Review on ES2007

The module equipped me with many useful skills including presentation skills, teaching skills, communication skills as well as interpersonal skills, Frankly speaking, I took a very long time to overcome my mental challenge in taking this module. English is always my weakness and I am lazy in remembering the vocabularies and learning grammar of English. I always believe that the best way to master a language is to practice it in the real life.

However, I have to admit that I have trained myself English for over 4 years, I felt my English is improving in a very slow progress. Thus, I felt that a module which could train my English language skills such as communication skills is very necessary for me currently. As a result, I decided to choose ES2007S.

After taking up this module, it turned out that taking an English module would not be always boring or tough; at least this class did not leave any impression like that. The class was very interesting and interactive. Dr Radihka will always deliver the knowledge to us humorously. The atmosphere of class would always be harmonious and many interesting videos and stories was shown and told to us in class. I felt like the knowledge of communication skills was taught to me subconsciously from various channels. Unlike any other modules, the lecture notes were only used as a guide in class instead of the essential teaching material. Many kinds of communication skills were taught to students via many practical exercises such as peer teachings, group discussions or formal presentations. With the help from lecturer and classmate, I was able to review the flaws in my presentation skills and other forms of communication skills. Be aware of all those flaws will help me do much better in the daily communications.  Besides the communication skills training, the module also introduced us very useful job-seeking skills such as interview skills, resume writing trick and application letter writing technique. Armed with all these skills relief the pressure on me of looking for job, meanwhile, it increased my confidence and helped me pass through many rounds of interviews.  All in all, this module is amazing in improving my communication skills. It actually has achieved in changing students from passive learners into self-initiated learners and make students highly participated in the class. I have to say this module really is my best choice among my 4 years biding history.

However, there are just my own suggestions on the class. As I am year 4 students, taking this module in semester two, therefore, I may encounter the problem that the career fair was organized in February which was the beginning of the semester and all the soft-skills required were only taught to us in the middle or late part of the semester. Therefore, maybe the module could change the sequence of content teaching in order to help year 4 students in dealing with all job-finding situations. Furthermore, as Dr Radihka mentioned that the networking skills is not included in the current syllabus, but I personally feel that the networking skills is very important in job-finding especially NUS now will hold up several networking event for students such as suit up, thus it is essential to know how and what students could talk with their future employers.  Therefore, giving more practices to students about how to network with your potential future employer is quite necessary during the course.

Lastly I would like to express my gratitude to all my classmates for your encouragements and suggestions, they really means a lot during my studies and I want to specially thank all my teammates, Denial, Jennifer and Selena, thank you all for the understanding and helping me in my English. I know how hard to edit my written English, thank you all for the great help and all the efforts you guys put in. Lastly, I want to show my greatest gratitude to Dr Radihka, thank you very much for the encouragements from the first day until now and you always are patient in offering me help and answering all my questions regardless how lame my questions were. You are really an awesome teacher and I truly appreciated to have you as my teacher.

Review on my oral presentation skills

Before reviewing my presentation skills, I watched several TED speeches. One of the speech made by a North Korean speaker strike me the most. Although I have to say, she is not so proficient in speaking English. She was telling us the story of how she escaped from North Korea with her obvious Korean accent. However, I was touched by her story and impressed by the way of her presenting. She stood on the stage still, talked with the moderate speed and delivered her story naturally, confidently with all her feelings. From the speech, I start to review my oral presentation skills.

As getting the feedback from my classmates and Dr. Radhika. The first problem in my presentation skills is I was talking too fast when I was presenting. One of the reasons of I am talking fast may be I am speaking in a fast path in Mandarin, when I speak another language, I have the intention to speak it as fast as the path in my Mandarin speaking. Furthermore, I naively believed that when I am talking fast, people will only catch my critical words and do not pay attention on my grammar mistakes or other defects while I am speaking English. Nevertheless,   I forgot to consider when I am talking fast, I am not able to pronounce each single vocabulary clear. It is very frustrated when you know someone is presenting in English, but you do not understand what he is saying, as all the words are sticked to each other and each pronunciation is blurry and you have to put a lot of efforts in guessing the content of his speech.  Hence, I will slow down my path of speaking and pronounce every word correctly and clearly  during the presentation. 

