Critical Reflection

Referring to the goals I have set at the start of the course which are improving my writing skills and improving on communication skills, I personally feel that there is still room for improvement to polish up my writing skills. One particular weakness I still face is that for some sentences I phrase, it sometimes would not be able to convey what I mean to the reader. In order to improve my writing skills, I think I should work hard and read more books and newspapers to improve my grammar and sentence structure.


As for communication skills, I believe I can communicate with my peers more effectively now. Understanding the importance of communicating, I placed my heart into trying to communicate effectively for the past few months and as such, I learnt to read the feelings of others and understanding various problematic situations, which in turn, allows me to effectively communicate my thoughts.

Back in the days, I was rather shy when presenting in front of others and I will either stutter or speak extremely fast. Furthermore, I would stand still at a particular point and not move while giving my presentation. After this going through this course, I have learnt to face the audience, looking in their general direction and also to maintain eye contact with them. This improvement was attributed to the fact that my team had countless number of practice sessions to polish up our presentation skills. In this practice sessions, each individual team member will give feedback to one another and comment on what could be improved. This has definitely helped me to build up my confidence level and improve on the way I presented.

Comments

  1. Brad BlackstoneApril 12, 2018 at 12:15 AM

    Dear ShuMin,

    This is a clear reflection. You address some of the means by which you were able to achieve the goals you had set for yourself at the start of the module and also what you still need to work on.

    I appreciate your sharing in this post and the fine effort you made this term.

    Best wishes as you continue your learning journey!

    Brad

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Interpersonal Conflict

No one wants to get into a conflict but due to unforeseen circumstances, we are often put into tough situations. For instance, I stumbled upon one while working during the holidays. The conflict happened during work when I was taking apart in a project and it happened between the client and myself. The main problem was that I was conveying the client’s idea of a cabinet into drawings and I was trying to picture his ideal cabinet in my mind so that I can draw it out. For the next meeting, I showed him the drawings and he spotted a few minor mistakes here and there, but those mistakes can be rectified. Since the drawings were confirmed, I sent it to the carpenter for production. After a long time, the cabinets were ready and when the client saw it, he thinks that the border of the cabinet was too thick. I felt the frustration and unhappiness in him when he saw the cabinet. However, when I refer back to my drawings, the cabinet looks exactly like the one I drew. There was some miscom...
Read more

Formal Introduction

Dear Mr. Brad, I am writing this formal email to introduce myself. I graduated from Singapore Polytechnic (SP) with a diploma in civil engineering with business. The reason why I studied in civil engineering is because my dad is in the construction industry and from young, I always found it interesting that different expertise come together to accomplish a project. When I was studying in Singapore Polytechnic, I learned how to design structures and I found joy in learning it. While studying in SP, my interest sparked even further, and I hope to become a professional engineer. For my final year project, my team came up with an energy harvesting road kerb model which includes components like wind turbine, water turbine and solar panels. Wind turbine will collect energy from cars using wind drafts produced when driving past. In the event of rain, the wind turbines also act as water turbine. When the water flows down the drain, it will cause the turbines to move therefore produci...
Read more

Analytical Reflection

This presentation is a good platform for the team to gather feedback from industry experts and also to truly understand the needs and concern of the industry. However, it was also a nerve-racking experience for me because in the midst of presenting, my mind suddenly went blank and I could not connect my thoughts. It was a very scary experience because the entire auditorium was quiet, and everyone was just staring at me. However, I have learnt that I should not have just kept quiet and stare at the audience but I should have just carried on with the next point instead of trying to recall what I should elaborate on. Nevertheless, I tried to slowly pace myself back onto the right track and elaborate on the rest of the points. The idea of presenting in front of the whole civil cohort made me feel tenser and all the eyes staring at me from the audience seats were very frightening. The team was given feedback to enlarge the font size of our presentation slides as from far it looks quite s...
Read more