Oral Presentation

Today our group was the last group to present on our report. Being the last group, I guess I was more nervous as I believe we will be compared with the others group. In addition, I believe more is expected from us. For this reason, I stumbled quite a bit during my presentation. Another reason for this nervousness may be due to the lack of presentation opportunities (my last presentation was during my Junior College days). Therefore, the confidence was not really high during the presentation.

Another area I have to improve on may be to reduce my non-verbal actions. I tend to do these actions to calm myself down and also try to reduce the "tense" atmosphere during presentations. I believe that such actions will be inappropriate during presentations.

Lastly, I believe that during the Q&A session, I should try and help answer some of the questions. Today, I didn't answer many questions because I didn't have the confidence in my answer to each of the questions asked. I did not want to convey the wrong message and undo all the hardwork that my team mates have done during the presentation.

Overall, the presentation is an enriching experience and I am really grateful to be given such a opportunity to display my presentation abilities. Thanks Brad.

And finally, I hope that I will be able to find more opportunities to practice and improve on my presentation skills. I believe having good presentation skills will be beneficial to me in the future.

post #7: Final Reflection

Sigh, we have finally reached the last post that we are supposed to write for this module. If only this was a module that could span for 2 semester, which is impossible in NUS. I personally have learnt alot from ES2007S- verbal, non-verbal, inter-cultural, interpersonal conflict and many more. I have the the confidence to say that throughout this course, I have not only developed some good personal skills, my thoughts have also matured. In addition, my writing and language skills have also improved. And most importantly, I have made many new friends. For all these I have learned, achieved and attained I am very grateful for it.

Reflecting on my first post, I guess I have achieved some of the goals that I have set out for myself.

The first is to open up and learn how to communicate effectively. Throughout the course, I believe my confidence to speak up and talk properly has grew enormously. The need to contribute to the class and Brad's "pushy-ness" helped me in this aspect. Now, I more comfortable when it comes to contributing and communicating in class. On effective communication, I guess I still have room for improvements. I still have to brush up on my sentence formation and structuring when I talk to people. Even though I may not be an effective communicator as of now, I hope that through constant practice I will improve and move closer to being an effective communicator.

On my interpersonal relationship, peer-to-peer communications and work, they have all greatly improved throughout the duration of the course. There is now less conflicts between friends and work get done more effectively. I hope these skills that I learned from the course will help me even more in my workplace, once i enter into the working world.

Last is on being successful. Even though there is still quite some time before real success can be determined, I believe that that there is some success in my personal development. These successes include making new friends, developing more confidence
and many more. So I guess that there is some degree of success achieved from this course.

The final thing that I want to say is that, Brad, you are one of the best teachers that I have since I started schooling (apart from the marking and grading), and I hope that you will continue with what you are doing now and I really hope to attend more courses that you are conducting. Thank You!

And to all my new found friends, good luck to those graduating and hope that we can meet up soon during the holidays. Thanks!

Cheers,
Keldren

Imperfections make the best impressions

An advertisement that is emphasizing the importance of having a family. It also shows how non-verbal communication such as snoring can effectively bring a message across. Very touching advertisement too. Prepare some tissue paper. =D

Post #6: Keldren's Biodata

My name is Loy Xing Zheng Keldren and I was born in Singapore. I am currently an undergraduate in Faculty of Engineering, majoring in Mechanical Engineering.

Prior to NUS, I attended Catholic High School (primary & secondary) and Tampines Junior College. Since my primary school days I was given the opportunities to develop my leadership skills.

In my primary and secondary school days I was chosen as the treasurer and subject representatives (Chinese, Social Studies)for my class. I bore responsibilities such as managing the class fund and ensuring that all instructions from the teachers were followed and carried out dutifully by the class.

Likewise, I was also given the chance to display my leadership skills during my junior college days. I was chosen as the subject representative(economics) of my class and the quarter master of my CCA Wushu. As a quarter master, I had to organize and make sure that all equipments were kept in order for the club.From these opportunities , I have not only developed my leadership skills but also developed the skills of good organization and interpersonal communication skills.

During my junior college days, I was also given the opportunity to develop my research skills. I was chosen to represent my school in a challenge named the DSO-DSTA challenge where we were supposed to develop a new product that would be beneficial to mankind. We had to plan and research(literature review,experiments interviews, etc.) to find a suitable area where our product can focus on. The challenge taught me the skills such as writing of proposal and laboratory research, but most importantly it taught me the importance of working as a team and how to work as a team.

After junior college, I was enlisted to serve National Service(NS). During NS, I managed to lose 40kgs and attained the rank of corporal, marksmanship and silver for IPPT. All these were possible only through sheer will, fighting spirit and determination that I have developed within myself during NS.

