Alex's Effective Communication Critical Reflection

Hello! I am Alexander Quah, and I am writing this blog as a final reflection on my 13 week journey I had in the Effective Communication module.

One of the goals I have set for myself at the start of the course was to improve my public speaking skills and raise my confidence level when speaking to a crowd. And I am very happy to say that the effort that I put in has paid off and I am able to see immense improvement I had since day one. This was made possible by Professor Blackstone, giving us ample opportunities to practice our public speaking in front of our classmates. I also took the opportunity to be my team's project speaker, giving myself more chances of getting used to the stage frights and nerves. I felt that during my final project presentation, even while feeling nervous and anxious, I was able to hold down the fort and keep my cool throughout. I would not have been able to pull through if it wasn't for the vast amount of practice we had for this module. Outside of the school curriculum, I had also applied what I have learnt to a recent internship interview and felt that it went really well. One key point  I have learnt and fixed about myself is to slow down my speech. This allows me to have ample time to think before I speak, and also reduces the use of filler words. What I will do in the future to further improve my communication skills is to participate in more presentations to further my confidence level in public speaking, especially so during my time in school.

Working with my teammates Wora and Wei Yan on our project Smart Chope gave me so much experience in different areas, such as being a designer, a speaker, as well as a team player. My team and I was fortunate to have come up with the Smart Chope idea which was new and exciting. The alignment of our thoughts to make this project a success gave us the drive to push on and get creative. Working as a team can tough at times when team members have a different idea to yours. However, my teammates and I have learnt to give constructive feedback to one another, having the same goal to improve the project, as well as giving way to one another at times. This really helped Smart Chope push forward as an evolving system as we were able to constantly find improvements in our project system. I find that this project helped us understand how to better work as a team and being a good team player. The project Smart Chope has also allowed me to have the first-hand experience in writing a professional report. Throughout my time in Polytechnic and University, in no way did we get critiqued on our report writing. Little did we know that there were many major mistakes we have made in the report, such as the formatting, language use, and even citation as well. My team and I are thankful to be able to experience and pick up these skills in school before stepping out to the working world. What I have learnt in this project is the importance of working as a team. Without my teammates Wora and Wei Yan, it would be impossible to get to this stage of Smart Chope and its fullness in the idea and content. 

With this, I would like to thank Wora and Wei Yan for being awesome teammates for the project Smart Chope and hope we can bring this idea to life in the near future. I would also like to thank Professor Blackstone for giving me the opportunity to practice and hone my presentation skills.

Best Regards,
Alexander Quah
MEC1281-T6