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Saturday, November 17, 2012

Final reflection

This evening's rain easily makes people emotional, just like the heavy rain of the day I graduated from high school. Coming the heavy rainy season, coming the time we begin to pray to Bell Curve God. Here comes the time to write the final reflection.

I remember Ronald wrote in a comment that I looked like a timid mouse in the peer teaching. Laura also mentioned that she noticed some people being shy in the first few classes. I believe I was one of those. I am usually shy and don't have much experience on presenting and formal writing. That's why I took this course, beside the reason that it was to map to one of my core modules. The mouse has only 2 more years to evolve.

It's my fortunate to take this course soon. The higher year I reach, the higher requirements I have to meet. Technical knowledge is crucially necessary but soft skill requirements is also an issue. This morning, my group in a programming module had to demo our software to the lecturer. Actually it was a demo session, which focused more on technical aspects, but the experience on doing presentation from this module did help me a lot.

I am glad to gain many useful experience from this module. I have learnt many things, both from the materials and from you, my awesome classmates. You always gave me sincere and constructive feedback. I have learnt to make good presentation, to write resume, cover letter and proposal, to conduct a survey, to deal with stress during a job interview and to form group bonding. I have even learnt from Han how to stress people (so guilty). Specially, thanks to Chandra, I learned how to revenge when someone bullies me, haha.

In the future, there would be no more people to give me such detailed and honest feedback as all of you. I feel that from now on, I have to fight alone to my own weaknesses. But I have been prepared fundamental weapons for the fighting. I will try my best to conquer them to reach my aims and fly far in life. Jiayou me and jiayou you too. We all have our targets and desires, and I believe all of us have the ability to reach them if we try our best.

It may be hard to meet you again after this class, especially Ding Ding, Laura, Sumea and my final-year friends Bernard, Ronald and uncle Eric. I treasure all the time we have been together. Thank you very much for all your advises. Hope you will get best achievements you wish.


p/s: after this course, if you see me make any language mistakes in Fb posts and comments, please feel free to correct me. I really appreciate it.

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Reflection on Oral Presentation

We are reaching the end of the course. Before the oral presentation, I felt like I had a lot of things to do with this module but after the presentation, I suddenly realized that I had just a few things left. 2 more blog posts, about 6 comments, and 2 two-hour classes. The oral presentation seems to be the last important assignment of this course.

After the oral presentation, I suddenly realized that I had learnt much about presentation in this module, intentionally and unintentionally. For me, I am happy that my presentation skill has been improved. I feel the difference between me in the peer teaching and me in the oral presentation. 

To be honest, I spent more time preparing for the oral presentation than preparing for the peer teaching. For the peer teaching, I did not know what to begin with. I had never had a chance to practice presentation before. I tried to look at how Bernard and Minthu, my 2 teammates, prepared but I had no clue. Minthu explained kindly to me what I should do but I still could not imagine. I sensed the "failure" beforehand but did not know how to improve.

In the oral presentation, things got better to me. Since I got experience from the peer teaching and I had seen the other groups doing presentation, I got some general ideas of what would going on. Chandra, Eric and Huiyun were very nice teammates.They kindly corrected even small mistakes for me: my word choices, intonation, and gestures. Huiyun helped me with the slides. Her PowerPoint skill was awesome.

The experience from the peer teaching really helped. After reading Bernard's self reflection and seeing the other groups' performance, I had some ideas of how to prepare for a presentation. In the past, I just thought of the ideas in my mind, sometimes murmur them, but did not say them out loudly and did not have any run-throughs with my teammates. No wonder why during the presentations, I often forgot ideas, used wrong words, and made so many grammatical mistakes.

Having prepared well, my performance in the oral presentation was better than that in the peer teaching. When I was presenting, I sometimes caught the encouraging eye-contact of Bernard, Minthu, Ronald, and Laura. This gave me the confidence that I was in the right way. My part was survey analyzing. Actually I felt it easier than the part I presented in the mock presentation, methodology, as all the statistics were on the slides, what I had to do was to link them together and emphasize how they supported our proposal.

However, frankly speaking, my presentation had many crucial weaknesses. I lacked of eye-contact and was not so natural. I was so intensive sometimes. I was still afraid of standing in front of many people, so I was embarrassed. My speaking was not so fluent also. I often stumbled and often included "ah..ah.." when speaking. The parts of the 3 other teammates Eric, Chandra and Huiyun were more natural than mine. I should have practiced more.

As Han wrote in his blog post, we all have a long way to go to reach our own aims. In the future, I will have to do many more important presentations, the nearest one is the FYP presentation 2 years later. I hope from now to that point, I would do my best to improve my presentation skill. Hope I will perform better in the FYP presentation 2 years later and good luck to those who are having FYP presentation.

