Reflection on learning

It has come to the end of the semester. Even though this is the toughest semester that I had, it’s really a very fruitful learning experiences based on what I have learnt from 4 interesting core modules as well as from ES2007S, Professional Communication. ES2007S has helped to improve my communication skills in several ways.

The area which I have learnt the most is how to write a formal proposal. From the proposal assignment, I have familiarized myself with the format and content required for a good proposal. Writing a proposal would aid in my future career as well as current CCA activities since we will be required to submit proposal when looking for sponsorship. In addition to that, this proposal assignment has also enabled me to learn about the method to conduct a proper survey to general public and interview with authority in order to obtain particular information.

I am also very glad to learn about writing business letter, in particular writing a cover letter. In my opinion, knowledge of writing business letter is crucial for the reason that it will be the most frequent used communication channel in workplace.

Besides that, I have also been taught about the 7Cs of writing. This part is very helpful for drafting email and writing assignment within certain word limits. I have learnt how to make my sentence concise and convey my idea effectively. This part of learning can then be applied to blogging. Blogging is an effective way to improve our writing, as well as to discover the diversified thoughts and ideas of everyone in the class.

Lastly, I greatly appreciate the presentation opportunities provided by this module. My presentation skills have improved significantly after having the two presentations. The experience in last presentation is especially useful. The understanding achieved from Garr Reynolds’s presentation show, video materials, and live presentations from other classmates have helped me to improve my presentation skills to a great extent.

I have enjoyed the learning in this module and it is worthy to wake up early in the morning to attend Mrs Richardson classes and learn something useful. Nevertheless, there is still a lot more for me to learn in this field of communication. I shall continue to explore more relevant information in order to be success in my future work life.

(Thank you Mrs Richardson for your guidance throughout the semester)

Reflection on oral presentation

The oral presentation on last Tuesday was the fifth presentation that I had in this semester. Honestly I do not like presentation because my English is not fluent to speak without memorizing a script or reading from slides. But of course presentation is an excellent way to train us to be more confident to speak in front of crowds in the future. Indeed, this presentation is very challenging because we have to use minimum number of words in all the slides, to have excellent visual effects in the slides, and it’s also not recommended to use a handout during the presentation. Hence, my preparation for this presentation was to draft a script and then memorize it according to slides. Besides practising in front of a mirror to build up my confidence and notice my body language, I also practised numerous times with my group members in order to receive feedback from each other and to manage the time of presentation.

During the presentation, I think I have managed to overcome the fears and anxieties and able to recall everything that I am ought to deliver. Even though I was able to complete my part of presentation smoothly, there are a few things that I must keep in mind so that I can improve further.

The first thing which I shall take note of is the mispronunciation of words. I have received comments from other classmates that there was mispronunciation here and there throughout my presentation as well as some grammatical errors. I am pretty upset by this comment because I thought my pronunciation was better compared to my pronunciation during practices. Although my pace and volume of speech were good, mispronunciation and grammatical errors could jeopardize my credibility of a presenter.

Next, based on the evaluation forms, I should also improve my confidence during the presentation. Being able to present confidently will demonstrate your control over the presentation and will help you to convey the message effectively. Maybe I should practice more frequently in front of mirror or friends to further improve on this.

Last but not least, I was impressed by the presentation of Footprints@NUS where they have wonderful visual effects in their slides and very interesting ideas to convey the messages. This is a very important thing that we shall learn because it helps the audiences to focus on your presentation. Perhaps we could spend more time in designing the slides and thinking of interesting ideas to deliver our messages. As an overall, in fact everyone knows that importance of presentation but to master it would be very difficult. Nonetheless, it shall be kept in mind that practice makes perfect and the reflection of past presentation would help you to succeed in the next presentation.

Intercultural Behaviour

This is my personal experience in last academic year.

I was a new member of a new committee in an organization. In the first committee meeting, I was quite surprised that all other members are from India. At first I was feeling very uncomfortable because it was the first time I find myself to engage in such a situation - meeting with strangers from very distinct cultural background. But I had managed to convince myself to relax and go with the flow.

During the meeting, all of them were involved actively in the discussion and tend to speak very fast. They seemed aggressive and would not hesitate to voice up their opinions and ask questions. Being in such an unusual situation, I started worrying about their viewpoints on me. Are they going to think that I am not contributing to the discussion if I keep quiet? How should I interrupt so that I can voice up my idea to them?

As the meeting went on, I started getting use to the atmosphere and ready to contribute to their discussion. But then, when I was talking about my opinions, the chairperson of the meeting would only glance at me and then quickly turned away to continue with other things with the rest of the members without waiting me to finish my words. As this went on and repeating many times, I became very disappointed and even started thinking about quitting the committee. To me, it is very embarrassing to encounter such a situation and very rude for someone to do that. However, I managed to not to show my disappointment and anger to them and then waited for the meeting to end.

This is a very unforgettable event because I have never experienced so much disrespect in my life before. Nonetheless, I also learnt from this incident that it is very important to be mentally prepared for this globalized world and its cultural diversity.

Biodata

This is the biodata which i would like to put into my resume, I have tried to keep it as short as possible.

My apology for not delivering this blog post on time.

I strongly believe that environment needs not be sacrificed for economic growth. Being an environmental engineering undergraduate, it’s my responsibility to help business to minimize their impact on the environment, as well as to create a sustainable energy future. My expertise in pollution management and biofuel will help Shell to achieve its goal of responsible energy. The missions would be challenging. However, they are also what excite me to strive harder.

