Critical Reflection on SIE 2016 Effective Communications

At the start of the course, I have made a commitment to seek new ways to improve my writing and oral presentation skills. If there was one thing to take away from this module, it is to write and re-write an essay a thousand times. Although having a strong command in English is important, an essay written once may not always be perfect. There will always be areas to be improve on. The key point is 'improvement'. There must be an improvement in the second, third, fourth, fifth, and up to the thousandth draft. There is no point of re-doing an essay if the same mistakes were repeated again and again.

One article that I have re-written many times is the reader response on cladding. That article was one that I had spent most time (and probably brain cells too) on, and I am glad to have attained one of the highest grades for that assignment so far. From that reader response, I have learnt the lesson of re-writing an essay a thousand times. As I have said, there will always be areas to improve on, and true enough, each time I re-visited the reader response, I found something that I could improve. It really doesn't matter if the improvements involved a word change, or restructuring of sentences - It was all about the improvement made to it. The question to ask ourselves: Is this better than the previous?

The value of re-writing could be applied to oral presentations. In my earlier post "Analytical Reflection on Oral Presentation", I mentioned about how preparation is key to a good presentation. 'Re-writing' could be changed to 're-presenting', meaning to say that we present once, review and improve, and present a second time. Review the second presentation and find areas to improve upon, and present the third time. Do it again and again until there is a 'wow factor' - that is the meaning of 're-presenting'.

Upon writing this essay, I have realised that the concept of 're-doing and improving upon the previous' can be applied to myself, as a person. There is a need to improve one's self, be it in character or in our skills. Why remain stagnant when the sky is the limit? In closing this reflection, I might interpret that this module not only opened my eyes to an effective way of learning English, but also of being a better person, and I can use this skill to improve myself at every self-reflection I perform.
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Edited on:
27 Nov 2017, 4.39pm
2 Dec 2017, 12.45am

Comments

  1. Hong Yu1 December 2017 at 19:47

    Hi Keric,

    I admire your positive attitude. I agree with you that rewriting can help to improve our script and help to make it better. Some people see it as a chore, but as a writer, you see it as a way for improvement. The more you write, the better it will become.

    I hope that you can keep up this positive attitude and this will take you far in the future. With that I wish you all the best in your studies in SIT!

    Regards,
    Hong Yu

    ReplyDelete
  2. Brad Blackstone3 December 2017 at 23:39

    Thanks, Keric, for this forward-thinking reflection on the impact that SIE2016 has had on your developing comm skills. I really appreciate the fairly narrow focus of this essay as you provide discussion points on the value of 'improvement.' You do a good job of capturing the spirit of write-rewrite/present-re-present. It's also interesting how you take this thought beyond comm skills and into the realm of self improvement. As Hong Yu has stated, there's lots of positive attitude toward learning to be found in this discussion.

    All the best as you continue your learning journey!

    ReplyDelete

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