brief Summary for Es2007

Oral presentation:
eye contact
familiar with content(notes and memorising)
hand gesture
objective
confidence
tailoring speech
visual aid(should not replace the speech, just helps to visualise)

interpersonal/intercultural skill
sympathy
understand others
love them
active listening
nonverbal cues
control anger. do not take blame personally.be objective and open to suggestion
the leader is the best communicator
To interact with other team members:
to show that you are one of them
do not judge personally, be objective(eg."this are the things you may adopted...etc". instead of "you are stupid...etc")
common goal

applying jobs
In the employee's shoes
application letter:
format
short but precise. only a introduction
do not repeat resume
make it attractive
resume:
only contain relevent infomation
precise but impactful
inteview:
preparation
mock interview questions
practice

Final reflection on learning

I have learnt many important things from this course. It is so difficult to pick just one to comment on as required by blogging directory. I appreciate every talk, slides, video, and presentation. My friend Dinesh said that he is thankful that es2007 is a core module for engineering student, I cannot agree more. Unlike other modules, I believe everything (literally) I have learnt in this module will benefit me even after graduation. That is why I will write a summary after this post, so that I can come back for revision in the future.

The focus of my development through the course I choose is definitely interpersonal skill. 

Apart from the knowledge, this course also provided great opportunities to interact with different people. This class is formed by different kind of people and each of them is unique. I really appreciate talking to any of my classmates. In this course, we are forced to form teams with different classmates. But the result was unexpected awesome. We practically practiced what we have learnt from the course about interpersonal/intercultural communication.

The group proposal gave us experience working as a team. We have learnt to interact with other team members whom might be from a totally different culture. We had small disagreements often, but because we had the common goal and we tried our best to communicate, everything turned out to be great.

There is this small point Madam Radhika mentioned during class which changed my life. She taught me that the key of interpersonal interaction is to love the person you are talking to. I was so surprise when I heard that.

At the beginning of this course, Madam Radhika asked us what the most important thing in interpersonal communication is. Some people said trust, some people said sympathy, Redonia said humor. My answer to that question is (in business world) both of the parties should have expectation on each other. I believed every conversation should have a purpose (except talking with friends, in which case conversation contains tons of rubbish and usually served no purpose at all).

Actually before this course, I have already realized that there is something wrong with myself. I was the worst ice breaker in the world. I am handicap of starting topics for conversation. I have tried really hard to figure out the reason until I attended that lesson in which I learnt the key of interpersonal communication is to like whom you are talking to. It really changed my world. Uncountable scenes of conversation flashed through my mind and then I realized each time I met someone, I respect them as individual, and that was all. I did not like them (nor hate them, just neutral), therefore I did not try to know them. I did not even try to be friend with them.

I truly believe it is the most important thing that I have learnt from this course. I would like to share it with anyone who is reading this post and hope it will inspire anyone who has similar experience.

I enjoyed every moment with my classmates and Madam Radhika. Thank you.

Reflection on oral presentation

I did my first oral presentation in week 3 for peer teaching. Ever since that, we have learned a lot of oral presentation skills in this course. My teammates and I spent considerable effort preparing and delivering this presentation. I felt proud of us.

Before the actual presentation, we met up to have a dry run. Apart from practicing, we gave suggestions to each other as well. I appreciate their suggestions very much. I would have done badly without their help.

Similar to peer-teaching section, I used to have many animal pictures in my presentation. They pointed out that it is inappropriate because instead of classmates for peer-teaching, the target audience of our proposal is the ODE department. KokWei Arvind and Eyo provided many suggestions to help me modifying the slides to suit our proposal better. I believe the carefully tailored script and slides is one strength of my presentation.

During the speech, I used a personal story to illustrate our group’s concern on transport inefficiency. I think it is another strength of my presentation. Based on what we have learnt from peer teaching, storytelling is appropriate for this situation.

Unlike many of my classmates, I was not able to construct a good speech on the spot without preparation because my logic flow is not in English. During our rehearsal, my teammates suggested that I should write down a script to reduce grammar mistakes. By memorizing the script, I would pay more attention on articulation, hand gestures and eye contact during the presentation. This is another important thing I have learnt and apply.