Job Application Letter

September 1, 2009

Human Resource Manager,

Shell

Singapore

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing to introduce myself and express my interest to participate in the internship program offered by Shell Singapore. I learnt about this opportunity through the Shell Singapore website and the program overview has impressed me.

Being the third year Environmental Engineering undergraduate in National University of Singapore (NUS), I have completed several fundamental modules from both Civil and Environmental Engineering disciplines such as Environmental Processes, Construction Project Management and Water Science and Technology. Throughout the studies, I had gained a deep insight into numerous pollution and environmental issues related to petroleum industry and their possible solutions.

As the Events Director of NUS Students Union Students Against Violation of the Earth (SAVE), my responsibility is to oversee and coordinate SAVE’s events. SAVE’s past event included Green Carnival, Earth Hour Celebration, and more than 3 environmental seminars and conferences. This position has provided me numerous opportunities to improve my leadership and communication skills. Moreover, I take pleasure in working in SAVE with people from various cultures such as Vietnam and India. Besides taking part in organizational co-curriculum activities, I also enjoyed taking part in voluntary work under NUS Voluntary Action Club. Experiences gained through voluntary work in hospital and moral welfare home was indeed precious and it always reminded me on how fortunate I am. On top of that, I was the project director for 1 Degree Up in SAVE in my first year of study. 1 Degree Up is a project that aims to promote awareness on energy conservation in NUS, as well as work with the school authorities for the implementation of environmental policy. One of the policies that we had successfully implemented is setting lecture theaters’ air conditioning at 25 degrees Celsius.

A career at Shell Singapore will provide me with opportunity to prove myself in the dynamic and challenging working environment. The company’s focus on reducing carbon and pollutants level emission further motivates me to join the organization. Hence I believe that given a chance I could contribute and succeed at Shell internship program.

I would welcome an opportunity to discuss my qualifications with you. I can be reached at the number and email address indicated below. I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours Sincerely,

XXXXXXX

#C-226, Ridge View Residence

25, Lower Kent Ridge Road,

Singapore 119081

Ph: +65 82635128

Email: tchon88@gmail.com

Climate Crisis Symposium

I was the event coordinator for last Saturday Climate Crisis Symposium organised by NUSSU SAVE, Students Against Violation of the Earth. Before that, i did not antipate myself to gain any useful or new insights. Being an environmentally conscious person, i knew that climate crisis was real. I understood how individual effort can eventually help us in this man-made crisis. However, i had somehow getting very bored with this kind of seminar/talk because I personally felt that their purposes were to educate or convince those who were not environmentally conscious. Of course, it was proven that I was wrong.

Let's come back to talk about the sympsium. The attendance on that day were quite disappointing, LT27 which can accommodate about 350 people was only half-filled. I sympathized and understood the disappointment of the organisers, Ting Ting and Wei Tao. They had spent more than 2 months with huge effort preparing for this symposium. For me, i was not even care about the attendance until i finished listened to the insightful "An Inconvenient Truth" talk by Mr Tony Boatman.

Tony has been personally trained by Mr Gore (http://www.algore.com/, in case you wonder who Gore is) and is the only person in South East Asia fully accredited to deliver the presentation and its scientific content. His presentation style was similar to Al Gore's presentation in his An Inconvenient Truth movie and it was really great.

During the presentation, Tony had reminded me a potential catastrophe resulted from global temperature rise which I had long forgotten. The catastrophe would be the melting of Himalayan Glacier, which fed seven of the world’s largest rivers and provided water to 40 percent of the global population, including China and India. It had appeared that people would enjoy the huge outflow of water for the first few years. But could you imagine the situation after the Glacier had completely melted? What would happen to the 2 most populated countries? When this actually happened, it's impossible for us to sit on the sidelines.

Other than that, Mr Tony also mentioned several key environmental issues which the world is facing, as well as the possible solutions. Too bad I would not be able to share them with everybody.

In summary, the aim of this post is to share this small piece of information to everyone. And also to express my disappointment with the symposium's attendance. Otherwise, more people would able to know the urgency of our climate crisis. Of course,this is not the only environmental crisis which we should pay attention to. Let's join our fight against climate change!

Note:

If you wish to learn more about climate change, you may want to attend Green Carnival organised by NUSSU SAVE next week. It is on 7th and 8th September, from 10-4pm, at Central Forum

Resolving Interpersonal Conflict

Here’s a typical example of conflict between friends:

Kaka and Terry were from the same department and they had several modules in common. One of the modules was programming methodology and students taking this module have to put in a huge amount effort to do well. The module consists of a practical examination where students have to solve a problem within certain period of time using computer software.

When it came to the practical examination, Kaka was struggling to solve the problem even after intense preparation. He was very upset and walked out the examination room with a heavy heart. Meanwhile, Terry felt that the exam question was very easy and was able to solve it. He walked out the examination room with joy. When Kaka met Terry outside, the first thing that Terry would share with Kaka was how easy he found the exam question to be, without even noticing the facial expression of Kaka.

Now, Kaka who was already in a very bad mood was provoked by Terry and his first reaction was to stare at him. But he then decided to suppress his anger, keep quiet and let Terry continue. Even though this did not result in any verbal conflict, it affected Kaka and Terry’s relationship without Terry’s knowledge. Kaka was very upset by Terry’s inconsiderate comment and has decided to stop talking with him until he’s able to forget that.

In this case, do you think Kaka should tell Terry about his feelings after listening to his callous comment? Do you think Terry is wrong by telling his friend his opinion of the examination? How should Terry respond if he knew that Kaka was upset at him?