Final Reflection (Blog Post #7)

It has reached to the final week of the semester. What did I learn and gain from this module Es2007s?

Throughout the whole module for 12 weeks, my understanding for effective communication skills is tremendously stretched out. In Es2007s module, we are encouraged to broaden our thoughts and ideas in various aspects of communication skills. Before I took this module, I did not have a deep understanding in the interpersonal communication. To maintain in a good harmonious working relationship within each other, this module has taught me how to deal with people at a personal level to solve the problems, negotiate differences and handle conflicts to get work done successfully. Such interpersonal skills are being known as EQ (Emotional Intelligence).

Another thing I have learnt from this module is writing a professional resume and job application letter. From this course I have learnt how to promote myself with an attractive resume. Previously, I really did not know that the cover letter has to be matched with the job advertisement. With Ms Kim’s guide, finally, I have known how to present my resume and cover letter attractively.

One more thing that I want to improve is my oral presentation skill . I tend to get nervous while I was presenting in front of a group of people and it had led my speech to be very fast. Therefore, in future, I have to practice more and pay more attention in this area.

Lastly, my experience in the research project has been very pleasant with my group members JooSoon and SiokHui. And also, thanks to all the classmates. Especially, I would like to say a great thank to Ms Kim for spending the time with us.

Biodata ( Blog Post #6)

My name is May. I was born in Myanmar. I am currently a third year undergraduate student at National University of Singapore, majoring in Civil Engineering. I graduated from Ngee Polytechnic (NP) with Diploma in Civil and Environmental Engineering with Silver Medal in 2006.

During my poly years, I involved at many CCA activities such as a student leader for school orientation, the department's Bridge Competition programme and other community clubs. I also joined at NP swimming team etc. I had one year working experience of designing building structures.

During my school vacation, I worked as a temporary fulltime designer under some Civil and Structural design companies. I will be graduating in 2010 and I am willing to work as a Design Engineer at dynamic Civil Engineering firm. My other interests are reading, travelling, photo taking and swimming.

Learning Experience from the research project ( Blog post #5)

I had a positive learning experience doing the research project with my group members. The research project had taught me to adapt the different working styles of different people depending on individual pace.

We had encountered some problems along the way. All of us are from different faculties and we had difficulties in meeting each other by face to face all the time. Hence, we got to communicate each other by sending messages or emails to clarify our doubts and speed up our work efficiently. This helped us a lot to get clear communication between group members and to finish the project within a limited time. Another difficulty is lacking of information for the literature review. Our research area is totally related to the NUS students and the information is very limited to get. There were no previous research papers that had been done on our research topics. At first, we spent too much time for searching the information and we did it in the wrong way for the first draft of our literature review. Finally, we managed to find the information at our second draft of literature review with Ms Kim’s help and we were able to solve the problem. For finding and interpretation sections, we encountered some difficulties for analyzing the data for twenty six survey questions. At first, we were afraid that we would not be able to analyze the data due to our topics. Hence, we set many survey questions to get wider views and opinions. Among from the questions, we selected the most prominent questions and interpreted due to the space constraints of our report. Lastly, the time given for the whole research project is only one month. Due to the time constraint, sometimes we were rushed to finish the report in time.

From overall, this research project benefited me in many ways. I had learned how to plan for better time management, how to communicate different people with different styles, how to write the APA format report, how to conduct a survey and how to analyze and interpret the survey data into the reports to present the feasible solution.

Evaluating Intercultural Behavior ( Blog Post #4)

This scenario occurred while I was doing my final year project at polytechnic with a Singaporean classmate as well as two exchange students from Ireland and Africa. One day, our Singaporean classmate invited us to her family reunion dinner for the Chinese New Year‘s eve celebration.

On that day, when we visited her house, my Singaporean friend introduced us to her family members. I noticed that her father was staring at my Nigerian friend disapprovingly and I realized that it was making my friend a little uncomfortable. I was puzzled as to why this is so since this was our first meeting. Later, I found out that it was actually because my Nigerian friend was wearing a black-coloured dress and it is a Chinese belief that black tend to be associated with mourning and inauspicious and thus should not be worn during joyous occasions such as Chinese New Year. This is a customary belief for the Chinese. However, this belief may not be shared by the Irish or African people and thus, it could be a practice which they may not be aware of. When we were having reunion dinner, I also noticed that my foreign friends had difficulty in using the chopsticks. This is probably due to them being more accustomed to using forks and spoons instead of using chopsticks like Asian people. From this dinner, I became more aware that Chinese traditions and rituals are very carefully observed in everything from food to clothing during the Chinese New Year and various people have different ways of doing things and beliefs under different cultures.

To communicate effectively with different people from different countries, we should always observe and understand different intercultural norms, behaviors and beliefs. Moreover, we can learn and find out the cultural norms from local people and reading the literature. This will help us to avoid misunderstanding each other and to improve our communication skill.

Potential Research Project

Should an extensive network of recycling campaign to set up at NUS to enforce a green environment program island wide? Is there any possible ways for the solution?

Do you know that it would take approximately 4,444 trees to print an issue of the Straits Times for a circulation of about 400,000 each day?