After NS I took up a few part-time administrative jobs. These jobs honed my skills in not only documentation using Microsoft Office, but also liasing with people or companies, publicity and event planning. Moreover, through the part-time jobs I have also developed the skills of organization and proper time management.

Having been in the university for about 2 years, I have not only enhanced my laboratory research skills also but also developed an analytical mind to solve problems- developed through laboratory experiments and research projects. Additionally, through group works and research projects, I have also learnt how to work better as a team. I understood that different people have different beliefs and values, hence in order to work properly as a team properly, I have to understand and make compromises for these differences. In university, I have also learned how to use Solidworks, which is a graphic design application for engineers and I got an A for it. My interest for Solidworks has since grown.

Recently, I have developed strong interests in finance, material sciences and astrophysics. Therefore, I plan to specialize in material science in the later half of my university days.And upon graduation, I hope to find a career which will allow me to embark on the road of researches and explorations with an engineering firm, as I believe it will not only help broaden my horizon but also give me the opportunity to help others with some of my researches. In addition, I also hope to pursue my other interests either through further studies or self-exploration in the future.

Lastly, I hope that the skills I have nurtured, my preferred career path/objectives and interests which I plan to pursue in the future, will help not only in my quest to be a better person, but also people around me.

P.S: Edited after feedbacks from friends =D

Post #5: Hitler - one of the greatest communicator of the 20th century

Adolf Hitler, is most often remembered for his atrocities such as the antagonist responsible for starting the second World War and the massacre of 6 million Jews during the war.

However, not everyone realize that he was actually one of the best practitioner of effective communication in the 20th century. Utilizing his charm and effective communication, Hitler managed to unite the whole of Germany to embark down the road to War.

Here is one of his greatest speeches: Triumph of Will


Look at the way he delivered this speech. He delivered this speech with lots of emotion and passion, as can be seen from his facial expression. In addition, he also effectively made use of body language to help convey his message across.

It is my guess that from the way he delivered his speech, people saw confidence in Hitler. Through Hitler's speech people of Germany found hope and they believed that Hitler was the one to lead Germany to glory.

To date, there are not many people that is able to communicate as effectively as him. The closest we have to date is Barrack Obama. The video below is his inauguration address.


As we can see, there are many similarities between Obama and Hitler, effective use of emotions and body language to bring messages across. Both of them made use of effective communication to make people believe in them, to make people place their hopes on them.

I do hope that through years of practice, I will be able to be as good an effective communicator as them.

Post #4: Evaluating Intercultural Behavior

Before I start the post I have to say that in this post I am not being prejudice or "nationalist". If I offend anyone with this post please let me know thank you. This incident happened to my friend in NUS about 2 to 3 weeks ago.

My friend was in the central library on Saturday rushing his report which was due in a few days time. He has been slogging it out for about 7 hours since 9 am.

At around 4pm, feeling tired he went to the restroom to freshen up. As he was only going to be away for a short duration, he left his laptop and belongings on the table and went to the restroom.

When he returned he realised that his laptop had switched off by itself. He was shocked as it was still switched on when went to the restroom. He then found out what went wrong. The socket that he was using had an extra user and the socket had been turned off so that it could be shared; his lap top's battery was not attached to the laptop when the socket was turned off.

He immediately turned on his laptop to check if his work was still present. To his horror it was no longer there as it has not been saved. Fueled with anger, he went forward to confront the user sharing the socket with him. The user was a Chinese national; my friend, disgusted by the person's action started quarreling with him.

His reason for quarreling with the Chinese national was that, he had not asked the friend of mine if it was possible to share the socket with him. He had assumed that it was fine to just turn off the socket as everyone had batteries within their laptops.

I guess I will leave the confrontation to every one's imagination. After the incident my friend developed a very bad impression of these Chinese nationals, and had to re-type his report.

On first impression, most people will see this as a conflict because of a lack of basic courtesy. However to me I see this incident as an inter-cultural conflict between Chinese nationals and Singaporeans. From my observations and experience, most of the Chinese nationals tend to keep within their own group and they hardly talk to any Singaporeans. Many of never had a chance to immerse themselves into the Singapore culture when they arrived in Singapore. They do not know much of the Singapore and may have assumed that when you require anything from someone, as long as it doesn’t cause any problems for the party it is ok not to ask. I personally have saw quite a few incidents such as this in NUS, such as taking up empty seats of the without asking the first occupant of the bench. Therefore incidents such as this are bound to happen. I guess more interactions between Singaporeans would be a good way to reduce such conflicts.

