Some Final Thoughts

Time really flies and the past 12 weeks of lessons in this module ES2007S have simply breezed past me. I'm glad that I have a little bit of time to think about what I've learnt over the semester.


When I first signed up for this module, it was through one of the recommendation emails that are sent through the circular before each semester starts. I had a pretty good experience in a similar module two years ago and I thought that it would be an opportunity to learn some "soft skills" such as writing, project group work and presentation skills.

I believe that one of things I managed to learn the most is being poised and calm during presentations. Sometimes, I fall victim to having last minute jitters and have a shaky start when it's my time to speak up. But over the lessons, I had many more opportunities to present my views (compared to Science lessons) and share with my classmates. I've learnt to spend a bit of time to organise my thoughts and construct a simple and coherent message that best brings across my views. Of course, I feel that it will still take me many years of practice to become a truly competent speaker but right now I feel that I'm in the right direction!


Another area that I had more experience in was in project work. To be honest, I never really fancied working in teams because of different personalities, schedules and working preferences. I had a bad experience back in Year 1 when I had two project members who simply didn't cared and left another friend and I to do everything. To add insult to injury we got a D for the project...

But I feel that I really struck the lottery with my group mates Linna, Alex and Shi Chie. They come across as confident and intelligent individuals who take pride in their work and also strive for the best. We also have lunches after our lessons together, chatting about everything under the sun and I believe that made us understand each other better and build stronger trust in our abilities. Throughout the project, we managed to work seamlessly and give each other support and it really made working with them easy for me. 

Really had fun working with these awesome people. 

Lastly, I will also mention Mdm Fazilah and the rest of the classmates whom I've learnt so much from through our interactions over the past weeks. Through each presentation, interview and peer teaching session, I managed to gain much more experience by watching and learning from all of you. Thank you for commenting on my blog and giving me advice!

I wish all of you good luck in your future endeavours, especially to those who are graduating from NUS and stepping out into the brave new world. Take care! =)

Jay 

On the Stage

Last Friday was our presentation day! It was the culmination of all the things that we have learnt our the semester and my team and I were eager to get on and showcase what we have been working on for the past few weeks. We were presenting on our proposal of implementing a buddy system in NUS for new undergraduate students as part of our project coursework.

I remember that the teams had to draw lots to decide the order of presentation. I never had much luck when it comes to picking places so Linna represented our team. She did brilliantly and drew us a number 2!

On the day of the presentation, our group met an hour earlier to practice our presentation and collaborate on what we were going to say. Having presented together once before (during our peer teaching session), I had a lot of confidence in my group mates. I saw how Shi Chie, Linna and Alex performed under the watchful eyes of my classmates and I thought they would do as brilliantly this time round. 

Once again, we stuck to the mantra of "simple is better". We had a simple PowerPoint presentation planned out and put in a couple of funny pictures to help illustrate our points. I made sure that none of the slides were too wordy so that it wouldn't put people off because I always believed that a presentation should involve some actual presenting by the speaker. Other than that, our preparations were quite muted, with each member just reading their own scripts and pacing themselves. The time ticked away and then we entered the classroom to set up.

Just before showtime, our classmates gathered and we were having a rather casual chatting session. It was actually a brilliant way to relax and ease the tension! When Mdm Fazilah announced that we should get started, I just popped onstage and began my piece. The only thing that was bothering me was my sore throat so I felt I rushed through my part a little. By the time I finished my throat felt like a piece of dry parchment. 

Personally, I felt that my group mates once again did a great job during the presentation. Shi Chie prepared cue cards beforehand but didn't use them much at all and engaged the audience well. Linna was poised as ever and Alex really carried the show in the end. The only slight blip was when I was controlling the slideshow but there were a few blips along the way! But we fended off the Q&A session quite calmly at the end and it was a huge relief.

In conclusion, I was really pleased at the our group's performance. I felt that we had a lot of belief in our skills as presenters,thorough knowledge of our content and most importantly confidence in each other. I hope that everyone had a good time at our presentation as well! 

Evaluating Intercultural Behaviour

In the multi-cultural and multi-racial society in Singapore, I feel that one of the more endearing qualities that Singaporeans often overlook (and to a certain extent, take for granted) is the ability for people of the different races to communicate and generally understand each other well enough. 

Indeed, the dual-language policy adopted by Singapore since its early days of independence has resulted in two generations of Singaporeans who not only learn their own Mother Tongue language to communicate within their racial communities, but are also quite proficient in English to communicate with their counterparts in schools, working environments and in the public sphere.

The humble kopitiam, bedrock of local Singaporean food.

Just last week, I was having dinner at a local kopitiam when I decided to buy a beverage. Queuing right in front of me was a well-dressed gentleman and he was trying to make his order to an elderly Chinese woman manning the drink stall.

He said, in his Indonesian-accented English, “Can I have a milk tea please?”

In the local context, it was a rather unusual order. Almost all Singaporeans order drinks in the kopitiam in a smattering of local dialects, Mandarin and Bahasa Melayu. From the confused look on the old lady's face, she had clearly never heard of a “milk tea” before.

So she barked, “Huh?!”

The man was taken aback and turned around to look at me for help. So I asked him what he wanted and helped him place his order in dialect. 

A few minutes later, he walked past the table where I was eating at, holding his drink, and he gave me a smile. I took it that he got what he wanted! If no one was around to help him, he might have gotten a drink that was not his cup of tea (terrible pun I know, but I just couldn’t resist).

