Final Reflection on Learning

At 9.30am, 14 April 2014, I felt shocked after my teacher said, “You know what, today is our last lesson.” Time does fly. Due to administration problems, I did not have lessons for the first two weeks. I did not really understand what I should do for this module at beginning. I was not that lucky also. Not only had I missed the first mock peer teaching presentation, also messed up with actually one. At the point I knew we misunderstand the knowledge our group should present, all the time we spent to practice and design activity seems so meaningless. From that point onwards, I knew that I will pay more attention to the information given and never let my efforts flew away like this. However it was good experience to work with others as one team. English is not my first language; therefore I am not confident in public speaking. During group meeting, we need to communicate with each other in English. They helped me to correct the pronunciations and made me more confident in presentation.

With many years of working experiences, I was not worry about my resume. However, that was the first time I learnt how to write application letter. It is important to have a good application letter to show your ability and engagement. With the help from other classmates during lesson, I improved my grammar and content in my application letter. Moreover, since I was the one to in charge agenda and minute written for the team project work, I studied how to write a formal agenda and summarised content of meeting. Those were valuable experiences that useful in my future career. Blog written can also be considered as a new experience I ever had. I was able to interact with other classmates through reading their blogs. I was also able to share my idea via this platform.

Team project work could be considered as the main subject for this module. We need use all the skills we have learnt, like research, conducting survey. From the beginning of the project work we worked as one group, it made our progress more effective. After the teacher indicated all the problems with our presentation, we made many changes. I and Wei Pin swapped our tasks. Due to he didn’t join the meeting for solutions discussion, I briefed him our main idea. And me, started all over again. However, the efforts we provided were not wasted. All of us felt “we did it” when our teacher told us “well done”. This module gave me a chance to expose my ideas, a chance to improve my communication skills, a chance to learn professional and formal written skills. Thank you, I really enjoy itJ

Reflection on Project Proposal

This is the first time I do proposal in group of four since I graduated from my Junior College. It is really a fantastic experience and I really enjoy the time spending with my teammates.

Right after we formed a group of four in class, Chin Kai created a whatsapp group to allow us to communicate and share all the information. Each of us rose with two issues that we would like to solve. During first group meeting, we went through all the topics we mentioned. After few round of discussion and argument, we almost reject all the ideas. Wei Pin suddenly asked us how do we usually dispose our electronic waste like used computers and mobiles. The rest of us felt confused and said never really pay attention on the way of disposing. We started to do research realized that Singapore actually do not have formal legislation one electronic waste recycling. We found it is an interesting idea and something we should to approach.

We read all the samples have been uploaded to IVLE to learn how to write a good proposal. Due to all the group members in different faculties, we are not easy to conduct frequent group meeting. Therefore we split the workload and discuss the during formal group meeting. Chin Kai would in charge of survey and data analysis, Wei Pin would in charge of current situation and problem analyse in Singapore E-waste recycling system, I would do research on different countries of their e-waste recycling system that we should learn and Gary would in charge of solutions proposal.

I spent a lot time online to read the introduction of e-waste management in other countries. At beginning I decided to use USA, Japan and India as three countries for my case study. However I found that because USA and India has too many state, they have numbers of legislations. It was difficult for us to demonstrate our idea. I shared my idea with Gary, he mentioned that probably we can choose the countries which are small but have effective e-waste recycling system. Finally I chose Japan, South Korea and Japan for our proposal. Since our proposed solutions were based on case studies and survey we did online. Gary and I conducted a small meeting to combine our ideas. I share the main points I read online and the solutions I thought we can propose as solutions. He helped me to summarize and modified them in a more proper way.

Mock presentation made a dramatic change among our group. The comments from my teacher slapped me and I knew that the slides I did was too wordy. I learnt that presentation should be clear with all the main points. Since my part also consider as the most important part of the entire proposal, the teacher suggested us to rearrange our part to present. We followed and during the actually presentation, we performed very well. Personally, I spent plenty of time to practice my script. Although I was a bit nervous, I was glad finally we amaze them with our presentation. We also modified our proposal based on the questions from the questions asked by the audience.

