Final Reflection

As engineering student, class participation is almost an alien thing. I am glad my experiences in  ES2007 were different in a really good way.

Despite the small class size, we have students from quite a diverse range of background. I find my best learning experience comes from working with different classmates and understanding their perspective in different areas of work.

The next valuable lesson comes from observing how Brad delivers his ideas to the class. After my last Oral Presentation, when Brad commented that my pace was too fast, I initiatively noticed how he pauses naturally at different intervals to allow us to digest the ideas he just said. I find this practicing and observing flow a very good way to improve my presentation skills.

Finally, I am delighted to see how everyone in the class have bonded well together and was certainly glad to join in the after class lunch during the second half of the semester.

All the best to Brad and all my classmates! Keep in touch!:-)

My Reflection on Oral Presentation

Sometimes I wonder why I speak like a machine gun when I do a prepared speech. I was not surprise to get the same feedback for this oral presentation. My friend once commented that I am a rather impatient person after looking at my handwriting. Since then, I  see it as the root cause to my machine gun talking speed. The irony is that for impromptu speech, I tend to speak much slower as it takes a while for me to figure out the words to use.

One really good feedback I got from this presentation is to pause at suitable timing for my audience to digest the ideas I presented. Most of the time, I had been a demanding speaker and expect my audience to keep up with my pace and digest all the information I said. So the next time before I present, I will remind myself that patient is a virtue I must cultivate. My audience needs time, so do I.

For the ES class, I would say all my presentations have been relatively average. We all have likely made better or worst presentations in the past. I am still struggling to consistently duplicate those good presentations I had, but the advices in this ES course certainly gave me some key pointers to improve on. Moving forward,  I would need to find channels to practice oral presentation more regularly in front of different group of audience.