Personally if I was a foreigner in a country, I would first find out the culture and customs of the country as it would help reduce conflicts and misunderstandings between the locals. Most importantly practice basic courtesy when in doubt. If everyone practices basic courtesy, I guess such conflicts can too be reduced.

Post #3 : Correspondence Critique

I received the following email about a month ago. It was to promote some upcoming events organized by an organization in NUS. The email is as follow (names of the sender and society has been removed):

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject-FW: E week event

I am from Nus *********** Society. There are two events this week for FOE and SOC students from our society. Could you please help me to forward the email to your course students. Thank you very much.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Enabling Entrepreneurship on the Web

e27 is proud to bring you "Enabling Entrepreurship on the Web"- an event focused on how you can make use of tools and services online to start your own company or bring your current business to new heights. Featuring speakers from Microsoft who will share their personal entrepreneurship experiences, and the resources available to help entrepreneurs create new age web companies.
Date & Time: Friday, 23 January 2009, 12:00 — 14:00
Location: SOC1 SR4 (level 6 room 12) (opposite Science)
Registration Deadline: Friday, 23 January 2009



An Entrepreneur's Path

Organization: Garag3
Speakers are specially invited to share their experiences on how to start, sustain and grow their business. Don't miss this event if you want some inspiration to start your own business.
Date & Time: Friday, 23 January 2009, 15:00 — 17:00
Location: E3-06-09 NUS Faculty of Engineering
Registration Deadline: Friday, 23 January 2009
Speakers are specially invited to share their experiences on how to start, sustain and grow their business. Don't miss this event if you want some inspiration to start your own business.
Date & Time: Friday, 23 January 2009, 15:00 — 17:00
Location: E3-06-09 NUS Faculty of Engineering
Registration Deadline: Friday, 23 January 2009

************
Hp: ********
Events Executive
The NUS ********** society
www.***.org.sg

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I guess the most obvious flaw to this email is that it is a forwarded email. To me using a forwarded email to get participation from people is very insincere. It lacks the "sincerity" that you would feel when someone approach you for a favour or something. I guess not much can be done as of now as all emails to different faculties have to go through higher authority before they can be decimated. I believe what the forwarder should at least do is to delete the request details at the top of the email. Thereafter, include a salutation and a brief description of the organized events by the organization; at the end of the email, include a proper closing such as "best regards, NAME".

Now for the detail of the email. First, the request email did not include a proper closing with it; Closing such as "yours sincerely" and

Now on the detail of the email. First of all there is a spelling mistake of entrepreneurship. Next the part on "the resources available to help entrepreneurs create new age web companies", is difficult to understand. Did they mean "resources" such as offices, capitals and manpower? Or did they mean grants and help in setting up a company? In addition, what is new age web companies? Most people will not have any idea what is that at all.

Next, there is no detail about how to register for the events. All is there is when and where will the event be held. If one is interested, how is he able to register for it.

Lastly, there is repeated details on the 2nd event. This will result in confusion when reading the email.

In conclusion, this email has not take into consideration the 7Cs of writing when it was written.

Post #2.5: update on post 2

Hey people just an update on post #2. I did what you guys have recommended. I guess it helped in some sense, at least i got her talking to me through smses using the mobile phone. I guess it did help when i apologized before i engage in a conversation with her. She told me there was nothing wrong now and we can remain as friends.

Maybe she has got her problems solved. Now all i can hope for is that it will last that way. Thanks all! =D

Post #2 : Resolving Interpersonal Conflict

This interpersonal conflict happened during my 1st year in NUS.

I guess this so called "friendship" started during my first ever tutorial class in NUS. I didn’t know anyone from the class and my current pool of friends are quite limited. Therefore, prior to the class I told myself that I should make more friends. Hence, I entered the class and saw that there was only 1 girl in the room. I went forward and introduced myself to her. We sat together and chatted during the class (ok I was talking about work and the tutor, not random stuffs).

After tutorial we exchanged phone number, and we started talking. From the conversation I realised that she didn't know anyone in the same course as her, and she often sat alone. I told her that she could sit with me and my groups of friends if she didn't mind and she gladly accepted the offer. I introduced her to my friends, and we all sat together enjoying each other's company in lecture and tutorial. We became very close friends talking about nearly everything under the sun.

However, this lasted only up till the end of the semester. For the next semester, even though we still sat together, something was amiss; she no longer chatted and withdrew from me. I asked her why and she just replied: "nothing" for most of the time, and if I probed more, she would flare up and scold me. After a few months, she decided to go back to sitting alone. I didn't ask her why anymore as I feared that I would strain our relationship more.