Much harder to order than you ever imagined.

From this short exchange, I believe that it was a timely reminder that intercultural communication can be tricky at times. In a seemingly simple task of ordering a drink at a local coffee shop, a foreigner may not be aware that some elderly Singaporeans did not learn English in their time and hence spoke only exclusively in Mandarin or dialects. 

On the other hand, most Singaporeans will intuitively order in dialect in a kopitiam even if he is capable of speaking perfect English! These are the small nuances that determine the effectiveness of intercultural communication and it may take months or even years for foreigners to pick up. 

Therefore, when it is our turn to go overseas for work or pleasure, we must be careful in our own interactions with people of other cultures to be able to communicate effectively.

The Work Life

Hi all, I'm back again with my latest blog post!

On the last few lessons, my group members had the opportunity to present in class in a Peer-Teaching session on position search, resume writing and application letter writing. It was a good opportunity for us to present to our fellow classmates on what we have researched online on the different tips of how to write a better resume and application to wow our employers in the future.

What I will look on Mondays in a few years time.

Part of our assignment was to put what we have learnt into practice, so here are my resume and application letters for a job that I am "applying for". Take note that the employer is looking for a permanent position (whereas I'm still pursuing my studies in NUS) so just assume that I'm about to graduate! 

I've made them into picture files so hopefully it's easy to read. If it's still too small, you can (right click + Open in New Tab) on the picture to see the actual size of the picture. The formatting is a little off (tried to fiddle with Microsoft Word but I eventually lost the battle) so I'll sort it out on a later date. Do let me know how I can improve!

(Job that I am applying for)

(Resume : Pages 1/2)

(Resume : Page 3)

(Application Letter: Pages 1/2)

(Application Letter: Pages 3)

Thanks once again for helping me to improve on my rather narcissistic resume! =)

"The Angry Man Closes His Eyes and Opens His Mouth"

Over the last two weeks of lessons, we have covered some principles of EQ and examined the different ways to resolve interpersonal conflict and smoothen communication between family members, friends and colleagues. I wished that I had learnt some of the skills just over a month ago in an actual conflict that I experienced.

My father had bought a new fridge for the New Year at Courts and to his delight, his purchase came with an additional free book of cash vouchers for his future shopping. All he had to do was to simply fill in his particulars at a redemption outlet and he would be able to receive the vouchers. However, due to overwhelming demand, the outlet ran out of vouchers and instead wrote him an IOU so that he would be able to collect the vouchers at a later date.

A week went past but there were no news from the redemption outlet. My father decided to send me on the unenviable task of going to the outlet to inquire on the status of the cash vouchers. While I was there, I explained my situation to a helpful lady at the information counter. She required some additional details to locate the IOU in their database but I realised that my father had not given me that information. I decided to call him over the phone to ask, but my father started to get angry and demanded to speak to the lady.

I had no idea what truly happened, but clearly the thought of providing additional information (when he was told all he had to do was collect the vouchers) struck a raw nerve and he spent the next five minutes yelling over the phone at the lady. Even though I was at a good three feet away from the counter, I could hear my father, incandescent with rage, screaming and complaining over the phone. The lady was growing increasing exasperated and repeatedly said she was trying to help but it fell onto deaf ears.

I was deeply embarrassed and I snatched the phone back from her. I wished to say I handled the situation in a calm and composed manner, but the truth was I lost it as well and started a whopping argument with my father. I couldn’t phantom why such a simple request for additional details could snowball into a needless fight. It ended with us slamming the phones on each other (or in my case, jabbing the “end call” button on my phone endlessly).

Much later, I tried to figure out why my father got so angry and what I could have done better. I guess that, like me, he was trying to get something that was supposedly simple done, but it had snowballed into a mess due to miscommunication. So my question to my fellow classmates is: what would you have done if you were in my place?

P.S On a rather separate note, it’s day one of the Chinese New Year on the due date of this blog post, so I wish all my friends a happy New Year and many great returns!

First Post for the New Semester

Hello all and welcome to my humble new blog! I'm Jay and I'm a Year 3 Chemistry Major studying in National University of Singapore (NUS) and this is my blog for my module ES2007S - Professional Communication.

Some people have the impression that Science students are poor souls who are holed up in their laboratories the whole time and spend little time outside of their thick textbooks and notes. However, I was lucky to have taken several interesting modules in NUS, such as Interpersonal Effectiveness and Communicating with the Academy and have greatly enjoyed those modules. That’s why I have signed up for ES2007S this semester to meet new people, as well as learn and practice the skills of effective communication.

Personally, I believe that effective communication is an essential “soft-skill” that one must consistently practice to connect better to other people. Unlike subjects such as Chemistry, Mathematics or even History (which often consists of “hard facts”), communication skills are transferrable to many situations – be it in the workplace with one’s supervisors and colleagues or in our daily lives with our family and friends. Great communication skills not only help us to better deliver our messages and achieve common goals, but also help to minimise misunderstandings and conflict, leading to better interpersonal relationships.

This skill-set is not only important to me now, but also essential when I begin work in the Ministry of Education in the future when I graduate. I have to be able to communicate with my supervisors, fellow teachers, parents and most importantly my students to be a capable teacher. I hope that this module will be an enjoyable and meaningful way to learn the principles of Effective Communcation together with my new classmates.