Critical Reflection on SEM2902

Throughout the course, the key takeaways that have impacted me would be learning the verbal and non-verbal communications. I believe learning these is the most essential necessity for effective listening. Effective listening can come in many aspects, but the for this post, it would be focused to our group project, effective listening within the family. Effective listening within the family is a very important topic as everyone will definitely face it at some points in their life.

Our group has found out that there are barriers that hinder effective listening within the family and have agreed to this 3 main key points to them. They are; ego, status within the family and failure to understand which was presented in our slides during the presentation day. We feel that these 3 points are the most important keys that hinders effective listening within the family. Firstly, ego works in a way a person's self esteem is more higher importance than listening to others. In a way, when a person were to speak another in a family, their ego would hinder effective listening. Secondly, status within the family is where the money-maker in the family would demand the others in the family to follow his demands. For example, if he/she were to demand the son/daughter to be a nurse, she/he is expected to be a nurse without any obligations. Lastly, failure to understand is where within a family, a person fails to understand or misinterpret what the other party is trying to say. Working on these 3 skills would help to improve effective listening within the family.

Within this project, it has taught me the importance of effective listening within the family. Quite often, these small issues are often neglected as they are seen to be useless or for my case, I am usually not around at home often. With that, i feel that one should adopt or improve these skills at home so as to be a effective listener within the family. I admit that i am always not around at home. Therefore, in the future whenever i have the time to be at home, i will put in a little bit in more effort for effective listening by taking note of the 3 key points listed out by our group and to use understanding of verbal and non-verbal communications.

Finally, i would like to reemphasize that effective listening is a very important topic for everyone, especially within the family as they are the few people that you would see everyday. Regardless if they are around or not, your family are the ones who are always there for you. Thus, i feel that the key takeaways from this project is to not only improve your effective listening for other aspects in life, but within the family as well.

Thank you for the time and effort for reading this blog. With that, i shall end my blog.

Critical Reflection on Project Learning

The topic that my team and I had chosen for our project is Effective Listening while resolving conflicts within the family. The focus for this post would be on my oral presentation skills.

I was the first to present in my team and to elaborate on the introduction on our topic. When I present, I would usually display a picture or two to the audience. This will in tend grasp their attention and make them ponder and guess on what the topic I would be presenting. This is one of the skills that I picked up on the module Composition during last trimester. Saying said so, the only time that I recalled presenting to the class was only last trimester during the module and once during the mock presentation this trimester. 

In the module interpersonal and workplace communication, one of the key things that I have learnt is verbal and non-verbal communication. I believe this is an important topic to be covered during the module. It helps us to improve on active listening, interpreting verbal messages and read their non-verbal. This is somewhat similar to the group project that my team has presented. Relating back to the presentation that I have given last Friday, I feel that I may have actually done some wrongs during the mock presentation.

During the mock presentation, the feedback that I received were that I may have actually dragged my presentation by repeating the same points so as to make it seem longer. At the same time, I was constantly seen checking my watch which was seem to be a distraction to the audience. These are where the verbal and non-verbal communication comes into play. For verbal communication, I was constantly repeating the same points to the audience which was a distraction. To me, I thought I was reemphasizing my points, but to the audience, it was seen as a distraction as I was constantly repeating them. For my non-verbal communications, I was constantly checking my watch which was also a distraction to the audience. I have to agree on this one as they may think that I am time-oriented, who cares about the time. These are the takeaways for to improve myself and be prepared for the final presentation.

On the final presentation, I could say that I’ve improved a bit. I made sure I was not reemphasizing on the same points over and over again. And also importantly, improve on my non-verbal communications by maintaining eye contacts to the audience instead of my watch instead. The only flaw this time was that I may have dragged the time too long for the audience instead by exceeding the time limit of 5 minutes and at the fact that I was pretty nervous. Some may have not noticed it but I’m sure Brad has noticed my nervousness. I believe I should improve myself in this aspect in order to improve myself for any future presentations.

During this module, I’ve learnt that I could improve myself once I get feedback from people. Constant feedback from people enhances my learning and also the ability to improve myself. Moreover, by applying what I have learnt during this module such as verbal and non-verbal communication can come in handy for any presentations or communication as not everyone is the same thus, different people may react differently when communicating. Lastly, I may lack confidence during presentations. Having mentioned all those points, I believe feedback, verbal and non-verbal communications and confidence are the few key takeaways that could be useful in the future.

In the future, I should take all of the key takeaways that I have mention to improve myself in terms of presentation wise. Those feedback that I’ve received will be forever remembered for me and to evaluate myself so that I would not repeat any of the flaws. Putting aside feedback, I should learn to better judge myself when presenting and to look at people’s verbal and non-verbal communications. By judging this, I would be able to know when to stop so as to not bore the audience. Finally, I should practice more on my verbal presentations so that I could be more confident for future presentations.

I appreciate the time and effort you read this post of mine. With that, I shall end my post.

Re-edited 17/4/2016