Critical Reflection (Draft 2)

At the start of this module, I mentioned that I am weak in my speech and would often had to depend on visual aids to express myself. With that, the two goals I had set for myself were driven towards honing my presentation skills, namely; to express myself clearly without any visual aids and to be a more confident and effective speaker in front of a group of audience. 

Looking back on this 12-week journey of the effective communication module, I would say that I am closer to my two goals as I can see improvements on my oral presentation as compared to the past. I guess old habits die hard as I did not manage to overcome my weaknesses entirely as I still relied on the slides during my oral presentation to help me deliver my message. Upon reflecting, I realized that in order to improve on my oral presentation skills, I would have to start by working on the day to day oral communication I have with others. The shift would be, instead of using drawings to help me express my ideas, I will form my sentences in my mind before verbalizing it.

Apart from oral communication skills, I have learnt a lot during the project work as I picked up many new skills such as writing a problem statement and even meeting minutes which were totally new to me. Nonetheless, the most valuable takeaway from the module would be experiencing the fruits of a cooperative teamwork. Through the process of working on the group project, I learnt to embrace different ideas and opinions from each of my team members and our discussions often lead us to stretch our thinking which were enjoyable to me. Overall, I genuinely feel that this module served as a great learning platform for me to become a more effective speaker and writer. 

(310 words)