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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.

Effective Intercultural Communication

Effective Intercultural Communication

Effective intercultural communication, for me studying in Singapore, has never been so important since I was born to this world. And to interpret my understanding of intercultural contact, it is quite necessary for me to separate it into two parts as leaving mainland China is a big change for me.

During the past 18 years before I flied to this multicultural country, I was like living in a more single cultural environment if compared to the life here now in Singapore. However, this does not mean that the cultural contexts in China are of merely one group. We indeed have 56 ethnic groups and each of them still maintains their unique and traditional customs as well as their conventions. But actually most of them are minorities and the largest group is Han like me. So it may not be surprising that the mainstream of Chinese culture is a more majority group dominant one. And with the step of world changing, the modern values come to almost everyone and it somehow lead us to form a new common social culture which combines and covers foreign cultures from other parts of the world. Always, when new values come, they always meet and have impact on old ones. So here, in the first part of my understanding, the intercultural communication lays on the local and foreign cultures. A very simple example of this can be the emerging gaps between different generations, which is considered as a result of cultural shock. Take myself as an example, when I thought following the American pop style is quite cool, my parents might not see it the same way as me. Another example can be that traditional Chinese people especially elder generations may regard the communication style used by teenagers as too open and inappropriate. These internal gaps between one nation’s different age groups seem to be unavoidable but I think there is no need to worry too much about this. In order to conduct effective communications with older people, I just need first to identify the common values that we both treasure and then try to focus on it instead of creating conflicts by showing difference. This is actually also a main method in my second part for communicating with foreign culture.

After I came to Singapore, the first thing that changed is the cultural environment. I have become a foreigner to this country. And there is no doubt that the way I was used to communicate is to be modified according to the new context. Not saying more than ten or twenty English word before suddenly changed into using and speaking English every day. So it is obvious that effective communication needs proper English for me in Singapore. And also I need to be open and curious to gain as much knowledge as possible to get accustomed to the local living styles, to achieve which I have been observing the local communication ways and try to follow it. I even took the Singapore study module in the first year to learn more about the country’s history and its perspective of the near and far future and the results turn out to be satisfying and that really helped me a lot although it was sometimes coming with lots of reading materials. During the module, I was required to apply critical thinking skills to analyze and express my own understanding of the social issues face by Singapore. So as a foreign student, I have already tried to view things from another perspective when I went through all the topics related to that module.

To have a summary, studying abroad itself is a way to test and enhance my ability to have effective intercultural communications. And during the past two years, it has become more and more frequently and my understanding still needs to be improved and I am quite confident with it.         

Application letter & Resume

Graduate Coordinator,

Name of the applying university

The United States of America

Dear Sir/Madam

I really desire in pursuing a master degree at Name of the applying university in Artificial Intelligence of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science program. I am currently pursuing the Bachelor of Computer Engineering at National University of Singapore, and my interested area is AI which is also a major branch of specialization of computer engineering.

Being a computer engineer undergraduate, I have achieved much experience and concrete knowledge of both Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, which enhanced me in both academic areas for combining them to build products consisting software and hardware. This is also a strong matching point with the program that I am applying for because they are both a combination of two majors. Computer Engineering is the wisest choice I have ever made. Through intensive and extensive projects during the CEG course, I have built up the solid basis with excellent individual and team performance for my future work and study in deeper and more specialized fields.

I always admire the breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and since I was a young child, movies and stories about robots have motivated me to put a lot of ambitions into my followed life decisions. I have a unique belief, which is that people who still remember their big childhood dream and pursue it are always the happiest and luckiest ones, moreover, the successful ones. If most people are commonly motivated by interests, then it is me myself that motived my interest. If most people are commonly focusing on the requirements and qualifications, then my belief keeps reminding me that children’s dreams do not have a limitation and here comes the possibility for the impossible for my life. Born in China, I have gone through the competitive College Entrance Examination before my turning point. The impossible came when I failed to get the desired major. However, children’s dreams always get a way out. Making up mind and fighting again for the dream won my possibility back. And this is why I am here in Singapore as a scholarship owner, making step-by-step milestones directly pointing to my dream. Thanks to Singapore, I can see the thin band bridging grown-up me and child me growing wider and stronger. And thanks to my dream, I feel the pushing power inside me no more clearly than now when I am writing this letter. Chinese has an old saying “Man struggles upwards, water flows downwards”. For me, dreams are there right in these two sentences.

Name of the applying university is my dream, but dreamers are not always lazy ones. I am a unique dreamer which dream of creating better dreams to motivate more people. I know Name of the applying university needs talents but dream can be talent if it comes a long way far from 10 years ago a young child’s heart. Sincerely thank you for reading this letter. I really hope there is a possibility for me to continue my dream and thank again for your consideration. Please contact me if there is anything else I need to provide. I look forward to communicate with you in the near future.

