Monday, November 9, 2009

Reflections on Module

So in a breeze, 13 weeks have come and gone. And soon it will be the last day of school. Have I learnt anything? Perhaps. I think resume writing and interview skills would come in very handy in the future. Also, the lessons learnt from preparing a proposal, making oral presentations are also important. I think I have caught a small glimmer of what the working world is like.

There are certainly things I disagree with. Communication is important yes, but can it be taught? In essence, is it nature or nurture? Maybe a bit of both. From what I've learnt, things like cover letters, resume templates, minutes templates, these can easily be found from the net. But the practical aspects, I believe cannot be taught. Rather these can only be experienced, and learnt from there. Thus, this module achieves its purpose in allowing students to have that experience, from Alvin's blog, I think he brought up a good suggestion. That is to have more "mini-presentations" rather than one large one. It could be a better gauge to see if pupils actually have learnt anything when comparing to how they were at the start to how they end up finally.

At the start of the module, I stated that communication makes us human. Now at the end, I'd like to go back to that. The opposite must be true as well, to be human is to communicate. To communicate effectively, first let us be effective humans. Throughout the module there has been a lot of talk of being natural. We already realise that "naturalness" helps us to connect better with our audience. But to learn how to be natural? To act natural? These are really just oxymorons isn't it. You can't teach the things which make us human, this is the nature aspect.

I enjoyed this class, I really did. Rarely in college does one get to have so much interpersonal interactions during class. And I think this is one aspect of this module which makes it so interesting. Good luck to all for the upcoming examinations!

7 comments:

  1. Heh, a bit similar to my post in that we both think teaching communication doesn't work.

    In light of the human<=>communication thing, what do you think of the hikikomoris then? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dear Aaron,

    There's this question that keeps me wondering since small, i.e. how the ancient civilizations and earliest beings invent languages, understand each other, how they communicate, etc.

    I believe communication is animal nature, even though it was not taught, we will learn it by ourselves by imitating or mimicking others unless we were being isolated since born and it depends on the environment we are being brought up. There are few case study in psychology research to investigate how babies learn communication and some cases which the infant were raised by animals like wolves or monkeys called feral children.

    On other hand, advanced communication can be taught by improving it to be more effective which is different than the basic communication just like a crying baby.

    Finally, thank you for being a wonderful partner for both projects! I find you to be a very efficient person and you manage your time really well. Your working speed sometimes left me amazed. Do keep in touch~

    Cheers,
    Jason

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dear Aaron,

    You have pointed out something very interesting. I do have my doubts, when I come into this class, after all, I did feel quite stupid to learn about communication, since I think, humans started communicating the moment we were born. A baby's cry is a form of communication, don't you think so? And very much, through this course, I have a deeper insight and understand that communication need not be verbal. It can be a simple gesture, a glance, a smile and really, body language sometimes communicate better. I believe that, it will be a never-ending debate on whether it is nature or nurture. Just like the question of egg first or chicken first. I think it depend on how you see it.And as for the part on "acting natural". I guess, first we have to understand ourselves and be comfortable with ourselves therefore behaving naturally.Thus, I feel that we do not necessary have to "act".
    It was great having you as my classmate. See you around in school!

    Cheers,
    yongshen

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hmm, regarding the Hikikomori, I certainly think that they are missing out on a sizeable aspect of humanity. Also interestingly, the phenomenon is mainly restricted to Japan. Something to be said about intercultural differences perhaps?

    I don't know how much of society they are shutting out. They could just as easily be indoors chatting over the internet, of course, differences between online and real life communication is not a point for discourse here. But yes, certainly, these people are missing out.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hey friend, I like your blog post.

    There has ben a lot of times in which I felt that some of the discussions are in one way or another not very relevant. As mentioned, finding samples of how to write a resume and how to effective deliver an oral presentaion from the internet is as easy as ABC. The difficulty does indeed come from constant practice. I do like Alvin's idea that we should have more mini projects in which we can learn from experience.

    "Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes"
    Peter F. Drucker, an American Educator

    Nonetheless, I think that the essence of this module is not so much to explain to us how to effective communicate, but rather, to expose us with the essence of resume writing, writing proposals and business letters, as well as to practise delivering an oral presentation to a target audience. It has been an fruitful 13 weeks of exposure, isn't it?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hello Mr Thong!

    I think you have a very interesting post to concldue this whole module.

    Well, it may be true that communication is by nature, but i believe the main idea of this whole module is to build EFFECTIVE communicators, which in this case are nurtured, though Im abit lost about what you said about being natural. (Seriouly, I dont have any recollection of any talks about being natural)

    But in any case, I think we all still learnt a thing or two, be it communication skills or writing skills.

    It was definitely great knowing you. See you around in Science for another sem! :)

    Missypow

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hi Aa,

    Your last post have certainly left us feeling intrigued!

    While I probably wouldn't want to bring up another debate over this issue, shall we discuss it in class anyway? Hahah.

    Those little chit chat sessions with you have been indeed enjoyable and insightful. Class was wonderful with you around too!

    cheers to the future and our friendship!

    -jj

    ReplyDelete