Final Reflection on Learning

Time flies, week13 is over and we are going prepare our finals! Blogging and reading others' blog posts with the same topic make me so obsessed on it and finally it comes to my final post for this English learning journey. It is so happy that I attended ES2007 class and met a humorous tutor and many energetic classmates, except for the fun stories heard from Brad, I did learn many things related to communications skills.

First thing I learned was active listening skills, as Joel mentioned in his post, we learned it because it is the basis of communication, how to react, how to show you are paying attention is essential. After that, we practiced our listening skills and other speaking skills in learning how to communicate inter-culturally and how to solve interpersonal conflicts, by doing the role playings and group discussions, we had the foundations of communication for us to move on. I enjoyed the class not only I learned how to listen and speak, but also got familiar with other useful skills for future working place, included business letter and email writing skills, interviewing and presenting skills, how to prepare resume and how to write proposal. During the peer teaching, mock interview, mock OP, final OP, I can feel that I was pushed in front of people, I need to improve and I realize that I am improving, by trying myself, by learning from my tutor and classmates, you guys are brilliant and drove me to pay more effort on it.

The most thing I learned and most part I have improved is the presentation skills. I was thinking presentation more depends on personal characters and language skills, however, during the class I also noticed that presentation is comprised with verbal and nonverbal skills, as well as slides making skills. I did not do well in my peer teaching, too crowded slides and  non well preparation which made me to refer the screen too often, forgot that contact with your audiences was also important, memorizing slides content also made me just "presenting" but not natural. I noticed that and did some changes to my final OP, I made my slides simple so audiences can more focus on me, I fully understood what I was going to say so I would not need to memorize and use tip sheets. I also paid more attention to my nonverbal part, appropriate gestures and movements, more eyes contacts, made it more like from your heart instead of only from your mind. The result seemed better and thank you all for giving me positive reflection and useful feedbacks.

In a nutshell, the experience in ES2007 class is fresh and comfortable, skills I learned in the class, communication with my teammates during the class and through the internet, all of these are shaping me to be a good communicator not only in work places but also in my daily lives for lifelong period.

Reflection on Oral Presentation

This presentation together with the mock oral presentation was a very special experience for me, totally different from the individual or group presentations I have done in other English modules. From the proposal ideas generating to slides making and presenting, we made it as a real and formal performance presentation to strangers who would potentially consider your proposal and make it realization. It provided us a good chance to learn how to communicate and present yourself in front of administrative people.

As a team of directNUS!

First I have to thank Ariele and Xi Min, who contributed a lot into this proposal and presentation, so lucky to be a part of the three people team! To my odd English writing and expressing, they gave me patience and helped me with my part, we discussed the ideas after class and through emails, shared happiness and anxiousness when we reached our goal or ambushed with problems. The day before that day, we finalize the concept of procedures in performance and rehearsed, we also came out with the idea that giving role identity cards to our audiences. To the real one, even though there were still some minor changes on slides, we all have confidence to make it well, because we are the last team to present and have learned some skills about presenting and dealing with slides from our peer teams. The result came well and we noticed both our improvements and things needed to be improved.

My dear teammates

Ariele have good slides making skills and responsible, audiences’ attention grabbed not only by her fluent expression, but also by her wonderful and interesting animationalized slides, everybody love it and enjoy it, great! She explained the functions and features of directNUS detailed but also very concise, more focused on the parts that audience interested in, appropriate gestures and eyes contact, as confident as a great presenter in working occasions. Haha, it good to be smiling more, I sure with more smiles and closed interaction with audience, you will be a great presenter!

For Xi Min, as usual, I supervised with her sophistication and confidence, well done Xi Min! As dear Brad mentioned, Xi Min have already very closed to a professional presenter, the tone, eyes contact and gestures can make plain slides lively. I usually wonder what if change to my mother tongue, can I be as good as Xi Min, I sure except that language, I still have many things to learn from her.  

For myself

I realized what Spiderman’s uncle said “the more power, the more responsibility”, so I decided to take the general introduction part and let my two powerful teammates to hold the important parts, haha. However, the first one to show up still challenge for me even though is not the first time. I give myself 7 out of 10 as I know that I was not as anxious as before, thanks to the mock interview and mock oral presentation sections. There were still some mistakes, like I wrongly recognized the slide, made the process pause, then I try to walk between two sides of the screen to relax myself, but it was too much, I ok with my tone and gestures but the speed still a bit slow. Anyway, there is a joyful presentation for me, and thanks to my classmates and dear Brad with their kind and sincere feedbacks, I sure I will improve more in the future!

