Learning Reflections

Final Post!!

I believe this course as allowed me to develop into a much more confident speaker who is able to impart the 7Cs of communication in my presentations. As compared to the first presentation, which was the Peer Teaching 1 , I believe I have gradually improve my self confidence and presentation skills. There were lots of opportunities given in class such as the mock interview and participating in other's peer teaching that provided ample opportunities to speak in class.

 Initially, I was a student who believed writing scripts and using handouts during presentation ensures a good performance. However, most of the time this mode of presentation will some how or rather end up wrong. This is because I feel more tense and less confidence. I realised through my final oral presentation, how knowing your slides well and just preparing in your mind what you intend to deliver will instead make you feel more confident. There was not much improvement in terms of non-verbal communication which plays about 93% importance in a presentation. This was because I have always practice using non-verbal communication during other presentations. However, this time round I realise how important it is to have hand signs appropriate to the audiences that is present. As, a common sign in one culture could mean a bad indicator in another culture. Thus, these minute details can create a huge impact on one's presentation. I also have to say at this point, the topic on inter cultural communication was really fun and interesting. In terms of challenge, I would describe it as the ability to present without any handouts in hand. As, I have overcome this challenge I am glad to say I am more confident in presenting without any handouts for future presentations. This also would help me to portray a confidence image to my audiences.

Besides this I have learnt the most important part about communication is to remember is a two way traffic where constant feedback is always given and received.  Hence, it is not only important to be an effective communicator but an effective listener as well. Furthermore, it is important to give feedback as an audience as it reassures your presenter that you are being able to understand his delivery. And as a presenter, it is important to receive this feedback and acknowledge it via non-verbal delivery which would enhance this communication. 

Lastly, I would like to use this opportunity to thank Mdm Fadzilah and all my classmates as well as my group   mates who made coming to this lesson everyday a fun place where active learning takes place. This was a module that I would never I regretted taking as it imparted me with raw skills that would be needed for us to outshine and perform better than our peers. It gave me knowledgeable insights to the world of communication and the importance of practising the 7Cs of communication. I am glad to say that at the end of the module, I have learnt the skills and tools to be an effective communicator!

Will definitely miss this class! Wish the very best to all my classmates who are graduating this semester and advance congratulations! As for those of us heading on to year 2 or 3 let us work harder and enjoy the perks of being a student!

Signing off,
Farhanah

Reflections on Oral Presentation

I cannot believe that I have finally finished my oral presentation. Just a week ago, I was worried about the upcoming presentation because off the persuasive style this presentation had to be delivered in. The truth is I have never experienced doing a persuasive presentation before. Hence, I knew I had to prepare well enough for the presentation in order to put up a good performance! The real challenge was actually in delivering my speech without any hand notes in my hand. Thus, I had to rely on the pictures on my slides to recall what the contents of my speech.

Now that my presentation is over I am glad to say my group and I have done an awesome job! I really enjoyed working with my group members and am sure going to miss the two of them.

I believe my group members and I managed to use all the three backbone of  persuasive presentation: logos,pathos and ethos. Thus, I strongly felt that we did managed to convince our audiences that streaming at the age of 12, which is the current primary education system in Singapore should be revamped as it does not encourage or enhance a student's human development and social integration.

Firstly, knowing each other slides and contents well allowed us to effectively pass our presentation from one to another. Thereby, creating a good flow in information to prevent losing any of our audience's attention. Our delivery was also good as we used our voice to create a serious situation that we wanted our audiences to feel. We also ensured that we all used hand gestures whenever appropriate. We tried to pace our speech well to ensure that we were not going to fast or slow that would cause us to loose of audience's attention. These points mentioned were perhaps one of the strengths in our presentation.

I guess some of the weakness included my failure in introducing my group members. Though I did mentioned their name I did not acknowledged them to the audiences. Besides, we also forgot that some of our audiences were not knowledgeable with common terms such as "Normal Acad" and "Normal Tech" which were short terms for "Normal Academic" and "Normal Technical". Hence, we should have remembered our various target audiences and avoid using short forms which would have left some of our audience lost.

Finally in terms of our visual I think we did an excellent job in the power point slides. All credit goes to William! We actually adopted approach where most of the time a single picture was used to present all the points that we wanted to deliver to our audiences. This was rather a challenge to all three of us as this meant that we had no helping words available on the screen to aid us in our speech. Thus, we had to really spent time preparing and rehearsing our delivery speech. Furthermore, we did this without holding any scripts or hand notes. Personally, this was a challenge as I was really worried that I would either forgot what I wanted to say during my presentation or simply go blank!

This presentation itself was a great experience. I really learned and gained from having such an experience and opportunity. I would also like to thank my fellow classmates who played different roles in the education sector. Thanks for your questions and tips which helped us to improve our proposal as well as provided greater insights to how we can better edit our proposed solution. It was one great persuasive presentation that I would never forget!

Farhanah