Currently, the environmental problems faced by the world are becoming more extensive and there is an increasing urgency for humanity to view the issue with utmost importance. The fragility of our global climate coupled by our dependence on it further highlights the gravity of the situation and Man should no longer hesitate to act upon this issue. It is a global crisis and it would require a global concerted effort to help mitigate or even solve this problem. Therefore, everyone can help to contribute to save our Earth no matter how insignificant our efforts may seem and there are many ways in which we can do so.

Among them, recycling is a major world-wide program which involves government bodies, large corporations and organizations. Therefore, NUS students, we should all take part in this GREEN PLAN campaign as the environmentalists who love nature and earth.

The objective of this report is to give awareness of the recycling campaign and my target reader will be all NUS staffs and students. From that campaign, all NUS staffs and students will be given an attention or awareness of paper recycling.

In order to raise the awareness of the above issue, an attitudinal survey should be conducted. I realize that we can see the situation from the survey results whether how many people are very active to participate in green plan campaign.

Some of my survey questions will be-

1. Awareness of 3R methods such as Reduce, Reuse and Recycle?

2. Should the system be changed to using E resources instead of printing on papers?

3. Should we provide more extensive network of paper recycling bins in the whole campus?

4.Should we use recycled papers for all text books and writing pads and printing shops?

From the survey results, the data will be reported to Office of Student’s Affair (OSA) for implementation.

The short term and long term benefits from green plan campaign will be such as reduction of air pollution, energy consumption, cutting down the trees or harvesting of the forests and lower costs.

Resolving Interpersonal Conflict

When I was at college, I had a closed friend. Let’s call her name as “B”. One day, I saw B was crying at one corner of an empty classroom. I approached and asked her for a reason. B told me that she had a nightmare that was always threatening to her since childhood days. She thought that there was no bright future for her life and she felt hopeless. I felt bad after I heard about her. She asked me not to share this news to anyone and keep it as a secret .I encouraged her not to give up easily and I will do my best for her whatever she needs a help.

After 2 weeks, we were having a lunch at school canteen with our classmates. One of our classmates, a bit naughty girl, was also in the group. She liked to joke with everyone in the class. We all called her as “a “JOKER.” On that day, she was joking with another classmate and suddenly she teased to B with a word. All people thought that this is just a normal joke that she used to do it. But at that time, B looked at me and her eyes were telling that I was such a kind of untrustworthy person. B suddenly walked out from the table and everyone was looking at me.

B went into the toilet and she was crying at one corner. I asked her for the reason. B did not look at me and told me that she was very angry to me for breaking up of a promise. I realized that the joke was somehow concerned with her nightmare. Therefore, B thought that I had told her secret to the whole class. I explained to B that I did not tell to anyone. Finally, B told me that she did not need a friend like me, our friendship should end from now.

I tried to explain her several times but she did not accept to me at all. At first, I was thinking to solve the problem such that I will bring my joker friend and ask her to prove for me that I did not tell anything about B's secret to her. But at one side, if I explain to the joker friend, she will know B’s secret and the news would be spreading and the condition would become worse. Therefore I decided not to explain it to anyone. But, our friendship was ended just because of an unintentional joke and until now B thought that I am such a kind of untrustworthy person.

How would you react if you were involving in that conflict? What personal skills would you follow up for that conflict to improve the situation and not to spoil the friendship?

The ways that developing effective communication skills are important for me

Communication skills are very important for us. Everybody has to interact with each other in our daily and social lives. Moreover, we still have to interact with other colleagues in our professional lives. The methodology to develop the effective communication skills is interactive and participative. It is also important that we can convey our messages clearly and effectively to other people, so that they can understand what we are talking about.

Effective communication skill is very important for me as an international student. I faced many barriers in communications especially in public speaking, non-verbal communication and the language itself.

When I first came to Singapore at 2003, I have some language difficulties in communicating with local and foreign people. English is not my mother tongue and I took English as a second language in Myanmar. English is not the priority language except for English classes in my school. Moreover, the local slang confuses me as I am a non-Singaporean. I could not catch the local accent for first few months during my school days. It was until I had more local friends to talk to before I can overcome my language barrier.
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During my poly days, I had to give oral presentations for projects. At first, the inconvenience in language translation made me very nervous in explaining my work in front of my classmates and lecturers. Therefore it made me to realize that we must practice more to develop our oral presentation skills. It also further emphasizes that the public speaking skill is an important tool for work presentation too.

Appearance, movement, facial expression and voice convey mean non verbal communication. We always make interpretations from these actions. Therefore, we should fully understand the usage, characteristics and function of those non verbal communications effectively. In face-to-face interactions, cultural differences can complicate the framework of understanding within the interaction. In my country, we know that pointing with a leg is a kind of very bad behavior and we try to avoid doing it. However, it is a normal for someone to do it in Singapore. Therefore we have to adapt ourselves to different cultures when we explore different places or people.

In Summary, we should learn to know and understand the concept of effective communications especially across cultures. If we can overcome those barriers of communication, we will become the competent communicators in our daily interactions.