Critical Reflection

Being able to communicate effectively and efficiently is an important aspect in our everyday life, as it can help us bring our message across. My initial goal of CVE 1281 Effective Communication was to be able to have a better grasp on how to use grammar properly when I am writing and to better pace myself even when I am nervous during a presentation. Through the help of Professor Brad and my classmates in this module, I was able to achieve my goals to a certain extend.

Throughout this whole module, I was given the opportunity to improve my grammar as we had different assignments that we need to complete. The very first assignment to be done was a self-introduction letter which had stated my initial goal upon completing this module. The next assignment proved to be a challenge as I have to write a summary as well as a reader response. Summarizing articles was never my strong suit, I always had difficulty in this section when I was in secondary school. However, I have received a lot of guidance throughout the whole writing process which allowed me to understand the skills of summarizing even more. This assignment has manage help me to understand the use of a thesis and how it will affect the flow of the report.  

One of the biggest challenge in this module was to complete the technical report, as a lot of research and paraphrasing of sentences had to be done. I am really thankful to have supportive groupmates, Nicholas, Amos and Darren to help me with this report. Nicholas and Amos are more proficient in English as compared to me so they often help me with the report as well as the presentation slides. Our team is able to work well and get things done efficiently as we each possess a skill that can be used to make the report and presentation slide better.   

There were different opportunities throughout this module that gave me the chance to speak up and present in class, either by reading the instructional units out loud or through small presentation on topics that we have researched in class. This has helped me become more confident in speaking up in front of a crowd. 

The other big challenge in this module was the oral presentation. When I am nervous, I have the tendency to speak fast during presentation, which sometimes result in my audience not understanding what I am trying to present. When the mock presentation was held, our peer review team, Why Five was able to give me constructive feedback which helped me understood what my weak points were when I was presenting. They told me that my body language, eye contact and volume was good, the only problem was that I have spoken too fast. During the actual presentation, I made an effort to slow down my presentation by adding pauses every once in a while as well as speaking slower. However, I was told that my pace was still too fast and that if I were to slow down more, the audience would be able to understand what I am presenting better. 

Throughout this module, I was able to learn a lot of useful skills that I can apply in the future. Being able to present smoothly would be very important for any presentation that will be held in the future such as my capstone project or pitching ideas in my workplace. Even though I was unable to achieve my goals fully, I still managed to improve on my grammar and my pacing during presentation which is considered a big improvement for me. I would like to thank Professor Brad and my classmates which all played a part in helping me improve on my writing and presenting skills.