Final Reflection on Learning

It is hard to believe that my first semester of second year passed so soon. I can still remember the first day when I first introduced myself to the whole class. In my memory, the two hours of every Tuesday and Friday were the happiest time in the whole semester. Although I actually felt nervous before each presentation and struggled a little bit for my application letter, all my experience in this course is very valuable for me and to be honest, I really love to see all of you laughing so happily in the class discussion.

To look back into my progress throughout this course, I made most improvements on my presentation skills, which was always my weak point. Speaking before a group of people indeed needs a lot of skills as well as plenty of practice. However, without confidence it is impossible for a presenter to make a good presentation. For me, although have been here for 2 years, I have not experienced many English presentations before. So as a result, preparing a presentation was a challenge for me in the beginning of this course, but luckily with the support and help from all of you, I finally gained enough confidence to overcome my shyness and fear with my presentation.

Through the dry run, I learnt the importance of coordinating with my teammates. For the slides, I prepared for a whole night to make the ppt beautiful. However, the slides turned out to be wordy and they did not match well with others’ parts. After that, I realized that I needed to adapt myself into the whole team and try to contribute to the smooth flow of the team presentation. So for my peer teaching, I tried to go through others’ content first and then build connections among their parts and mine. After the rehearsal as a team for the peer teaching, I stayed in the room and kept practicing the presentation once and once again. The results actually turned out to be much more satisfying than the dry run but my nonverbal skills were affected a lot in the peer teaching by reciting the content that I prepared a lot before.  I did not pay much attention to my hands’ position and the way I stood towards the audience because my mind was fully taken control by the content that I was supposed to present. As a result, my gestures looked unnatural and my hand had nowhere to be put except my pocket.  Then after the previous two presentations, I finally understood better how to prepare and present. So for my final presentation, I did not write a script and memorize it but just talk to myself in a story telling way about the content everyday. And I also tried to cut the length of the sentences in my slides to make them simple and make myself not rely on the slides too much. Finally when the time came, I was still nervous but I felt more confident than before and although a little unexpected problem happened during our presentation, I managed to handle my pressure well and the result turned to be satisfying to me.

In a nutshell, the three presentations in this course helped a lot on making progress on my presentation skills. However, I still have a long way to go and there is no reason to stop. Once again, it is my honor to meet all of you in this course and sincerely thank you for all the help and encouragements. 

Reflection on the oral presentation

After this final presentation, I really think I have learned a lot throughout the whole semester’s course. For a non-native English speaker like me, presenting in front of a group of people used to make me feel scared and worried. I can still remember the first peer teaching dry run which I referred a lot to the slides. However, for this final presentation, I improved from previous presentations.

First, for my work in terms of preparation, in the beginning I tended to prepare in the same way that I used before for the previous presentations, which was writing a script and trying to memorize it. However, this time, I changed the method. I started by telling myself what our team is going to propose when I am free and tried to make it clear. As a result, instead of reciting the proposal content, I found it manageable to explain my part in different ways based on knowing the context well. So although there was some problem with the clicker when I was doing the presentation, I made it without feeling nervous.

Second, for my delivery, I think I still need to make improvements on the pronunciation and the articulation of my spoken English. Actually, sometimes it is a little difficult for me to pronounce certain words correctly but I will be keeping practicing on that in the future. Moreover, this time, I did not put my hand in the pocket but I think I still had some distraction postures which I need to improve in the future.

Third, for the visual assistance in my slides, I used the video that found when I was doing research for our project, which I found really heart-touching as well as closely related to our proposal. I think it was a little success in winning the audience’s heart and avoiding making them feel bored. However, to improve the whole presentation of our team, next time, I will consider more about inserting the video in the best position of the whole team presentation.

In a nutshell, I made my improvements in the final presentation and also learnt a lot during the team work. To make more progress in the future, I must keep moving on.