Although I felt proud of our presentation, there are still many improvements can be done to make my oral presentation more robust.

One of the weaknesses is that, during the presentation, I looked at the notes too frequently. It was the first time I used notes in speech. I made one note for each slides, so during presentation I had more than 20 pieces of them in my hand. Ironically, I had to look at them often to check whether I was on the correct page even if I knew the content. For future presentations, I will only write down necessary information on notes. Instead of the whole script- like it is a math cheat sheet. I will keep it organized, brief and more readable.

Another weakness is that I was nervous, even though my audiences are just my friends. This made me realize that although compared with the first presentation I delivered at the beginning of this course, I am getting much more comfortable and confidence for presentation; I am still very far from a qualified speaker. Es2007 is just a start; I will keep practicing and learning without my friends and Dr Radhika’s help in the future.

Thank you.

Intercultural competence

Since this week’s class I had been questioning myself: what is the appropriate way to show respect to other cultures? If I am in a foreign country, how should I behave? When I meet someone from another cultural background in Singapore, how should I behave? Are these two situations similar? Is there a ground rule for intercultural communications? If there is one, what it is?

I imagined that if I am an Afghanistan whom is meeting someone from other country. He kisses my wife’s hand when we meet. How will I react to that? I probably will fight him right on the spot, because it is such a humiliation to an Afghanistan.

However if the same thing happened outside of my country, I will probably suppress my anger.

Why the differences?

 I realize that there are 2 factors affecting our intercultural behavior.

1.       What do we expect others to do? This affects our reactions to others’ action.

2.       What do others expect us to do? This affects our own action.

In the first case, I expect the guest to know the basic rule in Afghanistan. Even if I know that he meant to greet by kissing my wife’s hand, it is not acceptable because I expect him to follow my country’s custom. If I am abroad, I do not expect people to know and follow my behavioral guidelines. That is why I have different attitudes towards the same behavior.

In some Muslim countries, people are strictly forbidden to eat in public during Ramadan. This is certainly not the case in Singapore. In a multicultural country like Singapore, people respect each other’s habits. When we lower our expectation toward each other, chances of intercultural conflict is reduced. The only way to find out what others’ expectations , is by knowing their culture.

Singapore society is highly modernized. Singapore government effectively built a multiracial, yet harmonic society. Singaporean, especially the younger generation, has relatively unified culture value. I think that is why I survive until now. I do not remember offending anyone culturally, because I may have done that without noticing.

To be honest, I have never really taken a time to study other cultures. I know Chinese culture, because I am a part of it. I have some Muslim friends. I know their habits and values well. But I never have the chance to know other cultures. Apart from these, people from different age groups have different values as well. I know my parents and grandparents well because I have been living with them for 23 years. However other people may be different from them. I have a certain level of knowledge which I have acquired through the years living in Singapore, but actually it may be far not enough.

My strength is I have learned how to communicate effectively. This helps me to reduce the chance of causing misunderstanding. On the other hand, my English capability may be a problem.

 I enjoy talking to other people, men, women, elderlies, kids (well actually not every kid). This is an advantage. I learned dialectics and socialism by myself so that I can talk to my grandfather.  I am open and curious to acquire knowledge of other cultures. To enhance my culturally competence, I will start by learning from my friends from different cultures. When I talk to them, I will start to understand their value and culture, instead of just food or customs.

I have watched significant amount of discovery channel and national geography documentaries. I have read books from lonely planet series. This habit also enhances my intercultural competence indirectly. However, I only read books about places that interest me. I will change that.

Last but not least, the most important rule of communication is respect. From my experience, treating others with respect is the universal safe line of interpersonal relationship.

Good luck to everyone’s mid-term man.All the best.

Application letter

Zhu Wuzhong

addressXXXXXX

Phone Number

Email Address

16Sep2012

(Receiver’s contact infomations)

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing to apply for NUS overseas college programme 2013-2014.

Apart from fulfilling the listed requirements, I am ordinary.