Evaluating Intercultural Behavior

Talk about intercultural behavior, first thing comes to me is the foods and customs on eating. A Chinese proverb saying "Food is the paramount necessity of the people", which is also true for people from different countries. However, people with different background have extremely different customs on eating, Japanese like to eat raw fish as "sashimi" and delicate foods, Americans give others images with loving fast food like hamburger, chips and coke, Indians crazy about curry with heavy smell and eat with hand, Europeans love steak and toast, and finally Chinese seems dare to eat anything! Singapore's eating customs are multicultural, southeast tastes but also similar to south part of China, so for me it is not considered as intercultural, but I did met some friends with different behavior.

Last Chinese new year, I hung out with my Chinese friends, together with two German guys and one Spanish guy. We went straight on Chinatown to eat self-service Chinese steam pot, the foreign guys looked very exciting, maybe this was the first time they tried real Chinese steam pot. First interesting thing was when they ware going to pick the food, they prefer to pick their own food only, then put into the pot piece by piece, finally eat their food only, for me I just picked beef full with two plates, crab full with three plates so and so on, then put them all in the pot for everyone to eat. It reminds me one main difference between west and east on the dining table, which is that westerner usually put the foods into their own plates and focus on their own food, stands for their independence and self-health. On the contrary, easterner prefer to place the food in the center of table to share each other and pick food for others, stands for close relationship and harmony. Ok, time to showed how to enjoy real steam pot in Chinese way. Second interesting thing was the most usual one, chopsticks. Obviously, these foreign exchange students were not good at using chopsticks, most of the time these two little sticks really freaked them out, one of the them even gave up but instead of using hands. Why do westerners use knife and fork while people from most eastern countries use chopsticks? That is a long story. During the dinner, we talk about the most weird thing you have eaten, I believed my answer deepened the bias about Chinese dare to eat anything, including dogs and bugs. In my opinion, I treat dogs, pigs, cows and chicken as the same, they are all creatures with equal lives, unless you are the strict vegetarian, otherwise you should not judge me what animals I shouldn't eat. We also talk about the other differences of table manners and eating customs between east and west, I found the interesting stuffs of intercultural behavior in food eating. If you have interesting thing on the dinner table with respect to intercultural behavior, share with me!

Application Letter for internship

11^th February 2012

Dear Mr. Veemal,

I had the honor in meeting you few weeks ago in NUS Soc Career Fair, the 3 months internship offered by your company is attractive to me. If your company is still seeking for students with 3 months internship start from May to August in 2012, I would appreciate the opportunity you consider me as a potential candidate. More personal details included in the accompanying resume will illustrate my abilities to fulfill your requirements.

As you will see I am second year student studying in Computer Engineering, Nation University of Singapore (NUS). I have read modules of programming skills and I found myself very interested in web development and making apps, passionate in learning web developing skills like JavaScript, HTML and CSS. During the teamwork of software engineering with teammates, I learned the cooperative skills to work with others and learn from them. On the other hand, I enjoy socializing and have participated in many activities including NUS Karate team, and through the marketing modules that I have token, I have learned the way to market in technological area. 

From reading your introductory leaflet I received in career fair, I have been attracted by the working domain and vision of your company. The question in the leaflet asks “You like beautiful code?” and my answer is yes, I would like to be a part of your company’s internship program and learn skills in working place, as well as make benefits for company. I attach my resume with more details for reference and look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

Wang Zihao

Phone: 85102085

Email: a0073222@nus.edu.sg

When Interpersonal Conflict Happen To Me

I was in a project team with my three good friends, I felt lucky that finally I can focus on the work and do have to worried about the way of communication and language barriers. However, things would never  go smoothly and made me treat our relationship not the way as we used to be after the project, like the smashed mirror will never go back.

Girl S is our leader which we voted to be, outside the project, I love to talk and gossip with her and I like the way she talk. In the project, she seemed like holding the power of leading and keep jelling and pushing all of us, gave no scope. We suggested that there was a moderate way to give opinion, but she said that is her way she work, yeah, keeping embarrassing to your teammates.
"Are you listening to me! look at me! What am just said!?"
"You tell me you must finish this before 9pm! Right."
"...I try my best"
"No, you must"
Seems what she said was reasonable for our project, but why no one felt comfortable and encouraged?

