My GT Experience

Hi there! This week my post will be on my reflections for the group training which just passed not long ago.
 
I will first look at the actual presentation on the day itself. Well, honestly, I was really nervous for the presentation. I am sure the power poses did help a little, but that is just how much it can boost your confidence. There are other determining factors like the amount of preparation that you had. Our team was very collaborative, and we did make a constant effort to meet up to finalise everything and rehearse whenever we have a common timeslot. For this, I am really grateful to have such awesome members in the team! Good job guys!

However, I must say, time is really not always on our side and we did not get to meet often, so during these meetings, we had to prioritise the agenda for the meeting. We did rehearse on my own, and I attempted to talk to myself in my room, which I think helped a lot. But maybe I could have prepared and rehearsed earlier, instead of procrastinating and pushing it to the last minute. The group training was also the first time where I did not draft a script for my presentation, and thankfully that did helped me sound less like I memorised my content.
 
Zooming into the delivery of my presentation, I felt that my pace might have been a little fast. Also, the feedback for me was there was a little bit of data dumping for my part. I guess I could have further filtered the content that I was presenting, but honestly I did not feel that allocating more content to my teammates before or after me would have been a better alternative since we had broken the content down into different sections, and if I were to further break down my section into smaller parts, I feel that it may disrupt the train of thought of the students. This was why we chose this strategy and allocation of content amongst ourselves. On the other hand, I think I did make a conscious effort to have eye contact with everyone in the class! (:D) So in terms of delivery, things that I can work on would be having a more concise content, being clearer in my content, having more natural and less confined hand gestures, pace of delivery and pronunication of certain words.
 
As my team felt that the focus of the group training should be on us, articulating our ideas, we placed much less emphasis on our slides and did not include other audiovisuals. However, we did make a constant effort to ensure that there are no errors on our slides and that there are examples given for the different sections.
 
In conclusion I think it would have been better if I had prepared more and there is definitely room for improvement for my content and delivery!

Outline for Report Writing C

This post will be on the general outline that I have drafted out for report writing C on oral communication skills. I will start off with the PPQ that I have.

Statement of problem: NUS graduates and undergraduates face problems articulating their thoughts verbally, especially in comparison with our fellow peers from SMU.

Statement of purpose:
Focus on the different aspects of oral communications that needs to be improved on.
The purpose of this proposed curriculum change is to let students better master their oral communication skills, and not let it hinder their progress in life in general.

Key question:
Currently are there courses that help students develop their oral communication skills?
Which are the modules that facilitate oral communication skills?
What are the specific areas  of oral communication that we can look into?
How can the new curriculum be implemented?

General outline:
Introduction
- Background information using data provided
- Other data sources
- Scope: Which aspects of oral communication? Proposed curriculum change?
- PPQ
- Rough organization of report content

Findings
- Use the effect and cause & functional approach

Recommendations
- Proposed curriculum change
- Improvement to current teaching methods and new teaching methods to introduce

Overall conclusion
- Need to improve on oral communication skills
- Implementation of proposed curriculum

This is it! All the best! :)

#1: Interpersonal/ Intercultural Conflict- Little MRT Incident

This is my first official blog post for my Business Communication blog! It took me quite sometime to think of an incident/ story that would truly demonstrate an interpersonal/ intercultural conflict. Well, I thought of this incident which did not exactly happen to me personally, but it was a situation which most of us might have observed in our everyday lives as a commuter.

I used to travel a lot back in my junior college days. I spent an average of three hours traveling everyday. It was really interesting during these journeys because I got the opportunity to observe and pay attention to the details and surroundings while I was on the public transport. On a couple of the trips I made to and fro school, there were instances where commuters openly display their displeasure and intolerance towards other commuters who may, in their perspective, be carrying distinctive smells that are considered unpleasant and unbearable.

To me, clearly, those smells were not a result of bad personal hygiene, but they were more likely to be due to traditions or personal preferences (type of food consumed, type of cologne etc). I thought the communters' response towards the smells was absurb, and I felt embarrassed sometimes, when I see a fellow Singaporean being so insensitive towards other people's feelings, especially towards people from a more diverse background and culture. Do they not think their actions were very rude and offensive? Or were driven by self-centredness and only cared about their feelings at that point in time? It was really apparent to me that those people lack basic courtesy and respect towards the minority.

Thankfully, their actions were not being confronted, not because the other party was not aware of the situation, but I would think it was because of the generosity that the other party displayed that prevented a conflict from arising. Despite the other party being forgiving, is there anything that can be done to prevent such a behaviour in the first place?

Perhaps on my part, I came from a culture where people were more sensitive towards each other's feelings, and we tend to not display displeasure openly. This definitely contributed to my annoyance towards people who are less sensitive towards other people's emotions. In this aspect, maybe on my part, I should also be more willing to accept individuals who are more expressive. Then again, to what extent should I accept such behaviour? And will it be so overbearing that it crosses the line and becomes ungracious and insensitive?