Another problem in my presentation is that I could not articulate a sentence concisely with my limited vocabularies and grammar background. Thus, it is inevitable that the repetition of the words using will be revealed in my presentation.  Hence, in order to overcome such difficult, I will try to extend my vocabularies meanwhile, to learn the basic grammar and how to connect words together fluently. Once my English background is adequate enough to handle the daily conversation. I am confident that I can have a better articulating sentences during the presentation 

Lastly, I believe I am still doing something good during the presentation. I would like to look at my audience during the presentation, as I hope to get the feedback from their facial expressions. My voice projection should be my strength in my presentation since I learnt how to project my voice to the last row of audience when I was performing in a Chinese Drama. 

In conclusion, the audience would can have eye contacts with me during my presentation. They can hear me as well, but with a fast path talking speed. Although some sentences were not constructed naturally and they may be sounded oddly sometimes, the point of my delivery can still be received by audience. These not-well structured sentences would not affect the presentation too much. To sum up, there will be a lot things I need to work on in future, meanwhile, I need to secure all strengths in my presentation skills, then improve all the weaknesses we have mentioned. I am sure with more efforts input, my presentation skills will be getting better and better.      

This is the website of escape from North Korea

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdxPCeWw75k
I also attach another link which introduced how a chinese PHD become a one of famous talk show actors--Huang xing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buSv1jjAels

Evaluating intercultural Behavior

1.     Knowing them. To get into their culture background, to talk with them, standardize common rules in communication. To show your efforts and dedications in trying to know them and willing to talk with them.

2.     Non-verbal communication is intensively used in intercultural communication if the people involved in the communication not knowing each other’s language. 

These two points are the essential to the effectiveness of intercultural communication. There is a scenario as follows to illustrate how to conduct an effective intercultural communication.

I have been travelled to Europe last year, English is widely used in Europe however, in some countries like Italy or Span, and English is not so common used. Sometime when I get lost in the City, we have to ask the local people for the direction. Nevertheless, people on the street and usually busy, only the elderlies were willing to help us. Thus how to conduct a effective communication with the elderlies is our biggest obstacle since them are normal weak in English, some of them even barely know a single word. So we actually use the map as our tool to communicate with the elderly and I try to use English instead of Chinese to communicate with her, this is because English is the more similar language to their language and they may find something, which is common between their language and English. Body language and drawing really help a lot in this conversation and I will always keep smile on my face. The smile is very critical too because most of European think Asian people are always very serious and hard to approach, so a smile actually means we are friendly and we really want your help. At the end of the conversation, I bowed to her for showing our gratitude instead of hugging her. Although hugging is more common in their culture, but as they have the stereotype of Asian people and they will feel comfortable to receive a bow instead of a hug from Asian.

application letter

2012/12/22

Yue Yinglong
1A Kent Ridge Road 119224 Mobile: 85154100
Email: yueyinglong@gmail.com
Application for APAC Management Program in Ralph Lauren

Dear Hiring manager :

I am writing to express my interest as a trainee in Ralph Lauren APAC Management program. I am expected to graduate from National University of Singapore (NUS) with a 2nd upper Class Honours in Electrical Engineering in May 2013, I am keen to start my career with Ralph Lauren because it is one of the best-known fashion design and licensing houses in the world. It also recently acquired Ralph Lauren to further its business initiatives and continuous expansion of its influence in the Asia Pacific region. I am intrigued by its active involvement in sustainability development programs and community engagement that looks beyond business gains. I would love to be part of this global organization.

Although as an engineering graduate, I have a strong passion on the luxury lifestyle retail business. I have honed my organizing skills through the various volunteering projects I have undertaken. I was involved in a service-learning program held by Ministry of Education that requires me to organize a Chinese Culture Camp for over 100 students from different communication centers. As a event leader, I led a team of 12 and successfully introduced students about the distinctive Chinese culture in multiple aspects such as music, comestible, handicraft etc.

During my work experience with DBS bank Singapore,  In order to deal with the less efficiency of our promotion. I proposed a modification, which suggested that instead of working individually, we should work together as a team and have different specializations for each individuals according to their advantages.  The proposal was accepted by the team leader immediately. The promotion efficiency was significantly improved and created the highest sale record among 4 days’ promotion. This working experience gave me the opportunity to work with people from all levels where I learnt interpersonal and negotiation skills.

In additional to attaining a strong academic result, I am actively involved in co-curricular activity. I was the co-founder and vice captain of Titans cheerleading team overseeing a group of over 70 members in NUS Together with my team, we organized successful performances at both the  NUS inter-hall game closing ceremony as well as the Torch hand-over ceremony of Youth Olympics in 2010. We received overwhelming positive feedback from the audience.  We were invited to perform in more platforms such as NUS Open House, Delta League opening ceremony. I am confident that all my skills and knowledge acquired in NUS will put me in a good position to excel with Ralph Lauren.

