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.
Hi Thao,
ReplyDeleteIt is always a great joy to read your post because you are so sincere in expressing your thoughts.
I was thoroughly amazed by how you presented because you were extremely assertive and convincing in highlighting the gravity of the problem. It was intimidating listening to you because your tone was so authoritative. I would like to share something I wrote down while you were presenting: "Vast improvement as compared to the peer teaching, from a timid mouse to a feisty tigress." This was the feeling I had when you were presenting. Hahaha!
I feel that you have also somehow managed to integrate the survey results to support your argument, thus making the listener feel, "I'd better do something about it soon!"
You stood confidently and delivered your points with conviction. It was a pleasure listening to you and seeing how much you have improved. I don’t think fluency is an issue for you, aside from the minor grammatical mistakes, but do continue to work on establishing eye-contact with the audience.
Superb!
Dear Ronald,
DeleteI read your comment when I was rushing for a project. This was an overnight meeting. I was so stressful, so I opened the blog to see if there was any comments (just found some random thing to do to hide from the project). This was really a joy to read your comment. The first thing I thought was "How, he compared me with a tigress" =)))) I am a poor timid mouse, do you see? =))))
Yah, my teammate Eric also said that I lacked of eye-contact. I afraid of standing in front of the crowd, so I unintentionally avoid looking into the eyes of people. It may take some time to improve :S
Hi Thao,
ReplyDeleteLike Ronald, I was similarly taken aback by your improvement and your fresh, new, assertive style. You definitely put up a strong display during your presentation, which helped to drive home the point. You must have needed a lot of effort and rehearsal time in front of a mirror, and I really admire the hard work you put in.
Your group adopted a distinctly different style from ours, and I learned a lot from observing your group's approach to the presentation, not least of all, that different scenarios require different techniques.
You are shaping up to be a formidable speaker. Moving forward, I think you have gained the confidence needed to step up for presentations more often in school, which in turn give you more experience and more confidence. Take advantage of this positive feedback loop, and I'm sure your eventual FYP presentation will be a cakewalk.
This 'natural' vibe you speak of is most easy to observe but most difficult to reproduce. Basically, it's easy to be yourself, but it's hard to be 'natural'. A ballerina takes years of practice to make her routine look graceful, effortless and natural to an audience. So don't be too hard on yourself, you did a great job, and all of us have ample room for improvement anyway.
Good work, and all the best!
Dear Han,
DeleteI remember the time I said a wrong phrase "I afraid with you." It should be "I afraid of you." During the presentation, I was really afraid of you, haha. You had a killing eye-contact that made me nervous (although I knew you are friendly). Next time if you want to nervous someone, just stare at him and he will run away, haha.
Yah I agree that all of us still have many chances to improve. All the best to you too :D
Hey Thao,
ReplyDeleteThough Ronald and Han have already highlighted this aspect , I really feel that you need to be congratulated as you have improved tremendously as a public speaker.Moreover, during your presentation you managed to keep good eye contact with the entire audience and thus managed to keep them engaged throughout your part.Overall,I feel that you have gained a lot of confidence right through this course and that fact was very clear during your presentation.
Thank Sai,
DeleteYou are one of the few "audiences" saying that I maintained a good eye-contact. Maybe because I looked at your place frequently during the presentation. Oh, at least it tells me that I kept eye-contact with some-one-among-the-audiences. Really encouraged :D
Thao,
ReplyDeleteYou’ve made TREMENDOUS improvement. By your exponential rate of improvement, I believe you would be able to reach the standard you are aiming in no time! You sounded so much more confident and coherent this time round and I love your dressing! It is so professional.
You appeared so much more formal this time round which I think is very appropriate for this presentation. I do see your engagement in eye contacts to the class, and wish you for the best for your future presentations!