Yours Sincerely,

Yang Mo 

Address:

Contact:   

YANG MO

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Prince George's Park Residences, #18-2C, 27 Prince George's Park Singapore 118425

ymoctavia111@Yahoo.cn, +65-85809701

EDUCATION

2011 - Present      NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE, Bachelor of Engineering (Computer)

¡  Expected to graduate – June 2014 with 2^nd Upper Honors

¡  Award PRC Undergraduate scholarship for excellent academic performance

2010 - 2011        XIAN JIAOTONG UNIVERSITY

¡  Awarded SM3 Program Scholarship for excellent performance

2007-2010         Middle School Attached To NORTHWESTERN POLYRTECHNICAL UNIVERSITY

¡  Achieved excellent performance in CHINA College Entrance Examination (Top Batch)

WORK EXPERIENCE

2008              SHAANXI YUANGUANG HI-TECH CO.LTD, China

Jul- Sept           Learning Travel, Workflow Management

¡  Learned strategy of factory workflow management and analyzed the efficiency

PROJECTS AND ACHIEVEMENTS

2011  Oct         CS1231(Discrete Mathematics) Module Project (Taxi Dispatch System)

¡  Implemented a research project on “Designing Efficient Taxi Dispatch System Theory”

¡  Gained extensive knowledge of system design and problem solving strategy using Discrete Math

2012  Feb-Apr     Electrical Engineering Project

¡  Implemented a group designing and building project on “Self-Control Line-Tracking Motor Car ”

¡  Gained considerable experience and knowledge of electrical components working theories and great comprehension of electronic physics

¡  Enhanced self-designing and group-implementing skills in basic and complex circuits implementation

2012  Feb-Apr     CEG Hypermarket system design project

¡  Implemented a stock management program on “CEG Hypermarket System”

¡  Gained great knowledge of C++ programming language and considerable experience in system designing and application implementation using Objective-Oriented Language

¡  Enhanced program development skills in team work

2012

Aug- Present        Leader of Software Engineering Project

¡  Designing and developing User Task Management Application(The Lightask)

LANGUAGES AND INTERESTS

¡  Proficient in English and Mandarin.

¡  Keen interest in Chinese modern poetry, essays, and advanced electronic gadgets

Resolving Interpersonal Conflict

Rebecca is a private secretary in an international corporation. Her boss, Mr. Lu, is the president in charge of the company’s branch of Greater China region. Everything went quite normal between them until the night of April 7^th. On that day, Mr. Lu found he had left something important in the office, so he headed back for it. However, when he reached the office’s door, he suddenly realized that his key was not with him and he might have left it in the office. The only thing he could do was asking his secretary for help, which seemed a good solution but later it turned out to be the opposite. It was several hours after Rebecca got off work when Mr. Lu tried to call her for help. Unfortunately, after hundreds of phone calls he still could not get through. Then, several hours passed and all the ways he tried failed. Finally at 1:13 AM, Mr. Lu became so angry that he sent a strongly worded and blunt toned mail through the company’s internal e-mail system to Rebecca, which was also carbon copied to some of the executives. The next morning, when Rebecca received and read the mail, she did not choose to compromise but reply by an even more aggressive mail to her boss. Moreover, she even added all the staff on the cc list of her mail so almost everyone received that and word got spread so quickly that it eventually became a hot issue in the internet.

To this issue, some people said that she was doing the wrong thing because she would definitely lose her high-salary job. Others thought Rebecca was so brave to protect her own rights and they even called her “The Bravest Female Secretary”.

However, for this issue, my point of view is that both of them did not do the right thing in the right way. They did not know how to suppress anger and more importantly they did not know how to resolve the interpersonal conflict at all because I think calming down is very first step to resolve these kind problems. And another thing they failed to do was to stand in each other’s shoes, which is also important but they did not realize this. So, how to solve this problem if you were Rebecca? If I were her, I would just avoid the confrontation with Mr. Lu and wait until he calmed down. It may not be my fault, but to be tolerant and kind is a sign of being broad-minded instead of cowardly. And last but not least, as a secretary, she was required to be patient in all situations, losing which will make herself into trouble.

So, what would you do if you were Rebecca, or Mr. Lu?      

Why effective communication skills are important for me

Effective communication skills are important for me and there could be several following reasons.

First, my schoolmates come from different corners of the world. And as an international undergraduate in such a multi-cultural environment, it requires me to enhance communication skills and learn new ways to get along well with new friends of various backgrounds. To be more precise, effective communication skills are significant in dealing with expected and unexpected situations when my group needs to finish an assignment in time. This kind of internal communicating is also essential for the team integrity and cohesiveness. Nowadays, when companies are competing with each other, the winners always have a strong culture within them and it can be seen as a sign of high cohesiveness.

Second, when a team is selling their ideas, the importance of effective communication arises. Based on the first point, they need to make themselves understood, and even better, remembered by the customers. So, as a potential team member, it is my responsibility to be a good listener as well as a good speaker. Every team member is like a necessary gear for the whole team’s run. There is no excuse for me to stop when everyone is pursuing a bigger win.

Third, effective communication skills can help to reduce the risk and to avoid potential threats. One example is that in the future we may encounter situations where the every single word we use counts. Negotiation needs quite a high standard of this and the real world is full of negotiations. Make no mistake, a good command of effective communication skills will win you more chance.    

These are the most representative reasons that I picked up and it is nonsense if we just know this, we need to make a action.