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.