Post One!
Being an EFFECTIVE PROFESSIONAL would definitely help or solve some of the problem areas that I have identified in my daily life.
1) Oral Presentation
Problem: I tend to get excited and animated when I give a presentation. I would inject some jokes, snide remarks or the occasional references to popular culture so that the audience would not get bored with my presentation. HOWEVER, when does ‘playing’ up a presentation becomes too much that it crosses into being ‘unprofessional’? How should I make my presentation interesting without losing focus on the main agenda?
Remedy: Teeter-totter! Finding the right balance to keep their interest! I’m pretty sure with the communication skills I enquire, I could still keep their focus mostly on the main agenda of the presentation and at the same time, keep those wandering mind of theirs at bay through my enthusiasm.
2) Writing
Problem: My major flaw is I describe way too much. Verbally conveying my ideas is much simpler than trying to put it in ink. If I had my way, I would have painstakingly drawn a mind-map or draw out a diagram to get my point across. However, sometimes it gets too wordy. Like verbal diarrhoea except on paper! Some reader might take it as unnecessary information.
Remedy: By having the skills to write a well planned document, I will be able to make it concise and yet, getting my point across. From there, I can write a meaty essays, reports and even a short and impressive resume that won’t annoy my employer with all the CCAs I took in my school days.
3) Active Listening
Problem: Yes, I’m guilty of being distracted when my tutor is rambling in class. Especially when the speaker takes a whopping 10 minutes to get to his point. How frustrating! So how can I can be more of an active listener when faced with such a situation?
Remedy: I’m pretty sure with the right skill, I can sieve out the conversation for main points. This would allow me to ask intellectual (not redundant) questions which is beneficial to me!
I hope you enjoy reading this post. Yes, it has its flaws and but hopefully, by the end of the module, I can write an awesome blog post with all the communication skills learnt. AND sounds PROFESSIONAL too. Fingers crossed!
Signing out, Illya.
The men in my life.. Well more like animals!
Who needs Johnny Depp anyways!!!
Yup.. I want that rad car!
Lights Designer for a whole 3 month
Moi'
The Siamese Trio
We were Young
NUS Maths Geek
Theatre @ Esplanade
Arab Street Nights
About Me
- Illya Nafiza
- - Lone, random and spontaneous traveller - Big fan of e great white shark since jaws n free willy.. which lead to her insane wanting to be a shark trainer but she'll juz settle for marinebiologist (sadly, im roughin it out in maths) - Wants to go free-diving wif e great white - Backpack..Loved it.. and wants to do it again (Mantra: I muz get to Greece... I muz get to Cambodia) And here i shall stop.. and u shall wonder
8 comments:
I can understand the dilemma of how formal or informal an oral presentation should be and I think I lie at the other extreme where the audience will grow weary of my slightly monotonous voice. Hence, it should be helpful if I learn to pick up on nonverbal cues, prompting me to add in a joke when needed.
About writing, it always feels like there are too many points to put into the limited number of words allowed for my lab reports. Therefore, I'm quite used to being concise and just including as many key points as I can into the text, but the downside is that the whole segment may not seem to flow that smoothly, so effective communication skills would also help in this aspect.
Lastly, I fully agree about how frustrating and boring lectures can be as I cannot seem to keep my eyes open after the first half hour if I didnt not have something to munch on. I guess active listening is what I need the most to survive these long days with 6 hours of back-to-back lectures or even a lab session to top it all off.
I agreed that doing oral presentation is never easy.You have to make sure the audience is not bored and they get what you are saying.Therefore,we can upload slides in point forms so that they can listen to you and yet see the main points that you want to tell them.Haha!
For writing,it is quite difficult to interpret your ideas too for my case. Haha!So,I think you and me have to work hard on it.
For active learning,I have to agree with you that listening to your professors rattling away is really crazy.Therefore, with active learning we can do the trick.
