Critical Reflection

At the start of this effective communications module, I have set a goal to improve my fluency in English communication, especially for formal presentations where I usually would stutter or say too many "erm" while presenting. I have also set a goal to broaden my vocabulary in the English language. In the past, I will usually put all the details that I am going to talk about into my presentation slides. I used to be so scared of forgetting what I will be presenting and end up putting everything on the screen and reading it off so much so that I end up being too reliant on the slides during the day of the presentation. I did not realize how it made me look unprofessional and also how it shows how unprepared I am for my presentation in front of the audience. This in turn led to the low marks I get for my presentation and appeared to have not researched enough in front of my teachers and professors. However, after having gone through this effective communications module, I have picked up many skills and improved on my way of presenting my slides. One example would be how I tried to only have pictures and videos on my slides without it being too wordy and also to speak with more confidence. Without the usage of scripts and referring too much to the slides, I was able to better voice myself to the audience and also maintain eye contact to keep the audience engaged. On top of my oral presentation skills, I have also learned how to better write my letters and reports using critical thinking and various skills such as paraphrasing, the 7Cs of communication, APA in-text citations, article summarizing, effective writing of a strong thesis statement and Paul-Elder framework. After using all these skills and applying critical thinking, I was able to significantly improve my writing skills and also better research on the given topics for my report. I am also able to give better feedback to my peers and I also appreciate getting constructive feedback from my peers and professors as it allows me to critically reflect on my actions and improve further from there.  

I did a technical report with my teammates on a new airport baggage carousel system called the U-Lugg. At the start, we had a different set of ideas and had a hard time coming up with the problem statement. Although my team was not the best, I liked the fact that my teammates are all willing to talk it out and debate on the idea that we are working towards. We all managed to learn from each other's point of view and look at the problem from a different angle. For the report, all my team members are busy with other projects/reports and had different availability of time. This made it harder for us to come together and hence, we have fewer discussions with the whole team together. However, that did not stop us from completing the task at hand. We managed to work around the time and give constructive comments to change what was necessary. The only downside to me was that my sentence structures and grammar are not as well constructed as my other teammates and hence I required more assistance when doing my task. I managed to pick up some skills from them on how they write their report in return. As for the presentation, we decided to do the slides first before splitting the parts appropriately for each team member to speak about during the presentation. We also have several rehearsals for our presentation before the actual presentation which I found to be very useful as we pinpoint each other's mistakes and gave suggestions on how to make it better for each other. In my case, I do not use a script and freestyled during my presentation. However, during the run-throughs, I either talked too fast or took up too much time talking during the entire presentation. We had to change some of my parts as it was getting draggy and we felt that it might bore the audience if too many unnecessary pieces of information were given. 

I have learned a lot from this effective communication module. From a student with poor and broken English, I am now more confident and well-spoken. Thank you Professor Brad for making the class more enjoyable and interesting as compared to my other English modules. I think it's time we "smoke a cigarette, take a beer"! Cheers!