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Intercultural behavior

Hugging is a common phenomena witnessed by many people yet it symbolize differently. In Western countries, it is just a social expression of greeting, cheering and sympathizing. While in Asian countries, it is perceived a little bit more seriously, attached to the relationship between two people.

When I was in my final year of high school, I took a preparation course for the TOEFL iBT test. Upon the completion of the course, our Australian teacher hugged each student in the class. Although Vietnamese teenagers are generally open-minded now, I still saw the embarrassment on the cheeks of some classmates. Even I did not feel so natural. However, we understood the teacher's culture, so we were fine with the gesture.

After that, I wanted to try out this culture in my society, of course within reasonable limits. I hugged a close friend when she felt bad about her Math grade. Almost immediately, she stared at me. Maybe she was not familiar with my new expression. I embarrassingly explained to her that the hug was meant to support her emotionally. In order to escape from the awkwardness, I quickly reverted to back to my former self.

However, I observed that the gesture was applied naturally in some special situations. When we are really emotional, we hug one another as an expression of empathy. In my high school graduation ceremony, my classmates cried and hugged me. The graduation ceremony has a special meaning in Vietnam, and I believe it does so in many other countries as well, as it marks a turning point in one's life and the time for separation. Each will begin his own new journey in a city far away from his hometown, or maybe in a foreign country, alone.

hugs and tears in a high school graduation ceremony

When I first came to NUS, I had to adapt to a new environment. There were some evenings I looked out the window finding a bicycle on the street- in Vietnam, students ride bicycles to school- or murmured a favorite song: "Old school days with many dreams, there were many times I wished to pick the stars on the sky. Then when I grew up day by day, friends went far away, these days went far away..." Once there was a bad thing happened to me, I cried alone, suddenly desired a warm hug to energize me. I suddenly realized the meaning of the hug to Asian people. Gestures are sometimes more efficient than words in touching one's heart.

There was once, one of my close friends was faced with a problem. He was a really good student with an awesome CAP. He was about to start his PhD soon after he graduated. One day, the doctor told him that he had signs of cancer and he was shocked tremendously. When I saw him sitting quietly and despairingly, I really wanted to comfort him but did not know how. I was in a state of dilemma and did not know how to respond to this situation. For the Westerners, hugging their friend would be a natural action, but I could not, as I knew he would be surprise if I were to do so. He saw my hesitation and smiled, and began the conversation with me. Finally I comforted him without any hugging. (Fortunately, things are over now. My friend was totally healthy. Thanks, God)

Singapore is also an Asian country. I think the perception of hugging here is generally the same as that in Vietnam, or maybe a little bit more liberal. Actually, the gestures support the feeling expression in many ways but the idea is to apply them flexibly and suitably due to each specific culture and circumstance.



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Thank you Bernard and Shi Ying for the feedback :)
Edited: 14 Oct, 2012

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Importance of Effective Communication

When I am outlining this post, I keep scaring: "communication, again?" To me, communication is a special art: everyone can do it but not anyone can make it well. To be honest, it is not my strength; I admire effective communicators.
Communication is not only about the way people speak but the way they interact, attract and form relationship with the others. I feel that effective communicators have their own ways to assert themselves and lead the others' interaction. My team leader in a programming project last semester is that kind of person. At first, I found a language and nationality barrier between my two other teammates and me which made me worried. Then, I met the leader outside the class, by chance, and surprisingly he impressed me by a pleasant, opened smile as in a Vietnamese verse: "A smile like the autumn's sunlight." I began to perceive him positively, and after that our group cooperated very well. At the end of the project, while I wanted to give everyone a praise for the good work but still did not know how to say, he sent us an email to express his appreciation to our cooperation. We formed a good relation till now. The lesson I learned to overcome barriers is to have an opened attitude and think as simple as possible. Anyway, I still wish I had a magical smile as his.
Having an active and attractive interaction is not simple for me. I belong to the type of shy and silent people. While my friends are skating in West Coast Park, I enjoy being home alone writing poems or walking along a dreaming street. Because I talk too little, some people feel me not interesting or friendly. However, I think communication is not about talkativeness. Nevertheless, when interacting in a foreign language, the habit of keeping silent limits the chance of demonstrating my ideas, practicing the vocabulary and sometimes makes people misunderstand me. I find it difficult to transmit my ideas and persuade the others in the group meetings as well as to raise questions in the lectures. I do not intend to change my characteristic, it's like faked, but I have to learn effective communication: when to say, what to say and how to say; otherwise I will be left behind in the university and future life.
Long time ago, my friend shared to me an old Africa proverb: "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." Professional, at least effective, communication is a beautiful and decisive art that anyone who wish to "go far" have to learn.
I want to go far, as far as possible.