Lastly, i do agree active listening is important and I didn't include in my blogpost because I have exceeded the word limit.Haha!Anyway,thank you Illya!
hey illya! leaving my prints behind now. Anyway, You did a good job in typing this entry. It is concise and engaging. You have listed your problems and remedies in such a way that it si understandable and digest-able. However, I do have some comments about the active listening. I do have similar problems as you. However, I tend to shut my mind off other things and try my utmost best to to touch my handphone during lesson time. At the meantime, I would visualise what the speaker is saying and paint a complete picture about it. Well, I am also a culprit in taking notes whilst listening. so!! LEt's work hard in achieving our goals in active listening!!
Miranda, you prefer spinning your pens and annoying me (and the people in front of you for having to pick it up everytime)! HAHA.. I know you too well.
P.s. Its weird calling you Miranda.
Like what I have mentioned in my blog, effective communication skills are like soft core skills that are absolutely necessary for us to be able to interact successfully with other people. Thus like what you have mentioned in the areas of oral presentations, writing and active listening, we need to be empowered with effective communication skills to accomplish all these tasks.
For me, oral presentations can be quite fearful for me because I'm not really good at talking in front of so many people. It makes me nervous and panicky that sometimes I may stumble on what I have to say as well as giving me the chills and shivering. So I hope to be more proficient and confident in giving oral presentations as I developed the necessary communication skills.
When it comes to writing, like you, sometimes I may have the tendency to beat around the bush and write tons of stuffs regardless of whether relevant or irrelevant before I arrive at the main points which I want to focus on. In addition, sometimes it is quite difficult for me to use words to relay an information to another party because of the lack of expression. Thus developing communication skills in this area can certainly help me to overcome my weaknesses and be a better writer to convey my thoughts and feelings to those who read what I have written.
I agreed that active listening can be quite hard at certain times because of the many various barriers to active listening such as physiological, environmental, emotional, mental and socio-cultural factors. Thus in the process of acquiring effective communication skills, we can try to become a better listener by focusing on our goals and purposes, doing supportive listening, asking questions to allow a two-way information flow, paraphrasing the speaker's thoughts, checking of feelings and anticipating and predicting what the conversation is going to be about.
Well, nobody is perfect and we all learn from our mistakes. Hope we can do our best in becoming more effective communicators in this module. Cheers!
Hi Illya. Daijing here. Oral presentation is always a problem for me. Especially when i have to cope with my nervousness, at the same time, try to present in an entertaining mode and not losing the content. Therefore, i agree that with the right skills, it will allow me to be a better speaker.
For writing,I think I'm also one of those who sometimes write too much. When trying to convey a certain point, we do not know whether the reader will be able to understand what is written. Therefore, we may end up elaborating more and more which may cause the whole write up to be boring or even difficult to understand. However, in oral communication, we are to see if a person understood what is brought across through his or her verbal or non-verbal cues. We can then stop elaborating on the point immediately. I guess that's the difference between oral and written communication, and what makes effective communication important.
Hi Illya, I am kind of envious that you have the ability to inject jokes and interesting factors into your presentations! In fact, I would love to be able to do that (though it really does depend on the context and objective of the presentation). I am usually tensed up during presentations and I just want to get it over and done with. It would be good enough if I am able to speak without stammering. I guess through this course, you can learn to cut down on your 'funny' factors while I can learn to be more engaging.
As for written forms of communication, due to my limited range of vocabulary, I tend to not be able to convey the exact ideas to my readers. I always find it a challenge to write out my ideas and it would be so much better if I can include pictorial aids. Besides the writing skills (7Cs) that we will be learning in this course, I think I would need to brush up on my vocabulary by reading more on my own part.
Lastly, for active listening, I am just as guilty as you are for drifting away in class. I have a short attention span and it really irritates me when I have to sit on the tiny seat and focus on the monotonous lecturer for 2 hours! Since I cannot influence how engaging the lecturer is, I would have to work on my own active listening skills. I have to learn, through this course, how to pick up the main points in the lecture. This will benefit me in future as well, when I have to sit through long and (sometimes) boring meetings.
Let's work towards our common goal together! (:
Interesting blog! I like the way your reflected on your problem areas and on your own, suggested possible remedies. Am sure it shouldn't be a problem for you to write an awesome blog post. I can see you already have what it takes to write well!
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