Shan. The XXX Community Center (10 minutes walk from XXX MRT) will be holding a blood donation drive this coming September. Here are the details.

Blood Donation Drive 2008
Date:27th Sep 2008
Time:11am
Venue:XXX CC

If you are able to support the drive, do mark the above date of your calendar and support us, at the same time saving lives.

Here are some of the Facts:
Everyday, about 250 units of blood are required by the hospitals in Singapore for patients requiring bloodtransfusions. Unfortunately, the number of units that is being collected daily is insufficient to meet therequired needs.
Blood is needed not only to save lives in times of emergencies, it is also needed to sustain the lives ofpatients who requires regular blood transfusions at the hospitals.
Important for more healthy individuals to come forward to help save and sustain the lives of these venerable people. For this blood donation drive, we are appealing to all healthy individual between the ages of 16 to 60 to help save lives.
Lastly, the Red Cross officer has also indicated that their blood stocks in the blood bank is extremely low thus making situation more critical.

So please spread this message to your friends and relatives of the said event.
For enquiries and/or make an appointment for the timing on the actual day,
Call : 1234567Email: 1234567@hotmail.com
Kindly provide us with your name, NRIC, contact number, and email/call to register for an appointment.

Thanks and Regards,
Mary Chia Shan Shan
Organising Committee Coordinator,
Blood Donation Drive 2008,
XXX CC

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This is an email sent out to urge donors to come forward to donate their blood.

This email is clear in emphasizing points that are more important in the form of bolding and increasing the fonts of the words. Another good point is that the writer starts and signs off the email in the appropriate way with her designation and where she is from. In addition, the tone of the email sounds generally pleasant.

However, I feel that the email is not very organized as the facts were not properly listed down and there is not much sequence on the email as the writer jumps from the event to some background facts of the need to donate blood and back to the event again. Perhaps the writer should have started off by introducing the event and all the details before talking about some whelming facts of blood donation.

The email is not very concise too as details of the event will not very clearly stated. For example, the time frame of the event should be listed rather than just stating the start of the event. More details of the events such as, how long will donors take to donate his blood and are there any special points that a potential donor needs to take note before donation should also be mentioned in the email.

There are also some expression problems in the email. For example, “My names Mary Chia Shan Shan.” should be expressed as “My name is Mary Chia Shan Shan.”

An interpersonal conflict

An interpersonal conflict can arise at any corners of the world. The only difference lies in whether there is a solution to it or will it result in a formation of a long term war. In this post, I am going to share an interpersonal conflict that I have experienced and would like all my readers to provide me with some suggestions.
It happened around December last year, when I was appointed to organize an annual children camp with Quan. We are both volunteers that are under the Youth Executive Committee and I have known him since secondary school. We are very good friends in private and will often hang out together with our friends. As we were under different subgroups within the committee, we seldom have the chance to work together. This Children Camp was the first event that we will be working together on and it was a challenge for the both of us as we have different working styles.
When we were planning the event with the rest of our Children Camp committee, our views and opinions often could not be met. I am more of a perfectionist and I would go into the details of the camp program to make sure that everything goes smoothly on the day of the camp. Quan on the other hand, likes to do things last minute when the event is drawing near.
Despite being the heads of the event, this difference sours our partnership. This problem went on for two months and things finally blew off on the day before the camp. We were supposed to meet for a final check of the event when he suddenly threw his temper at me and stomped off, leaving me puzzled and frustrated behind.
If you were in my position, what would you do, especially when the next day would be the camp and the two of you have to be in control of a total of 40 volunteers and 150 children participants?