Final Reflection

Through the course of these twelve weeks, my understanding of the value of effective communication has been expanded. Before, I had the mindset that effective communication was important only in the workplace and was more eager to hone my communication skills so that my future students would be able to receive and decode my messages desirably. Upon the completion of the research project, I realised that effective communication is essential not only for cordial teacher-student relationships, but also when collaborating with others in a team, in business correspondence, presenting information as well as report-writing. Communicating effectively would reduce conflicts, foster close interpersonal relationships and put ourselves in a positive light.

The diverse communication skills that I have learnt in the course would be applicable in many aspects – including professional, personal and familial – of my life. One example of a “soft” skill would be active listening, which promotes not only amicable relationships between bosses and subordinates, but also between parents and children, and amongst friends. At the other end of the spectrum, research, report-writing and oral presentation skills could be applicable on many occasions, such as when doing market surveys, writing testimonials for students and doing investigations in the laboratory.

What I felt was most beneficial in the course was that we worked in groups for our research project, as it allows us to progress as a team. Discussions on what we learnt, such as the designing of a survey questionnaire, were stimulated and this increased our learning capacities. It also portrays to us what working in a team entails, and trains our communication skills such as empathy, and builds up our personal emotional quotient (EQ).

These twelve weeks of the course have enriched me in many ways. As I continue my university education and eventually step into the working world, it would serve me well to communicate effectively. With that in mind, I would seek to further refine the skills I have picked up and put them to good use.

My Biodata

Currently pursuing a Bachelor of Science in the National University of Singapore, I am an enterprising individual who is persuasive, has strong leadership qualities and a healthy dose of irreverence for conventions. Taking a keen interest in presentation, I have led the marketing team in numerous successful negotiations with corporate sponsors during my stint as the Marketing Director of NUS Sports Club in AY2006/07.

A social person, I see myself as a part of a larger community and feel a need to contribute to it. I participated in the Youth Expedition Project in 2005 to the rural Thai borders where I befriended and taught English to the underprivileged Thai children.

Reflections on Project Experience

My learning experience for the research project was on the whole a positive one. I came away enriched with the subject matter at hand and learnt a great deal about teamwork and effective communication, both within the team as well as in the form of formal report writing. I would like to share two qualities that I have found to be of utmost significance – empathy and openness.

Clear communication requires openness and empathy. Take for an example, when my fellow group member, Sherine, was to sit for two tests before a coming deadline, she told Seow Teng and me beforehand. It was with Sherine’s openness and understanding on Seow Teng’s and my part that we were able to split up the work further and complete it without delaying our progress.

Openness and empathy also foster cordial interpersonal relationships. As a considerable amount of work had to be done within a short span of time, seamless teamwork was essential in ensuring that all the deadlines were met. With the burden of school work and heavy personal commitments, coordination of meeting times and work assignment had to be tight and well-thought. We were able to exercise openness, empathy and diligence to ensure that work was distributed appropriately and completed by the deadlines. Furthermore, we did not hesitate in laying out differing opinions, thus ensuring that no bad feelings were accumulated and that rigorous discussion could be carried out to come to a shared conclusion. The overall atmosphere in the project group was an extremely cordial one, and we were thereby encouraged be diligent to play our roles as credible team players.

I embarked on the project with a foggy concept of formal report writing (especially citation of sources) and doing research, thus the learning curve was rather steep at the beginning. Through the meticulous guidance of our tutor, my group members and I learnt how to conduct a proper survey and refined our report time and again right down to the finest details. With that and motivation from my fellow group members, I got to hone my report writing skills.

From the last couple of weeks, I have learnt that dealing with issues requires openness, mutual empathy and focus on the objective. Whenever issues arise, it is important to keep the big picture in mind and work towards a win-win situation. As such, should misunderstandings arise while preparing for the oral presentation, I would put myself in the other party’s shoes and work towards to a mutually beneficial outcome.

To improve on communication within my group, I would practise active listening more often. Personally, I tend to speak more than listen and as such, I may miss out on valuable contributions from my group members. Practising active listening would enhance our esprit de corps, making time spent on the project more enjoyable and the final presentation smoother.

Fostering Intercultural Communication

My memory of a most vivid juxtapose of intercultural views took place in my French class last year. The session was on the topic of marriage, and the tutor shared with us his insights on the topic. He described to us that in France, the concept of marriage is not generally popular and most couples sign an agreement called PACS (pacte civil de solidarité). This is an alternative form of union that encompasses all the legal rights of a marriage but less cumbersome to annul. People (who do not want to or cannot get married) register themselves with the local mayor and are then recognised as a couple before the law. This applies to both homo- and heterosexual couples. He added that this has more advantages than a true marriage, where couples may be tied down to a less-than-fulfilling relationship but avoid a divorce as it is socially stigmatised and legally tedious. The PACS allow couples to enjoy the legal benefits of marriage (such as tax benefits enjoyed only by couples and the right to co-own a house) with no life-long commitment.

A Muslim girl then voiced out that the union of a woman and a man has to be recognised by God in Islam. Marriage is also a union solely between a man and a woman and not between homosexuals. Another girl, who is a Catholic, realised that under PACS, couples would be having pre-marital sex, which is a cardinal sin in Christianity. She added that the act of sexual intercourse should be purely for the purposes of procreation, not for lustful gratification and definitely not between gay couples. The two of them stood strongly for the idea of a holy matrimony and pointed out the moral implications of PACS.

