Now that ES2007 has drawn to an end, I'd admit that I've never regret taking it. Experiencing a project module for the first time has helped me realize the importance of communication skills, team-work and simply being confident. Working with peers much older than me is intimidating at first, but knowing them better really open things up and I've learnt to work and connect with them. A definite eye-opener for future project modules.
Looking back at our group presentation, I felt that all of us performed well, transitioning from each speaker fluently and having equal opportunities to answer questions. And though we lacked the resources to have ample practice (why must tutorial rooms be locked on weekends!?), we still managed to pull through as a whole. One thing I felt we could have improve though was having more connection between the audience and us. L ike addressing each audience specifically and making them fee l important during our presentation.
And as our project says, "Practice Makes Perfect", I wouldn't say I perfected my oral presentation skills yet, but I did improve compared to my previous attempt. I made sure that I wasn't constantly shifting about and cutting down on those "ummm"s and "aaahhh"s would make my speech more fluent. Those distracting hand gestures I had previously had to go too. Honestly, I never knew that presentation skills have so many aspects to take note of.
However, my speech didn't go exactly fluent either. Because I memorised my script, I began faltering at the end of it, struggling to remember the last few lines. Looking at some of the other groups, I was impressed by their style of presenting. I felt I could have done better in placing more emphasis in important words or sentences, and having the right pauses.
Hopefully I'll be able to hone my presentation skills by the end of my 4 years, and I won't end up like this :P
A big thank you to Ms Goh, who has constantly guided us, and also the encouragements you gave me when I didn't start off the module so well. My group mates, Eric, Halim and Chaoyi who made this journey possible. This experience has been joyful and invaluable for me. see you guys around in school :)
Hi Jia Ai,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your reflection and cartoon with us.
Generally, I felt that you have improved in your oral presentation as compared to the peer teaching one such as moving of body and more. However, I could sense that you were nervous as you forgot your lines. Perhaps you could have be more natural such as having pointers to guide you instead of memorizing the scripts as it is very obvious to the audience. Also, you could have better engaged the audience so as to capture their attention instead of just presenting the content. Let me share with you an article on "Why You Should Not Memorize The Body Of Your Speech Or Presentation" at http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/Why-You-Should-Not-Memorize-the-Body-of-Your-Speech-or-Presentation/1542346
I believe that with your determination and consistent practice, you can definitely do it well. As the saying goes "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts". I wish you all the best in your future endeavour.
Cheers
Kent
Hi Jia Ai,
ReplyDeleteI think you have improved a lot since your first presentation. Your posture was much better, there was less shifting and there were fewer pauses during your delivery. Perhaps more hands on practice would definitely help you in improving it. Given your natural level of enthusiasm, I am confident that you would be able to further hone your communication skills and be an excellent speaker in the future.
I agree that perhaps we could have involved the audience more during our presentation by addressing them directly by their appointment or name. It would help increase the level of engagement with them.
It was great having you as a team member. The success of our project would not have been possible with you. I wish you all the best for the upcoming exams!
Regards,
Halim
You have definitely improved as compared to peer teaching. However, I felt that you were rather stiff during the presentation. Perhaps you could relax your body slightly and use your body language to engage the audience better. I hope the following link will be useful to you.
ReplyDeletehttp://totalcommunicator.com/body_article.html
I believe you will definitely improve on your presentation skills in time to come. Lastly, it has been great working with you for peer teaching and I wish you all the best for your examinations.
With regards,
Kar Liang
Hi Jiaai,
ReplyDeleteI can relate to how you feel, working with peers older than us may be intimidating at first, but it is also working with them that gave us the chance to learn from them. I’m glad we learnt so much from each other.
You definitely made improvements from the last presentation! You were more aware of your body movements and gestures. To do away with memorisation of your script, I suggest having bulleted points on your slides to guide you along; just to point you in the right direction. I think the important point is to talk to the audience, so narrating your thoughts to them should be key and that should make you a more natural speaker. Well, practice does make perfect!
I wish you all the best in your future presentations! See you around in school!
Regards,
Jerina
Hi Jia Ai,
ReplyDeleteSorry for the late comments.
One thing I will always remember when thinking of you is the big smile on your face. That’s very impressive when talking with you. Maybe you can smile more during the presentation and that will smooth your tone and body language. But overall, we all can see your improvement from peer teaching. You can control your voice better, and tried to make more eye contact. The reflections you made this time show that you have thought through what you and your team have done, and you will improve that in your next team project. That’s very important for your rest university life. I believe if you keep this positive attitude and efforts, you will have a very fruitful undergraduate experience.
Smile and remain smile. Good luck for your undergraduate years.
Best regards,
Cangming
Hey Jia Ai,
ReplyDeleteit's been a great time working together with you on our group proposal and presentation! you were a GREAT help when it came to gathering statistics for our survey questions, I must admit that it was crucial when crafting our proposal. You were always positive and sporting whenever we had to meet up to do up our proposal or rehearse, and i'm certain this enthusiasm will outshine your inexperience!
Honestly, I felt you did a great job during presentation (especially when you had to work your way around one of the slides). I could tell that you were taking this presentation seriously and contrary to belief, we had prepared as much as we could. Given the continuous drafting of our proposal, we could only prepare our presentation late into the semester and that may have been our downfall. However, I still believe we did a decent job presenting our proposal across and always keeping in mind the audience's needs and possible queries.
While I may not have had much experience in presentations myself, I think one way you can appear more confident will be to try to not memorize your script word for word. Sometimes your body language gives yourself away when you are trying to recall your script, so maybe it's better to remember your script by bullet points.
I'm sure you'll ace future presentations with more practice! It simply takes more confidence and self-belief to give yourself the edge over others, and by having a positive personality, that helps plenty in covering your flaws! Good luck with your coming exams, I look to working with you in the future!
Regards,
Eric
Hi Jia Ai,
ReplyDeleteYou did much better in the oral presentation than in your peer teaching. Although fluency wise could be further enhanced, you demonstrated confidence and enthusiasm in your presentation. In addition to that, your posture and gesture were also improved in your presentation. Perhaps next time we can consider using a smaller remote controller instead of the wireless mouse, as it sometimes limited our hands' movement. Anyway, congratulations on the improvement.
You have mentioned that we could have better engaged the audience. One thing you might want to give it a try is to first write your script and then reduce it to point form. Thus you don't have to memorize the long script and hence could spend more time to observe the audience's response, keeping their interests high accordingly. Having said that, with a script in point form, practice and rehearsal become very crucial to the success of the presentation. For this project, we did not have enough time to rehearse due to time constraint, but I believe you will have ample opportunities to practice project planning in your subsequent semesters in NUS. With good project planning, you can guarantee sufficient time for rehearsal of your presentation.
It was an enjoyable experience working with you in the research project. I liked the topic in education and thanks for the many creative ideas you have brought up during our project meetings. Wish you have a fruitful 4 years in NUS ahead!
Regards,
Chaoyi