Final Reflection on Learning

  Time flies, 12 weeks has passed by so quickly. This blog post marks an end to the "Professional Communication" course that I am taking. But what I have taken away from the course will definitely be beneficial for the rest of my life.

  Look back to the time when I just joined the course, I was expecting a course that is full of presentation only. I had that mentality because I am mapping ES2007S to my core module CG1413 that I did not take on the previous semester. And that module I was told to only do presentation for the project of CG1103 because CG1413 is bundled to it.However, after being through the course for the first few weeks, I realised I was completely wrong. I could still remember that Dr Radhika asked us to talk about what each of us wants to take away from this course. My answer to that is polish my writing skills and presentation style since I am already quite confident in presentation.

  To my surprise, not only I learnt what I wanted but so much more than that.For the very first stage when we are doing peer tutoring, the style is completely different from a presentation. I have to present my materials and engaged the audience at the same time. It is a huge jump from just presentation because interacting with audience will definitely increase the level of nervousness.

  Gradually, I start to learn more about communication. Communication, I understood it to be just verbal communication between two or more parties earlier. But from the enriching course that I have been through, I understood that non-verbal communication is actually playing a more important role in professional communication. This is because others is able to understand the true intention of your verbal speeches from your non-verbal cues.

  Perhaps, the biggest take away from the course is that not only I am able to realised my mistakes and areas that I am lacking, but also I have digged out the potential in me. All this will not be possible from the feedbacks and suggestions that I obtained from Dr Radhika and my fellow classmates.

  In conclusion,I would like to present my appreciation towards Dr Radhika and my fellow friends in ES2007S for the fruitful 12 weeks that I have spent with all of you. I would sincerely accept all your comments towards me and improve myself bits by bits from now on.

Reflection on Team-based Project Proposal

  For this Team-based project, I was put into a group with Liyana and Disheng. And since the day when the group is formed, we have already come up with the area that we want our project to cover. I was very impressed by Liyana not only because of her creative ideas, but also she is very resourceful too. She is the lead and the key person that persuaded us to looking into the area of safe cycling. And thanks to that, our group is able to set the focus within such a short period of time.

  At that point of time, I thought everything would fall in place easily but time proves me that I was wrong.

 

  Looking back to the time when we just started to plan how our proposal should progress towards now that we have completed it, almost ninety percent of our meetings are conducted online using google docs. This is because the very fact that we could not really find a common slot to have face-to-face meeting. I could still remember how we planned the each and every task for the following meetings on the first meeting when everyone comes to an agreement. We distributed the work among three of us to do research individually before coming to the next meeting. However, mid-term examination was around the corner then, each of us needs to revise on different day since we have different examination date, so the execution of scheduled task was delayed. That is the first obstacle that our group encountered and that is the main challenge that leads to only a short period of time dedicated to writing of proposal.

  Furthermore, I think for such a project, everyone should be responsible for the task that is assigned and also be responsible towards your whole team. I understand that is very difficult to even find a common time to conduct online meeting, but when the timing is set and one of the member might not make it, he or she should task up the responsibility to inform the whole team about it. He or she should not assume that informing the team leader is equivalent to inform the whole team. I was very frustrated then when I was not inform and I waited for almost an hour before I found out myself there wasn’t any meeting that night.

  In conclusion, from the obstacles that I encountered was indeed due to the fact of lack of communication between team members. If there is a proper form of communication in place, I believe the project would have gone through a much smoother progress.

Intercultural Behavior

  What is culture? Culture is the shared patterns of behaviours and interactions, cognitive constructs, and affective understanding that are learned through a process of socialization.In such a multi race and religious country like Singapore, everyone should have intercultural competence in order to adapt to this multi-cultural society.

Memories flashed back to a few years ago when I was first in Singapore,everything here was very new to me. The most surprising thing about Singapore is nonetheless the multicultural society here. I am from China where people in the country is mostly Chinese, so the multi races and religious here gave me a "cultural shock". I could still remember that I was appointed as a monitress in my primary 4 class and my form teacher was an Indian lady. As a transferred student, I don't have a co-curricular activity(CCA) which was compulsory, so my form teacher who is also the teacher-in-charge for Indian dance urged me to join her CCA. I agreed and joined Indian dance muddle-headedly.

To be an Indian dancer was my first opportunity to obtain a deeper understanding about another culture since I came to Singapore. Despite I am a Chinese and I am new to Singapore, I took up the challenge to befriend with other Indian girls who were in the CCA. For my height, I was chosen to be one of the lead dancers in the upcoming dance competition in Singapore Youth Festival despite I am a Chinese(such an irony). I put in a lot of efforts to learn the dance steps that are easily understood by others because the trainer spoke Tamil 70% of the time during training. Fortunately, my fellow Indian friends kindly repeated the instructions to me in English and guided me the dance steps. From the dance and the time I spent in the CCA, I understood the Indian culture and arts very well. For example, there are basic and unique dance moves that are specially from the Indian dance, the kind of costumes and the kind of makeups are usually used during performance. Eventually, all our efforts paid off by clinched a silver medal from the competition.

That one year I was laughed at(positively) by my friends for my interest in the CCA, but the same year I spent in Indian dance was truefully fruitful.It was not only a key to integrate into the multi-races society but it also opens a door for my entrance to the globalized world.

Resolving Interpersonal Conflict

  What is interpersonal conflict? As William Wilmot and Joyce Hocker (2001) states that interpersonal conflict is an expressed struggle between two or more interdependent parties who perceive incompatible goals, scare resources, and interference from others in achieving their goals. Interpersonal conflict is all around us. We do see or experience it either in our work lives or personal lives, so neither was I an exception.

      The incident happened last year when one of my friend’s (friend A-male) birthdays was around the corner. Another two friends of mine (friend B-female & C-male) were also preparing a gift for “A”, so they called and asked me for my opinion. We came to an agreement that we will share the cost and give “A” birthday present together. However, I was caught up with a few projects then, so “B” volunteered to look around for a gift to buy when three of us are out together the following week. That night “B” called and told me that she bought a MP3 at a cost of around $200. I was astonished because “B” (She is lavished with her money and always asked for more allowance from her parents) did not inform us what she has chosen at the point of purchase and neither did she consult us for our budget. Furthermore, “B” said that “C” is unable to come on “A’s” birthdays so only two of us were going to share the cost. I was very angry for her action because she did not care about if I have enough budgets to pay for the gift. I had a quarrel with her for her self-centeredbut she defended herself by saying I am stingy. Eventually, on “A’s” birthday, I had no choice but used half of my allowance to share the cost of the present and certainly our friendships are affected.

  I reflected after the incident happened. I knew her intention was good because she heard from “A” that he lost his MP3 recently, so she decided to give him a MP3. The incident would not happen if she has told us earlier, so I would find a more affordable MP3 or other gift as birthday present. To me, I perceived present as a little token of gratitude towards my friends so it should be affordable. Maybe she perceived presents differently, that leads to our quarrel. 

What do you think either of us(“B” and me) could have done so the conflict would not arise?