Once I said I would like try one part of work which is not exactly my job, I worked over night but still some small bugs cannot be figured out. We were doing project in project room all the day and the rest went sleep.
"Is that what you do over night? seems useless!!"
"...oh, okay, after I get some sleep, I try to fix it, now the brain cannot move"
"what, you leaving? I am about to work"
"..."
Of course you are about to work, you got good sleep when I was working. There is nothing with the sleep, but is the right way to treat you friend, your teammate who volunteer to do the job? You are not Steve Jobs in the early Apple, everyone's work need to be respected.

Last thing made me totally understand we are truly different kind of people and barrier built. In the last presentation, even though we still made some small mistakes, but it was the last for us doing project together, why you still complain to each other? Why can't we return to good friends shake hands and  say "well done, good luck to finals"?

What I can say is the difference in characteristic and goals, I more enjoy the process of doing teamwork and hope to build lifelong friendship through it but not the results. Finally I realized that we can be common friends to talk but not close friends to work. Sorry about my garrulousness here.

Resolving Interpersonal Conflict

Interpersonal conflict are the conflicts within persons usually occur due to different or incompatible education and life backgrounds, ages, cultures, goals and values, as well as behavioral patterns and potential profits. Interpersonal conflict may result in bad relationship and communication barrier in working area and normal lives. Involve in interpersonal conflict, people may suffer bed feelings such as anger, frustration, melancholy and so on, choose to confront the conflict directly and open or ignore it, suppress it, depends on the judgment of the potential benefits outweigh the possible costs.

Reasons For Me

Misunderstand

Incompatible Character

Working Pattern

Incompatible Perspective and Goal

Lack of Cooperative Spirit

Personal Behavior

In conclusion, the reason why interpersonal conflict will happen is that when people discuss or solve problem together, three situation happen:

• one side's profit is being threatened
• action and decision from one side if being rejected
• both sides cannot reach the consensus

Tips to avoid the Interpersonal conflict:

1. To be honest and accept each other's views, actively listen to each other information expressed when in communication.
2. To be reasonable when requesting others.
3. To develop sense of humor, giving moderate praise.
4. To care about others' situation and happiness initiatively.
5. To respect the freedom of others to express moderate self-affirmation.

Steps to solve Interpersonal conflict:

1. Aware of the existence of the conflict 
2. Confront the conflict with courage and determination 
3. Both of two sides to communicate and negotiate actively 
4. Identify the problem and where the conflict is 
5. Come up with the solution and carry out the procedures 
6. Implement the solution and review its effectiveness 

Resolving interpersonal conflict is hard work. It requires skill, self-awareness, courage, compassion and patience, no self-limiting, do not communicate with others by the assumption taht "they should know what I mean" .Sometimes we need to test ourselves the way we communicate, change the behavior and respect others, so as to remove the barriers and save the friendship.

Tips on Managing Interpersonal Conflict in the Work Environment
Resolving Interpersonal Conflict
 

Found some interesting tips about business writing to shared with you guys~

Top 5 Mistakes That Kill a Business Letter

Why effective communication skills are important for me?

Image by flavijus via Flickr

Easily see that from the blog title, I am a student major in computing and interested in IT areas. More and more I realized that technological works are not just setting in front of the computer and doing programming, but also need to communicate with people either from your geek teammates or business field, because you have to share your ideas with others and ask for requirements properly, as well as to communicate with users and finally sell your products.

Communication Skills are different in different environments. From my experience, in a team meeting, the communication skills are more like leading to brainstorming sections, analyzing and commenting on the direction of the group process, clarifying expectations of group members, and also creating consensus within the team. In this process, team leader plays an important role in explaining clearly the plans and organizing their ideas, especially holding the aware of erasing the barriers between teammates and encouraging them generate their viewpoints. It is important for ensure accountability for communication and build the self-responsibility in the beginning of work, making every member in the meeting know clearly the goals they should achieve and pay full attention during the whole work. The failure may usually occur when staffs do not get the viewpoint clearly and thus, may get confusing to the whole framework of the project and begin works without goal-orientation and more unfortunately, they don’t submit future inquiry on it. Take software engineering as a example, teammates start work with deeply understanding of the framework and connection between user interface, logic and storage, leading to huge difficulties in subsystems merging and testing as a whole because each teammates are doing very different part of the project.