I graduated from Ghim Moh Secondary school, and then finished my A-level in Jurong Junior college. After two years of national service as combat signaler, in 2011 I enrolled into National University of Singapore to study Computer and Electrical engineering. I am currently a year 2 student .By june I will have the required 80 MCs to participate in this program. I am not good at math and physics, but I love programming and building circuits. My CAP is 3.5 for now. Currently I am not involved in any CCA or student society.

My entrepreneurial aspiration is to create smart shops/homes, ideally require minimum man power to operate.

Compare with starting up companies in university years, I prefer to acquire sufficient knowledge before making my own business. I worked as sushi chef for UmiSushi in 2011 summer and sales assistant for NET fashion in 2012 summer. These experiences give me well insights of food and beverage as well as retail industry. By participating NOC programme, I hope to learn entrepreneur knowledge which I thought only can be learned after graduation. That is important to me because by talking to seniors and formal participants I learned that NOC is a once in lifetime opportunity to develop entrepreneur ability. I may learn the knowledge I want quickly, much quicker than any other form of education. That is the reason I know I am not outstanding, yet still taking courage to write this letter.

Following are the reasons for me to believe that I am suitable for this programme.

I am able to adopt into new environment quickly. I am from china Fujian province. I came to Singapore by the age of 15. I have 8 years of overseas study experience, and handled it very well.

By playing different roles as a student, waiter, soldier, chef, sales assistant, project group member etc, I was exposed to thousands of people literally. I have well trained communication skill and interpersonal skills. I got along with different kind of people easily, probably because I am normal as everyone else.

I participate in different projects in NUS, software engineering as well as hardware engineering. I think being a CEG student gives me the advantage that I have both electrical and computer engineering back ground. Companies may need student like me whom has relatively specialistic knowledge in both fields. I am NUS trained for C++ programming, electrical engineering, circuit programming, micro controller programming, C# programming as well as communication skill. The companies may assume that I have sufficient knowledge in these fields.

I am proficient in English and Mandarin.

I am normal. I think this programme may want to include some people like me rather than having a cohort of genius, presidents and vice-presidents. This programme is meant to build entrepreneurs, people like me may be a different test sample, or control group. (just kidding) I am ordinary, but I do satisfy the requirement “strong entrepreneur aspiration”.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to speaking with you.

I can be reached via email at XXX@XXXX.com or 65-xXXXXX.

Yours faithfully

Zhu Wuzhong

Resolving interpersonal conflicts.

Last week, my lab partner A told me a story about himself.

Last semester, A was in a project group with other 3 classmates. One of his group mates B did not participate actively while doing project. He used excuses to delay his submission frequently. As a team, that affected everyone else’s plan. So B was given a lot of pressure.

As the due date getting closer, A got more and more anxious because their project was extremely lagged. A tried to push B to perform better, but B seemed not giving any positive response. One day they had a big quarrel after A accused B for missing group meeting again. B said A did not understand his situation (B was trying to switch course because studying engineering was too stressful for him). The workload assigned to him was too much and he already tried his best.

A did not told me the rest of the story. Luckily, they submitted the project on time at the end, but I can tell that A was still angry at B.

I use this story as an example because I think most of us may have similar experience as a university student. There are a few reasons contributing to this conflict. The first one is both A and B were in a very stressful state. A was pressured because of the due date. B was pressured by A. Therefore the conflict outbroke easily. The second reason is they did not understand each other’s position. When B could not submit his work on time, instead of helping him with his work, the rest of his group mates added more pressure on B. They did not know that B was actually putting in the same amount of effort (or maybe more). The third reason is B did not sound out when he noticed he could not finish the work on time. He affected the whole team because of his self-esteem. That was very selfish.

To solve an interpersonal conflict, staying calm is the first thing we should do. Communication and sense of sympathy are the keys we should use. If I were A, I would ask B whether he needed any help with his work rather than assuming he was too lazy to finish it arbitrarily. If I were B, I would ask for help when I knew I would not finish on time.

For anyone who is reading this post, do you have any similar experience? Were you A or B? What will/did you do in this situation?

 Sorry for the long post.I tried to make it shorter,but the idea was not properly expressed.

Always stay cool.peace.

not cool. cool.