A Happy Ending Indeed !

 ES2007s-Professional Communication  is a core module in my course of study .So during the CORS bidding , I had to go all out to somehow get this module and I ended spending nearly 2000 points. As a result of this,my mind was filled with regret for a long time. However ,I walked into the my first class and we were immediately asked to fill in answers to some questions that involved interacting with the other students of our class. I was the first to finish and Brad gave me a 3$ Koufu food coupon.At that very moment for some reason I felt that I was going to love this module. The validity of that coupon was till the 30th of September 2012.However, I still have it safely in my room as a token of remembrance or a memento. That is testimony to how true that thought was.

As I am writing this blog, I feel so enriched  as I have gained an insight to so may aspects about interpersonal communication in such short time. During this course, I  definitely improved  writing skills, my verbals and non-verbals through the various sections of this module such as  publishing blog posts,writing an effective cover letter and resume ,having peer teaching lessons ,the elevator pitch and the mock job interviews.

I especially enjoyed the work I put in during the business proposal along with the oral presentation as we had to use all the skills we had learnt up till then and use it efficiently as well .For the written proposal, I learnt how important it was to write in an effective manner  and follow the 7 'C's such that no part of  our proposal was lose or unclear in terms of the structure and organisation as well as the  desired impact we wanted to give to the reader .For the oral presentation, though I had prior experience with presenting to the class through the peer teaching lesson,  this time I really understood the importance "being" the presentation. Thus I realized the need to have a formal outlook of myself which involved absolute control over my verbals and my non-verbals.

Nevertheless ,I must say that I  also learnt a lot from this module during the class activities which made me realize the importance of listening  carefully and responding appropriately.This was the time where in we were all present in a forum of sorts which always had room for ample discussion about the various aspects of effective communication such as inter-cultural communication networking,team-building and leadership skills .Since the classroom was also a forum for debriefing sessions, I was always able to grasp a lot of relevant points or aspects  that I could utilize in the future.

As they say, 'All good things must come to an end' and that is true for this module as well.More than anything I will miss the company I had during the entire course of this module as I was part of two amazing teams ,the peer teaching team of Chandra,Laura,Huiyun and the business proposal team (SHSS INC) of Sumea,Han and Shiying .Apart from them I can also never forget my other classmates Minthu,Rohit,Eric,Ronald,Yea Wen,YongSheng,Thao,Bernard,Ding Ding and last but not the least my professor Brad (without whom this module would be only half as much fun)  as each of them have played a vital role in shaping myself to not only be a better communicator but a better person as a whole.

Reflection on my oral presentation

Last Tuesday, my team SHSS INC were put under the spotlight as we were the first  in line for the oral presentation. I personally felt that we had put ourselves in the most difficult situation as  we did not know what was the expected standard of the oral presentation. Moreover, this was not the first ever presentation in this module  and so we did not have the excuse of first timers at our disposal.

Personally the problems I had to tackle were the mistakes I had committed in my peer teaching and since the presentation for our proposal is very different from the topic given to us for our peer teaching, I had to make a lot of changes in my speaking style . In addition to this ,since I also speak comparatively fast compared to my other team- mates,I had to make major adjustments to my pace of delivery in order to maintain a constant tone throughout our presentation.

Practicing what we had to say was another important aspect that we could not afford to ignore as we were not retelling our written proposal .Instead ,we had to convince our stakeholders that our solution to the problem we had identified is the most viable option and that it should be undertaken with immediate effect.For this ,we had to draft out what we were going to say and how we were going say it.

However, there were  a few aspects  that gave us immense confidence about the success of our presentation. One  was that  we as a team worked on practically every part of the proposal together and thus we had ample knowledge about the subject matter at hand .The other advantage I felt we had was the decision to use Prezi instead of the usual PowerPoint slides. Though,we had our fare share of difficulties in  using this software (I personally still find it very hard to use this software to make a single slide),the sheer thrill of imagining how unique the entire presentation would look like geared us on till completion.

Eventually , when it came to the time where we had to showcase our work in the form of the presentation I felt that I was in my elements for some reason and so I never really felt nervous or uncomfortable at all .Instead I was focusing on how to present myself in the best manner possible.After we had done our presentation , I felt quite relieved and satisfied as during my part I was totally aware of what I was speaking and took that extra effort to control my pace of delivery so that the the crux of the matter I was conveying did not go over everyone's head .Though there were few instances where I was not able to control myself from speaking fast , on an overall basis I had managed to stay composed and thus I felt that I had done a pretty good job at "being the presentation" .