Now, I no longer talk to her. I tried saying "hi" whenever I see her but she just ignores me. Up till now, I still have no idea what has happened, I can only think of a few possible causes.

One reason is that something may have happened in her family that caused her to withdraw. Another reason may be due to me being too close to her, she wasn't comfortable with it . The last reason that I can think of is that I have offended her in some ways without me knowing.

Right now, all I want is to keep this friendship, as she was the first new friend I know from NUS. Is there any way that I can keep this friendship? Is there a way that will help me to get her to open up? Also, right now I even have a problem trying to talk to her, can anything be done to solve this?

Non-verbal communication?

Ok, so it is the Chinese Lunar New Year, most chinese family will go visiting. It is at this time that many of us may only see some of our relatives for this very time and never see them again for the rest of the year. Even though we have not seen them for a very long time, everyone seems to be trying to get along especially at the mahjong table or gambling area. Why is that so? Is it due to the fact that gambling allows one to interact non-verbally just using simple gestures, such as the way they see cards, pick up tiles, their expressions ? Do we classify this as non-verbal communication?

#1 :Why the need for me to develop effective communication?

What does effective communication really mean? When one search over the internet for the definition, more than 10 pages of results will be generated; so which of them is the correct definition of effective communication? I personally think that there is no correct definition. All of the definitions contain the essence of effective communication; that is the transmitting and exchanging of information between people or organizations in a clear and concise way, using both verbal and non-verbal methods. This is the general definition of effective communication that most people perceive, including me.

Why is developing effective communication important to me? Below are some of the reasons why I feel so.

For a decade, I was in a boy school (because it was catholic high school primary & secondary). Within the school there was not much avenues for me to open up and develop my communication skills. In addition, being overly sheltered by my father, I was not given much chance to develop my communication skills be it in school or at home (presentations in projects, phone call enquiries, etc). As such I was not able to open up to people properly and often felt uncomfotable when I am required to do any tasks that involves interaction and communication (side effect of poor communication skills?). It was only after I went to JC and NS, did I began to open up to others and learnt the importance of effective communication. I told myself: “Only when you are able to communicate effectively, then will life be smooth-sailing and successful.”

What does smooth-sailing and successful really mean to me?

In work or school, being able to communicate effectively will save you from a lot of troubles, be it from your fellow group mates, bosses or clients. In work or school, effective communication enables all available information to "flow" from one to another in a clear and complete manner; you would know everyone’s idea, what are their goals and expectations. Clients or even schoolmates will be able to understand what you are trying to bring across. This will not only make work progress smoother, and conflicts can be minimized and resolved more easily. Likewise, being able to communicate effectively allows one to have a clear "grip" on what is going on in your workplace or school projects. As quoted from the picture below, you would not be happy in your job if you do not have any ideas about what is going on at all. Hence, life will be more smooth-sailing, as conflicts are kept on check and work can get done at a faster and more efficient pace. Therefore, everyone should learn how to COMMUNICATE EFFECTIVELY!!!!

Effective communication helps in relationship with people too. When meeting new friends, simple gestures such as a handshake or a smile, make one feel closer to you, even if they have just met. In maintaining of friendship and interpersonal relationship, effective communication plays a very important role; being able to listen to your friend’s problems attentively and providing meaningful solutions is a form of effective communication too. Your friends will feel that they are being cared for and they will enjoy your presence. Likewise, to maintain a close relationship with your loved ones, effective communication is required. Talking and working out differences with each other when conflicts arise, showing non-verbal gestures such as a hug or a kiss tells each other that they are being loved. All these are effective communications that can help maintain a long and loving relationship with the ones you love.

Okay this is one of the most important reasons for me to develop my effective communication skill that is being SUCCESSFUL! There are many people that are successful as they have mastered the art of effective communication. Just take a look at the 44th American President Barack Obama, who is skilled at effective communication. No one would have thought that an African American will become the leader of a superpower nation United States of America, especially when he does not have much political experience. In the past, African Americans were regarded as people of lower society status and were segregated from the White Americans. One would ask how he had achieved such a phenomenon feat? I would believe that he achieved it through effective communication. He was able to bring across his ideas, thoughts, and what he hopes for the nation to the people of America, in a clear and effective way. The way he talked to people, his actions made people believe that he was the one for America, the one to lead America out of her current crisis.

In conclusion, the reason behind me developing effective communication is very simple, that is to be successful and make life better for everyone around me. Cheers!!!

Last edited:
January 27th 2009 12:19 AM, Reason : To change sentence structure and make it more understandable =D ... happy CNY all