From this project, I learnt how to make effective presentation slides and the workload should split based on personally ability and characteristic. Even for the questions of survey must have their purpose to meet our requirement. Group meeting is an integrated platform to let teammates express their ideas. Different people has their own way of thinking, this helps us to develop our proposed solutions. From next project work onwards, I will participate more actively and with better communication skills. I must say I really felt success at the point I finished our proposal.

Evaluating Intercultural Behaviour

In this globalized world, we realize that we are exposing to different cultures. We not only communicate with people within the same society, but also from other countries. They may speak different languages; believe in different religion from us. To improve communication and avoid conflicts among people, we need to learn from different cultures. This will help us with a better understanding when we learn a foreign language, also minimize the misunderstanding between people from vary cultures.

Personally, I am a person who followed the globalization trend. I travelled 8 hours to study in Singapore, this amazing country when I was 15 years old. In this small island (compared to other countries(*^^*)), I found that different races stay together in harmony. There is even a festival, named Racial Harmony to encourage people to learn others culture. I believe that is one of the reasons that there was rarely a conflict among different races. My religion is different from other Chinese believe in. I am a Chinese Muslim. In China, due to my special eating behaviour, I do not have many chances to having outside food. In Singapore, Muslim food can be found everywhere which is so convenient. I read from one post online before, ‘no one is born to be racist’, children from various races study together since they are young, therefore they respect each other when they make friends.

There are not only differences in different countries, but also appear even among the same society and same race. China is one of the good examples. In China, there is also a huge difference from people stay in northern and southern part. The difference shows in eating habits, dialects and even the way how rich people show off their wealth.

Language speaking also reflects the cultures from different study. People in different societies and countries have their beliefs and values they followed. We should learn to be more appreciative of other cultures to build and develop friendships/relationships more easily. This can help us survive this shrinking world.

Resolving interpersonal conflict

As Bolton says ‘To be human is to experience conflict’ (1986). Interpersonal conflict is a daily part of human existence, no matter which age you are in. The only difference is how we deal with those conflicts. To survive and gain success in this competitive world, we need to avoid these interpersonal conflicts.

Conflict occurs between us because we are different, with different needs and wants. Therefore, the key cause of conflict is the degree to which individuals are different. Interpersonal conflict usually arises from six basic issues: control over resources, preferences and nuisances, values, beliefs, goals and the nature of the relationship between the partners.

Despite some negative effects of conflict like larger problems and deeper personal resentments may occur, there are positive effects like people can release their feelings and increases motivation and self-esteem. However, the negative effects may occupy a large proportion of feelings of people.

What can we do to resolve the conflicts? Generally, we should respect others. It might be difficult especially when people are aggressive and argue about something. We need control our attitude and avoid worse situation. We should extend to other the respect that we wish others to extend to us. Empathy is one important manner we should learn and apply to our life. Listening to others' content such as ideas, needs, proposals, position, and listening to their feelings, also try to see the situation from their point of view. It is not necessary for us to agree with them, but we need make effort to understand them. Always keep calm and state your own opinion. Brainstorm all the possible solutions and choose the one that will best meet both parties’ needs and consider possible consequences.

Different people have different style of conflict management. For passive or non-assertive style of people, they choose to avoid the conflict or not respond to it. It is good that you usually do not get direct rejection or blame, and people will not be hurt with rough attitude or language. In the other hand, you may store up a heavy load of resentment and anger and people will never know your needs and wants. For aggressive style of people, they may move against another with the intent to hurt. It seems they can get control of their life by getting what they want, however, their behaviour wind up for them a lot of enemies. They will scare about losing what they have now and in the end, they create their own destruction. Last but not least, for people deal with conflict in assertive style are smart and work out effectively. They can receive success as well without making others mad and they can easily control the entire situation. However, we cannot deny that this style of conflict management may take some risk in how others perceive them, thus they may get hurt with disappointment in some of the relationships.