Thank you for your time to review my application. I enclosed my resume for your consideration. I look forward to a face-to-face interview with you to discuss my suitability for this position. I can be contacted at 85154100 or yueyinglong@gmail.com at your convenience.
Yours sincerely, 
Yinglong 

Resolving Interpersonal Conflict

Human is an intelligent animal that normally uses their own way to solve problems and not depend on someone else, however, when their thoughts regarding how to solve problems do not match, it gives rise to conflict between people. I will illustrate a real interpersonal conflict situation in the following paragraph.

I am involved in King Edward VII Hall basketball team. Basketball as a team sport, it requires the members in the team to work closely with each other and to achieve the same goal, which is to win the game. Therefore, some conflicts may be raised when the teammates are using different ways to approach to that goal. During one of our friendly matches, a conflict raised between our team captain and another player we call him CH here. Before the game began, captain announced the strategy for the offense in the game. However, CH spotted a major defect in this strategy which would make offense less inefficient. Instead of voicing out his suggestions on strategy, CH chose to ignore the strategy and played in his own way. His behaviors caused a big confusion in cooperation in offensive side. During the time out, CH could not tolerate the blames from the captain and finally pointed out the defect of the strategy, whereas, the suggestion from CH now was only regarded as an excuse for why he did not follow the strategy and was not accepted by the captain at all. CH had been substituted and due to the defect in strategy, we were lack of efficient ways to score which resulted that we lost game.  

In this situation, interpersonal conflicts were caused by three faults made by CH. Firstly, He ought to state the defect of the strategy while captain announcing it immediately, then all team members are able to discuss on how to improve the strategy on the spot. Secondly, even with a great disagreement on the strategy, he should not do the individual play and disrupt the cooperation in the team. Thirdly, he should not mention that defect during the time out. It would not only enhance the conflict between the Captain and him but also affect the determination of wining the game for other players in the team. Players would be distracted when the strategy did not work well and began to doubt the feasibility of the strategy as well. Although CH and Captain both original intensions are the same which is to win the game, the three faults made by CH caused an interpersonal conflict between him and Captain. Moreover, it caused a lose-game consequence to the team. Hence, in order to avoid such conflict, CH should raise the problem of the strategy before the game start. Everyone in the team would consider the problem and give a better solution for it. Even if CH hardly find an appropriate chance to point it out, CH should follow the strategy first as all team members are following it, then find a suitable time to indicate the problem politely to the teammates and captain and explain why it is a problem, meanwhile, CH would provide a concrete solution for the problem if possible. I believe, if CH handles this situation in this way, interpersonal conflict will be avoided and probably we will also win the game. Hence, an appropriate way of handling and resolving interpersonal conflict is very important in our daily life.

Here I leave some questions to the readers. In this situation, was this interpersonal conflict only caused by CH? Did captain and other teammates do anything wrong? What should they do to prevent this interpersonal conflict occurring if they were doing some wrong?

Effective communication skills

When I first heard the term “effective communication”, several scenes pop up into my head. Two best friends were sitting on their sofa and talking with each other, businessmen were negotiating with their contracts. Effective communication is essential to our life. Therefore, learning effective communication skills are important to us. Although some people claim that words are more essential in making the communication effective than nonverbal signs. They failed to consider that in fact the nonverbal communication sometimes is as important as or even more important than verbal communication in effective communication skills. I will illustrate it in three aspects in the following paragraph.

“E”, stands for efficiency, nonverbal communication would help to improve the efficiency of communication, for example, when someone ask for a direction, you would like to draw a map or point in the direction of the location instead of describing it. “A”, means assist, body language would assist the words and enable people to have a better interpret on content of the speech. “R”, is to help people become more relate with each other, nonverbal communication is better than verbal in sharing feelings. It makes people become closer to each other, for instance, a hug from old friend and a high five with teammate after a success, they both bring people closer. Lastly, “E.A.R” here has the same spell with ear, ear is the organ of listening and listen contributes crucially in effective communication. It would let you understand others in their own perspective and eliminate the misunderstandings. Hence, I believe if we would express ourselves with the combination of verbal and nonverbal communication and listen to others carefully, the communication will be more effective and people will perform better at workplace and get closer with their friends and families.