Final Reflection

After attending this module, ES2007S, for twelve weeks, I have learnt that there are many more obstacles to effective communication than I initially thought. Consequently, the need for effective communication skills seems more important to me than ever. During my first blog posting, I had the impression that both the speaker and the audience play an equal role to make the communication an effective one. This impression, however, changed slightly when it came to my mind that successful communication depends on meeting the needs of the audience to a very large extent. For instance, if a sale person does not interest the shopper with his product, the shopper will not bother to listen to his selling and may simply walk away. Similar, if the speaker does not convey his message in the needs of the listener, the listener may not be interested to listen and make an effort to understand the message. Therefore, knowing your audience and preparing your message in accordance to their needs could be a way to initiate effective communication. Subsequently, the continuation of this effective communication involves active participation of both the speaker and the audience.

Throughout this module, I have learnt a number of skills in the various aspect of effective communication.

What is learning without practice and what is practice without feedback? The several writing assignments especially the blogging and survey report allowed me to practise and reflect on the effective communication skills gathered from the course book, skill builders and class discussion. These practices and reflections further improved my understanding of these skills and thus strengthened my ability to communicate effectively. The timely feedbacks from the numerous conferences with Mrs. Richardson who is a native English speaker highlighted one of my weakness in effective communication - my English language. I think a great amount of fundamental work has to be put in to improve my English standard before I can be an effective communicator.

The areas covered in the science of job search communication are really broad and in depth. From discovering self to matching your skills to the job requirements rather and from writing to apply for a job to trying to impress your prospective employer to offer you the job, all these skills will definitely be of great help when I graduate and look for a job in the coming months.

My group attempted to make the oral presentation a success by following closely to everything that was stated in the course book and handouts except one thing - rehearsing the presentation. Due to the tight working schedule and several important deadlines, my group did not have time to rehearse our oral presentation together. As a result, our oral presentation was not as impressive when compared to Meijie’s informative presentation and Jimmy’s zealous presentation. Ultimately, the performance of oral presentation still largely depends on how well you can deliver your information and good delivery comes with sufficient rehearsals. This is an important lesson learnt. Nevertheless, I must say I have enjoyed working with Binglin and Jiayi.

Lastly, constant practice is crucial to the successful application of the communication skills learnt in this professional communication module.