#Reflections

I have decided to end of my last post with a short reflection of ES2007S. This module has certainly impacted me and laid grounds for my future experiences in the workforce. Personally, the most significant lessons were on effective communication. Beforehand, I felt communication should be a natural tendency for all. However, during the module, I discovered certain aspects of communication which I have never though about. This gave structure to the lifeskill, and made me appreciate that connection built between 2 parties should not be taken for granted. On top of that, the gap between different generations and how both sides need to accustom to one another was a fantastic take home point.

Next, I would like to talk about how awesome my group mates have been! Both during peer-teaching and the written proposal. Due to time constrain, we had to work efficiently and maximize the the precious time we had together. For our written proposal, we actually met at 730pm on a saturday night (& it was pouring)! Honestly, although we all made sacrifices, none of us actually complained & used the few hours to complete what we had to do. I was really happy with how the proposal turn out (:

Finally, I would really like to thank RJ for conducting this entire module really well! A mixture of presentations, class room interactions worked out really well. What made this class even better were the students themselves! I felt everyone were really friendly and make effort to participate in any way they can.

cheers to es!

Yi Bei

#5 Oral Presentation Evaluation

The oral presentation was definitely a good way to end of the module. It summaries all that we have learnt during the 12 weeks, including a formal presentation and the project my team has been working on.

Before the presentation

Our group divided the workload into the different sections that we were working on, so this made it easier for us to prepare for the presentation. Since the main issue of discussion was low fertility and birth rates in Singapore, I hope that the entire presentation will be an interesting topic to the audience themselves. More importantly, I made a mental note to myself to keep my presentation formal yet not too rigid and keep the audience enthusiastic throughout the entire time.

To start preparing for it, I started working on my script and then the powerpoint slides. As mentioned by RJ, good presentations are to the point and able to connect directly to the audience. I kept a constant reminder that my presentation should be short and concise, and only the significant points should be explained. Since the duration of the speech was relatively short, I attempted to memorize my speech.

During the presentation

I was the last speaker of my group and had to round up the entire presentation. When i started speaking, I was rather nervous and had to make a good effort to keep my thoughts together. However, after the first 2 slides, I felt more at ease and confident speaking. I was excited to introduce both of my solutions to the audience. I constantly reminded myself to be excited about pitching my solutions to the audience and not worry about what I had to say. This was definitely a good method stay focused and increase the fluency of my speech.

During the conclusion, I gave an adequate summary on what each of my group member has done.

Personal thoughts

I felt that I could be slight more fluent in my speech and perhaps include some pertinent questions that I could ask the audience to keep them engaged. I was kind of in a dilemma on the formality of the presentation, as I understand that the 'audience' was a combination of students and NUS staff, while in actual fact that audience were my own classmates.