Dear Shi Ying,
DeleteIt's easy to move from "don't know anything" to "know some thing" but it's much harder to move from "know some thing" to "know most of the things." I think it's my situation. All of you are at high level and it's hard to go higher, while I was at low level before and it's easier for me to make a big improvement. Thank you for your encouragement, I will try harder to reach the aim :) Hope you will make big improvements in the future too :)
Hi Thao,
ReplyDeleteWe did it! We have finished our oral presentation and we are free! Time does feel like it is flying when we are busy! I am glad that you have learnt a lot from this class and I have also learned a lot from all of you. There is no need to be discouraged about your performance. I think everybody in the class will agree with me if I say that you have improved the most among all of us. This is especially amazing considering the fact that you have little experience of speaking English before you came to Singapore.
There is no need to worry too much about your lack of eye contact with the audience or your lack of naturalness. Those factors come with constant practice and it is difficult to achieve such naturalness and good eye contact with the audience in just a month of practice.
Lastly, I also wish to apologize if we demand too much of your time for the oral presentation. I know you are extremely busy with labs and exams and our insistence on constant meetings and practices may have taken your time.
I hope you also continually improve on your presentation so that you can achieve the standard you aiming for.
Regards,
Eric Linardy
Dear my smart uncle,
DeleteI m glad we are free now (thanks God). We all sacrificed a lot of time for the project and I hope we will receive good grade. It was a joyful time working with you.
We are reaching the end of the course. I afraid I wouldn't have any more chances to work with you. Will remember the time we worked together. All the best to you too :)
Hi Thao,
ReplyDeleteLike what all the classmates had mentioned, you did improve tremendously! I could still remember your presentation during peer teaching in which you were feeling rather awkward, lost for words and lack of confidence. This time round during the final OP, you were speaking with confidence. Your analysis of the survey results was clear and concise and it definitely triggered the thought in the audiences that the problem your group identified was worth solving. Overall, being natural during a presentation is important. Very often, we all get nervous and fear of forgetting what we prepared to say. However, like what we have learned, do a "power pose" to increase your bravery before the start of the presentation!
Cheers,
Yong Sheng
Dear Yong Sheng,
DeleteI forgot to do a "power pose" before the presentation, maybe that's why I got nervous. My analysis was concise because I cut off many things that I intended to say, and I wanted to hide from the crowd as soon as possible, haha. I will remember to do the "power pose" next time :)
Thao!
ReplyDeleteI feel like everything I wanted to tell you has been mentioned by the others already, but I guess it does not hurt to repeat a few things. As Eric said, I think you are the one in our class who has improved the most. You started with the peer presentation all the way in the beginning and your performance at that point in time really was not very convincing. When I watched you present during the Oral presentation I was totally impressed by the change you have undergone. It was like a completely different person was presenting! Considering this tremendous learning curve, I am sure that you will reach your personal goals in no time. Compared to everyone else you started off with really bad conditions, due to the difficulties you still had with English. I think that this skill too has increased tremendously and I am sure that it is one of the reasons why your presentation was so convincing this time. If you continue working on your English and if you continue to overcome your shyness - I am sure the level of naturalness will increase as you go ;-).
All the best for the future!!!
Laura
Dear Laura,
DeleteThank you very much for your encouragement. I didn't think I would receive that much encouragement from all of you. We all did very well and I have learnt much from you all. Actually until now, I still have some difficulties with English but I will keep trying my best to improve.
All the best to you too :)
I wish I was the first one to comment, like Laura says everything is mentioned.
ReplyDeleteSo the only thing I will say is you have to believe in your self. You have improved tremendously, and you have reached far. I think your presentation was highly professional and how you did the entire presentation was amazing. Keep up the good work and you will reach far in life.
Wish you all the best!
Dear Sumea,
DeleteEverything has been mentioned but you said a new thing :) Since the first time I came to this class, I saw all of you were very awesome, and I lost my confidence. Actually all of you are really really good communicators. But since now I know I have reached an initial step, I will try to develop further. Thank you for all your encouragement (and your welfare bookmark this afternoon :) )
Cheers,
Thao