Critical Response

 

Module Learning:

 

Compared with the goals I set in January, I believe that the standard of my communication skills has become night and day. Through experiencing numerous presentations back in my schooling days at Singapore Polytechnic, I considered myself to be one of the more confident speakers stepping into this class, due to my outgoing personality and the useful ability to interact with people whom I had never worked with before. However, I knew that there was room for improvement in terms of communication, especially in managing nervousness when speaking in front of larger audiences.

 

This has changed a lot, surprisingly, in just a dozen weeks. With the guidance of Professor Blackstone, I was able to learn much about making my presentations and even my reports better. For instance, I always relied on scripts previously and believed that they are a main staple towards a great presentation. However, Professor Blackstone rebutted, believing it hindered the natural delivery, which turned out to be true! During the mock presentation, I stuttered a lot, panicked, and looked away as I tried to remember every last detail of it. With the help given, I was able to build up confidence and was able to present more authentically, resulting in much positive feedback from my peers and Professor Blackstone.

 

Finally, Working with both Brenda and Robin was a pleasant change from past projects where we hadn’t collaborated. This experience helped me grasp their strengths and weaknesses, allowing me to adapt and collaborate effectively. From this experience, I am looking forward to more presentation-based lessons in the future, as they not only offer opportunities to collaborate with new peers but also enhance my confidence in public speaking.

 

Project Learning:

 

As for the group project, I was tasked to be the main speaker among the team, having the responsibility to be in charge of managing the presentation slides, and also making sure that the flow and transition of the presentation were smooth and natural. Though we had one less group member than the rest of the groups, we found it to be an advantage, as we agreed on our roles much more quickly, and it was much easier to come to a consensus for the majority of the work.

 

As much as how well we started to work as a team and progress through our work, there were some issues we faced. One example would be preparing the presentation itself. The presentation itself tested our adaptability as well as our creative thinking to a huge extent, as we had to be able to back every single detail with the utmost skill and knowledge we had remembered about, or came up with knowledge that was certainly related to the research. It was also a challenge to maintain professional composure, pushing our mental strength, body movement, and audience interaction to the limit.

 

Ultimately, I lost my composure a bit, but I did pretty well engaging with the audience and articulated well throughout the presentation as well as the questionnaire. This experience has certainly improved my confidence in speaking in front of an audience, which was one of the major points I wanted to improve at the start of this class. To add on, without my team’s hardworking mentality and their perseverance through the challenges faced, we might have faltered much more in our assignments, so I am pleased with my team’s performance.