Having heard these opinions, the tutor insisted that the idea of marriage is purely religious and that people should be free to pursue relationships without being bonded to religious practices and long-term commitments. He added that staying in a relationship should be a choice and not an obligation. It was then clear to all of us that the tutor was imposing his views on us and was unreceptive to our views, thus the two girls did not argue further. This could also be due to us being Asians brought up with the Confucian values of not rebutting the teacher strongly. On the other hand, it is in the French education culture to argue and state their points of view without any negative feelings and thus the tutor stood for his stand adamantly. Communication in this case was one-way due to the cultural views and caused the teacher to be rather unreceptive and aggressive to our views. In my opinion, this is not a question of whether PACS or marriage should be favoured in either society but rather an exchange of views. Learning a language would require embracing and accepting the particular culture in order to understand the language, although this may sometimes translate into a relaxation of our own cultural norms and values.

Ugly Commuters and Priority Seats

Photo courtesy of stomp.com.sg

The moment the train doors open at the station, all the immaculately-dressed and able-bodied professionals cast all social etiquette aside, jostle their way onto it and snatch up all the available seats. An elderly lady, after bearing several shoves, finally gets onto the train. She hobbles towards the seats and realises that they are all taken up by the young and healthy pretending to be asleep.

More often than not, commuters turn a blind eye to those who need the seats more than themselves. The Prime Minister in his National Day Rally has also encouraged Singaporeans to be more courteous and to move towards a more gracious society. The above scenario is familiar to all who have taken our MRT before, and clearly does not depict the behaviour of Singaporeans as considerate, much less gracious.

In a bid to advocate mindfulness towards the elderly, the pregnant as well as the handicapped, SMRT recently assigned certain seats as priority seats. These priority seats are introduced with the well-being of the needy commuters in mind; to rise the level of awareness of their needs in society and at the same time to urge the other commuters to be more altruistic. These seats are also commonly seen on the London Underground and Japanese trains. A visiting Taiwanese friend once shared that these priority seats in Taipei are only occupied by the needy. Having said that, however, are these priority seats effective in protecting the interests of people in need of seats on our MRT?

To study if such a measure is efficacious, a survey on the opinions of commuters would be appropriate. The survey would find out if commuters themselves actually fulfil the purpose of these priority seats and their general ground observations of other commuters on our MRTs, amongst other things. The survey, if conducted in an unbiased manner, would aid greatly in deducing if the newly-introduced priority seats have served their objective. Such a study would be valuable feedback to the relevant transport authorities and the Singapore Kindness Movement Council, and would surface feasible improvements to the concept of "priority seats".

Resolving Interpersonal Conflict

For this blog post, I put forth a hypothetical interpersonal conflict situation involving a project group setting. I would be using the themes cultural differences, gender issues and emotional intelligence in the scenario to illustrate communication problems amongst us.

Peaceful Parry, Bossy Bobby and Fatty Fatimah have been assigned as a project group working on the subject of Nutrition. Bobby, a body-building enthusiast of four years, is well-read on the subject and possesses a chiselled body of envy as proof. Due to his domineering nature, he automatically assumes leadership of the project and expects his good friend of ten years, Parry, and a stranger he barely knows, Fatimah, to follow his orders.

Fatimah, being a headstrong person herself, is also aggressive in the way she pushes for her opinion during group discussion. Parry is the diplomatic group member and often reconciles disputes between the two. Once, Bobby and Fatimah disagreed on whether aerobic or anaerobic exercise is more beneficial for people trying to lose weight. Each of them felt strongly for their case. The argument escalated to a point where Fatimah stormed out of the discussion room in tears, when Bobby demanded what she knew about weight loss after launching a personal attack on her weight. Parry, wanting to maintain amicable ties within the group and feeling that sometimes Bobby may be too pushy and unreceptive of their project group mate, went after her to repair bad feelings on his behalf. After all, Fatimah is but a girl and it would be a win-win situation for him to empathize, be more sensitive and give in to her once in a while.

Through the working of the project, as Fatimah feels unappreciated and that only menial and insignificant job tasks are allocated to her, she becomes increasingly hostile towards Bobby. This has however provoked him into retaliating with snide and racist remarks against her.

With the above situation, one can imagine that Parry is in a great dilemma. Bobby is his good friend and long-time working partner and he trusts in his ideas about the project. However, he also feels that Fatimah has raised valid points and that Bobby should not be so obstinate in his thinking nor should he have been racist in his conflict with her. In one attempt in talking to Fatimah, he also sensed that she feels victimized and that Bobby and himself, being long-term friends, are “in it together” against her.

How should Parry assert himself to ensure that cordial relations are restored within the project group and to complete the project eventually?

Effective Communication Skills

As Lee Iacocca, former president and CEO of automobile giants, Chrysler and Ford, aptly puts, "One can have brilliant ideas, but if he cannot get them across, his ideas would not get him anywhere." I cannot agree more.

Effective communication is the key to the exchange of ideas, and this two-way process is particularly important for me as I would be serving as a teacher, come graduation. Sending and receiving messages are an integral part of teaching. The manner in which these messages are delivered to students can either entice them to partake in discussion, explore, create and stimulate synergy with others or discourage and leave them in confusion and frustration. This is why there is an impetus for me to be clear and effective in my verbal and non-verbal communication, such that I am organized, enthusiastic and sensitive. This is particularly crucial as I am imparting knowledge to students who may not have great understanding of the subject and are likely to have certain cultural differences. My audience would be coming from diverse backgrounds, thus it is important for me to understand the different communication barriers that we may have, and overcome them so that my students would be able to receive my messages and decode them in a desirable manner.

Part of being an effective teacher entails active listening as well. Paraphrasing, perception-checking and clarifying questions would allow me to detect the gaps in my sent messages and to work on them with my students. Developing effective communication skills would also help me avoid the pitfalls of many a teacher. Some teachers simply make communication one-way by dumping heaps of knowledge onto the students and leaving the onus of concept-grasping to them. With the MOE Teach Less, Learn More initiative, it is vital for me to project my ideas coherently so as to make the most out of my classroom time with my students.