Critical Reflection

 

During my first week of Effective Communication, Professor Blackstone told us to list down some of our goals for this module in our self-introductory email. One of my goals was to refine my public speaking abilities. Even though I knew I could have done a lot better with my oral presentation, I believed I had worked my hardest to be confident. As I mentioned in my letter, communicating in a large crowd has always been a challenge for me. The oral presentation moved me out of my comfort zone and forced me to confront one of my greatest fears. However, there will always room for improvements. Good communication takes time and effort. For the time being, I will continue to articulate myself while I am with my friends and I see this to hone my public speaking skills, such as speaking confidently and clearly.

Besides, I said that I wanted to develop my writing abilities. I have been subjected to a variety of reports and articles online during the last 12 weeks of Effective Communication. I have started to see how their writing flows and how the writers bring their words into the essay after reading them. To be honest, I am not a big fan of reading. Nevertheless, I spent countless hours on my research to find a suitable article for my summary reader’s response. This helps me to correct grammatical mistakes in my prose and improve the consistency of my sentences. Gradually, I start to develop a reading habit, and now I strive to read one book every week.

For my research project, I managed the benefits and drawbacks of the proposed solutions. Saira, Cheng Quan, and I came from different backgrounds, but we all managed to work towards the same goal; to help one another while improving our individual communication skills. Saira had the most work experience, so she was the one who guided me and Cheng Quan through our research project. There were moments where we had opposing viewpoints, but we were able to discuss and work it out. This allows me to relate to a real-life workplace situation in which we can have disagreements along the way, but if I can communicate effectively with my co-workers, they can respect my point of view and where I am coming from.

When it comes to our presenting skills, usually we will do a mock presentation amongst ourselves and give each other input so that we can learn from our mistakes. This is the opportunity for me to confront my worries and get outside of my comfort zone. I discovered that it is best to make the slides as short as possible. That was to ensure that we could keep the audience focused throughout the presentation. As for writing a technical report, it was critical to be concise and persuasive to keep the report clear to retain stakeholder engagement in the report.

One of the key takeaways I learned from this research project is how to interact closely with individuals I have never worked with before. This is a lesson I will apply in my future career since I will be working with people from diverse backgrounds.

To summarize, I am extremely proud of how my team members accomplished their goals under Professor Blackstone's supervision, and I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to him on behalf of them.