Wrapping up on ES2007S

It’s time to wrap up ES2007S, one of the modules that I never regretted taking, even as a year one Engine Faculty student. It has been at least three months since I first walked into my first Professional Communication class, without knowing what to expect. However, it turned up to be a great experience to be in a class led by Ms Fazilah and all my interesting classmates.

Three months down the road, I think I have improved a lot in my communication skills, especially in giving oral presentation in English. It was a challenge to me as English is not my primary communication language within my friends or even my family. However, after attending these three months of lesson, I have learnt how to put forth my ideas in a more effective way. I shall never forget the importance of 7C’s in communication. However, there are still rooms for improvements to be a great speaker who can influence and impact the audience.

The second takeaway is team building skills. The peer teaching session was also a great approach to hone our skills in different areas, such as teamwork building. In the midst of preparing for the peer teaching, I have learnt a lot from my teammate Zu Rong, a final year student majoring in Industrial and System Engineering. He has shared with me about his experience in preparing for a real job interview and also gave me an insight on what to expect in the real working world.

As a whole, I never regretted taking up ES2007S as it has guided me in the different communication aspects. Credits to Ms Fazilah for all your sharings and understanding throughout the entire semester. I am really glad I met all these people and I hope everyone had a great experience just as I did.

Reflections on Oral Presentation

Let me start of with some sharings on my preparation en route to the persentation. My team, Team Kagz met up a day before the actual presentation to do some rehearsing. We did some improvements to our slides and rehearsed on our speeches. I also took note on the things that can be improved as pointed out by my team members. The meeting ended in about two hours and we were all ready for our oral presentation the next day. That night, I practised for quite some time to ensure that my ideas’ flow was coherent with the slides presented on the powerpoint.

Despite hours of  practice, I started to feel nervous the moment I stepped into the class. I was worried that I might somehow fumbled on my speech. I calmed my nerves down by taking a sip of water and let the ideas ran through my mind once more. Knowing that practice makes perfect, I was ready to get myself going during the presentation. When it finally ended,I am proud to day that all the practices and rehearsals paid off. 

Overall, I think that there are a few things I have to take note of when I present. I should not read the words displayed on the slides. Without doing that, I can maintain eye contact with the audiences  and engage them in the presentation. Besides that, tone variation is one of the presentation skills that I did not apply in my presentation. Maybe I should try that to spice up my future presentation.

Here are some of the important things that I have learnt anout presentation and would like to share with everyone.

1.       Slides should not content too many words. Use key words on the slides so that when the audiences see it, they can easily remember them. This can have deeper impact on the audiences compared to lengthy phrases. Remember one of the 7 C’s, be concise.

2.       Pictures or diagrams are much more useful than words. It is true that pictures do say a thousand words. It is also one of the things that audience would like to see.

3.       Statistic is important in presentation. However, these facts and figures do not mean anything unless you link it with something that the audience is familiar with. For instance, when you’re trying to sell an 8GB ipod, tell your audience how many songs can it stores.

That’s all from me. I hope all of you enjoyed Team Kagz presentation. Feel free to let me know how I can improve my presentation as this can help me develop into a more effective communicator.