Blogpost 7: End of the beginning

Before enrolling for ES2007S, I had already started learning; learning not about communication skills, but rather, its importance, as well as the practicability of taking such a course. However, my initial fears of communications courses had almost deterred me from the enrollment. You might ask, "what fears?" Well, I was basically afraid of my incompetence in open discussions. But I guess that is history. For I am now, the ES2007S-trained effective communicator! (There is some bit of exaggeration there)

Looking back at the course, I see a significant improvement in my communication skills. To better elaborate on that, I shall talk about three things. Firstly, oral presentation skills, secondly, writing awareness and lastly, confidence.




I dare say I have improved my oral presentation skills. Before this course, I wasn't aware of various styles and approaches in oral presentations. All I believed in was confidence. I thought that was enough for anyone to present well (With good language skills nonetheless). However, I learnt about Steve Jobs' minimalistic approach and could understand the memorable effect it brings during presentations. Therefore, from becoming aware of Steve Jobs' style, I have began developing my own style and approach of presentations. Also not forgetting: Learning about the styles of my peers, such as Goh Chern and Rohan who were creative and daring enough to venture into new methods. In essence, my take away points from oral presentations in this course are creativity and boldness.









Next, writing awareness. I can't say my writing skills have improved significantly over the past 13 weeks, but I believe I have an increased awareness of writing techniques and reader's dilemma. I have learnt the value of being concise and complete in writing sentences; to be concise is to be to the point and making it simple and easy to understand; to be complete is to provide sufficient information for a clear understanding of sentences. I have also learnt the readers' dilemma, that is the reader's 'want' to understand a piece of information but the 'reject' towards reading lengthy text. A counter to this problem is to be concise yet complete; easy to say, not easy to fulfill, those are my take away points from writing.








Lastly, confidence. Nothing impedes learning more than a lack of confidence, especially when the only way to learn is to speak up in this class. Thankfully, the class seemed to bond really well from the start, and that made me feel a little at ease when speaking during discussions. My confidence in speaking thus improved over the 13 weeks; having the chance to intereact with everyone in class during discussions, mock interviews and oral presentation Q&A sessions. What I learnt about developing confidence is there really isn't a need to develop it. All one needs to do is to stay at ease and you will likely be able to speak with confidence, much like speaking with friends.





Overall, I really love the lessons in ES2007S, the people I've met and the knowledge I have gained. I believe the reason why I find the course fulfilling is because we don't just learn from the "sensei", we learnt from everyone; just like this final post, there are at least 16 other perspectives to look at, and 16 other experiences to learn from. Most importantly, the skills I've learnt are definitely going to be useful as I gradually move into the working world.





Before I end, I have some or maybe just one negative comment to make. The course had covered too much in too short a time that some aspects didn't really have a lasting impression. For instance, intercultural issues seemed like a "touch and go" lesson. If possible, it would be great to really experience intercultural effectiveness through an activity!

One more thing, I realised many of our suggested curriculum changes during the oral presentations seemed to converge on the idea of extending ES2007S or to have a "long-term" approach towards communication skills training. Perhaps this would really help in having a holistic coverage of communications skill training; maybe, just maybe all of our ideas could merge into something substantial! Just my two cents!





One last thing, the wonderful lessons for Group8 of ES2007S couldn't be possible without the guidance of 'sensei' Brad! Thank you! "Arigato gozaimasu sensei!"

Blogpost 6: Reflection on Oral Presentation

"There was too much hand movements and gestures. You turn to the screen quite often. You tried to explain it too much." At least to the best of my memory, I recalled these were the comments given to me during the peer teaching session. From then on, I reminded myself the need to improve my self-awareness during presentations; I get too animated at times when I try to seek my audience's attention.

For this finale of ES2007S, I thought the oral presentation of TeamScientists was superb, relative to our previous performace during peer teaching. But on the individual level, I am not without flaws. I shall touch on three main components of the oral presentation: preparation, delivery and visual-aids.

First up, the preparation. Overall, I did not alloate sufficient time to rehearse the presentation. There was the problem of my poor time management, towards the end of this semester, which led to inadequate practice. I was aware of this, so my only attempt to resolve the issue was through running presentation scenarios in my head while I am on the train, bus and before I sleep. This method worked pretty well as a last resort.

In the inital phase of preparations, I attempted to construct my sentences and develop a flow at the moment of presenting. Apparently, it was terrible, and I am sure Emily and Joshua would agree with me. My ideas seemed as if they were rolling out of a BINGO machine. My flow...well, nothing flowed. So I took the advice of my teammates and prepared a script. At the next rehearsal, the script worked magic. By the final rehearsal, I had the points and flow embedded in my head. The take home message here: prepare a script to construct your flow.

For the preparation of slides, I personally gave it the least emphasis; I was adopting the school of thought that you are the best means to convey a message (reminded by Brad's mention of the absence of powerpoint and electronic visual aids in the past). However, what I thought was not conveyed clearly enough to my teammates; I was glad to have less reliance on powerpoint, but at the same time, I was worried that adopting such ideas could have undesirable repercussions. That brought about some delays in the preparatory work, since a fundamental methodology could not be established.

Secondly, the delivery. Before I present to the class, it was a nerve-wrecking wait. During the presentation, I was on "auto-pilot". After delivering my message, I felt relieved.

The delivery process was tough; I had to pay attention to three things while at it. These three things were minimizing gestures, reducing my tendency to turn to the screen and maintaining eye-contact. I felt a sense of achievement to have all these three things under conscious control, in addition to being fairly aware of what I was saying; I was almost on complete "auto-pilot" since I had to constantly pay attention to myself, without losing eye-contact with the audience and speaking the correct sentences.

My weakness in the delievery was most likely the lack of friendliness and enthusiasm. I realised smiling and showing excitement were effective ways to draw your audience's attention. I really have to improve on the 'smiling' part.

Lastly, the use of slidewares. Powerpoint is a useful tool, but sometimes it could easily tempt the user into over-reliance. I felt that for a first try in the minimalistic approach, I did quite well in focusing the attention of the audience on what I have to say. The only weakness I found in this approach was the lack of highly relevant pictures; it was difficult to obtain pictures that could speak for itslef, for instance, a picture on 'postcards from the lab' that could explain how the recommendation could be carry out.

Overall, I felt I did quite well for the oral presentation; I felt that I had improved a lot since peer teaching. However, there is still much to do in improving the effectiveness of my skills. Currently, my perception towards oral presentation has evolved; I now believe that oral presentation is a form of art; there is no need to conform to the norms. Essentially, oral presentations can be done in many ways with the key being creativity.