'The End'

It has been almost four months since I wrote my very first blog post in my life... four very intensive months. Just a little recap of the expectations I held when I came into this module; I found myself enamoured with the concept of communication as a scientific process and hence looked forward to learn about the ‘communication model’. I was curious to know more about the holistic nature of communication as one that included the message, the non-verbal cues and the medium. Finally I expected to gather more understanding on the technical aspects of job-applications and formal writing.
Well, first and foremost I do not take 2 hours to write a blog post anymore unlike the initial blog posts. I have learnt to organise my thoughts much more clearly and am thus able to communicate them more effectively as well. The application letter, resume, the letter of transmittal, the proposal itself, minutes of meetings as well formal e-mails were all different methods we learnt to express ourselves in. What I found particularly useful and eye-opening was the significance of minute details. Like Alex pointed out, Ms Lim’s eye for detail honestly shocked me at first. I have always had the notion that the content is the most important part of any medium. But I have learnt how little nuances can affect the impression someone (eg. a potential employer) holds of you. The formatting, font size, print quality, paper quality, time of sending the document and several other details were things would have never considered before this module.
Besides that, during the proposal writing period I think my time management skills were greatly tested and of course eventually improved. The time crunch towards the end of the project was an incident that taught me how to divide work efficiently and to prioritise my work as well. The peer teaching and oral presentation exercise at the end developed my confidence in public speaking and I learnt several important techniques for an effective presentation both from Ms Lim and our classmates. What struck me were again the small changes in the slides and your non-verbal cues that could effectively make or break your presentation. I guess it would be safe to say that I have been more of a big picture kind of person, thus these tips were all the more astonishing.
Lastly but most importantly I feel that the area of the module which covered the factors such as non-verbal cues was the most appealing to me. The importance of the intangibles in a communication is something we cannot do without. While the message itself might be composed in a favourable way, the rest of your intangible factors could easily cause a misinterpretation of your entire message!
Something about this course that is different from others: it was full of revelations about the world of communication and kept up the line of surprises for the entire four months (some of the surprises include deadlines :P). The hands-on method of this course was very applicable to its content and was very effective putting the message across. It managed deeply ingrained these communication skills in my personality, thus making this content relevant to my daily life.

~Introspection of my oral presentation~

I began my group’s presentation by introducing my team members, setting the context of the presentation, giving an overview what we were going to cover, illustrating the significance of the scientific research industry and ended off by explaining the importance of laboratory report writing skills in this industry. Whoa that was a long sentence; thank god I did not have those in my presentation :) I have a habit of using long sentences which I realised was counter-effective in oral presentations after I heard the speech by Bryan and Gerard (last week Mon class). Thus I put in more effort to ensure my speech text was free of long sentences. I feel I achieved this relatively well.

I also feel that I had an appropriate volume and relatively good intonations to put my point across. I put more emphasis on the points which illustrated the importance of our SLRW workshop. I tried to improve on my eye contact which I believe was a low point in my peer teaching. Thus I consciously told myself to look at all four corners of the room as well as at certain people who were strategically placed all over the room and were smiling (i.e. Mufeedha, Alex, Wei Xi, Benedict, Jim ;p). However, I feel that perhaps I did not smile enough and might have looked abit stressed. I have realised over time that when the presenter does not look completely at ease, the audience tends to feel restless also. I will try to improve on this particular point. I think being the last group to present may have frayed my nerves a little.

Other than that, I tried to use a personal experience at the introduction section to make the speech more interesting and to get the audience attention. Personally when I am listening to a speech I feel more connected to presenters who bring in personal anecdotes or stories. I had also committed my speech to memory as I felt that eye contact is easier to establish when I am not looking down at cue cards. While I believe this was effective to a large extent, I think it also led me speed up during the last part of my presentation. Being a fast speaker normally, this was a very intuitive thing for me. Hence despite consciously telling myself to slow down I think I spoke a bit too fast towards the end. However I did try to guide my audience through the use of rhetorical questions during the presentation.

I do believe that I had reasonably prepared and hence could deliver my speech without major glitches. The delivery was fairly good although I could have done better. I will remember to maintain a pleasant expression on my face. While I improved on my eye contact, I could have been slightly calmer which would have helped me slow down while speaking as well. I feel that the use of slideware was largely glitch-free. All in all I feel that my speech was decent but of course could be improved through more public speaking experiences.