#6 Final reflection of CG1413

Everything has an end, there is no exception.

After 4 months of CG1413, I really learnt a lot of things: not only effective communication among team members and different cultural groups, but also how to be a person who is confident, sober and always prepared. I have to say I am in favor of this module. This module is not merely an English language subject, instead of that, it is more likely to be a discussing session with friendly and mature classmates, interesting topics and stories, and most importantly, an experienced, humorous and kind-hearted teacher. I am feeling lucky to have taken this module.



This module is closely related to our programming project in CG1102, and because of this, I have the chance to know two of my group mates and also friends now, Sasha and Phong. At the beginning, I do not really like to share ideas with them as I was afraid of the possibilities to cause any troubles and misunderstanding because of cultural differences and customs. Just after two or maybe three meetings, I discovered that things were not as bad as I expected. They are both very friendly and open-minded persons who are capable to accept different ideas and suggestions. Sasha is an optimistic person who will sing songs at any time. She often shared foods with us and cheered up when we got frustrated. Phong is a very humble and polite person. He always did a lot of work about our project himself and then asked us to check errors. After I pointed something needed to be corrected, he will thank me first then go ahead. This really changed my view of him and I really learnt a lot of programming knowledge from him. Thanks to CG1413 and CG1102 for providing chance to know these two friends of mine.


Although there was a lot of difficulty and discouragement in this learning process, we did not give up and get upset. We reflected ourselves from it, encouraged each other and finally got rid of it. However, most of the time, this voyage is full of laughing and relaxation. I think after this module, everyone in our class has known each other better and become friends. Now, this module has ended, I hope everyone in this class as well as Mrs. Brenda will have a brighter future.


Yesterday
The beatles

Yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they're here to stay
Oh I believe in yesterday
Suddenly
I'm not half the man I used to be
There's a shadow hanging over me
Oh I yesterday came suddenly
Why she had to go I don't know she wouldn't say
I said something wrong now I long for yesterday
Yesterday
Love was such an easy game to play
Now I need a place to hide away
Oh I believe in yesterday
Why she had to go I don't know she wouldn't say
I said something wrong now I long for yesterday
Yesterday love was such an easy game to play
Now I need a place to hide away
Oh I believe in yesterday
Mm mm mm

#5 Reflection of Oral Presentation 2

Let me quote from Louis Pasteur's famous saying, "Chance favors only the prepared mind". You will never really understand what this old saying means until you experienced it. Today, we finished our oral presentation 2, unfortunately, in a big, big hurry.

If one of our audiences, Gary, is the CEO of a company who awaits us to convince him to accept our proposal, we would have failed.

To be honest, I admit that OP2 power point slides were only finished before the day we present. There are two reasons for this: first is that we made a mistake of having an interview of the officer in charge of NUS cloud computing, and the date was postponed again and again. The other reason is we cannot finish the slides without the answers given from the NUS officer as we were not able to come up with a solution by ourselves—the topic is just too difficult and cutting-edge.

As a result, we could not find a time to have a rehearsal or some kind of practice. The most we can do is to prepare our own parts according to the slides. Obviously, none of us looked confident at all.

However, apart from the hastiness, we did a great job in the collecting of survey results as well as interview reports. In addition, our presentation skills have improved quite obviously, not only in verbal fluency, but also in the way of using proper gestures and eye contact. Personally, I feel that I performed just like what I expected. I did not feel more nervous than usual, and I did control my part of presentation within the time strain. So I guess I know the secret of oral presentation by now: which is nothing more than PRACTICE.

#4 Reflection of Meeting 1

This is my real first time of being recorded while having a meeting. The first feeling of mine, of course, has to be nervous again! Hahaha. To see yourself on the video is such a strangle thing especially for people who are not actors or journalists, isn’t it?

I have to say, we had a wonderful and skillful meeting (I would rather say ‘discussion session’) on 12th Feb 2010 at Prince George’s Park Residence at 7:30pm. To start with, Sasha, our very experienced Chief Executive Officer of the group, introduced the project outline to us clearly. Phong, our Chief Software Engineer, took the responsibility of analyzing the project and distributing the tasks individually. Finally, as the Chief Risk Manager, I checked the correctness of the assumption as well as the possibility and feasibility of the solution.


Nothing is perfect, so is our wonderful meeting. During the discussion, we had to pause the recording for a moment several times when we reached a point that all of us had nothing to say. This is quite embarrassing, especially we had written meeting agenda at first place. I think this is because we discussed the project too fast; another reason might be we were all too shy to voice any doubts or opinions. From my point of view, I think I was not prepared well enough comparing to Sasha and Phong. For future improvement, I need to do more in preparing as well as brainstorming before the discussion.

One good thing about our group I want to mention is the behavior of others while one is expressing his ideas. All of us were able to listen to others effectively as in nodding head or watching the speaker in the eyes. :p

#3: Resolving interpersonal conflict

I hope you have not gone crazy after watched that video.

Our two close buddies, Opie and Anthony, had finally blew the whole Earth up just by non-stop quarrelling itself. After laughing at these two, don’t we have to deeply think about what exactly went wrong between them, or more generally, among the very group of people who are having the same problem with O and A?

Interpersonal conflict is usually caused by lack of effective communication between the two. As a result, one may not understand the other one’s real meaning as well as not able to express him correctly. Just like what Opie has said “You can’t say ‘voice my opinion’ when all it does is piss you off”, Anthony kept asking Opie to express himself freely while not really listening to his opinions. Is this a good way of communication? Of course not. Opie also chose wrong way of expressing himself, frankly speaking, not friendly and making sense. He always complained anything he did not agree. Such conversations will never be effective at all.

Another possible reason will always lead to conflict or misunderstanding is one’s self-centered perspective. Anthony is such a self-centered person who does not consider other’s feelings and opinions at all. He will say “You are insane” just because he thinks Opie is insane when Opie behaves so strangely. He did not realize that he might hurt his friend by saying that. He kept saying that until Opie eventually retorted angrily. All of this can be avoided if Anthony could think from a more mature perspective or he can think from his friend’s point of view. Sometimes, to let others understand you, understand them first.


All in all, resolving interpersonal conflict is hard work. It requires self-awareness, courage, compassion and patience. And most importantly, think from a different perspective.

#2 Skill that you need to have: effective interpersonal communication

Effective interpersonal communication leads to proper understanding between you and me, thus it is the door to the financial wealth, loving relationships, and all that is good to life. However, communication is the most talked about and least understood area of human behavior. A person can be a poor speaker but at the mean time, a good communicator. You may wonder that, how can this be? The fact is, the loss of one or two senses certainly can impair communication, but it does not have to stop communication. The use of non-verbal language such as body language and facial expression is an important role in the art of communication.





Well, how to explain that when a person has all his senses functioning normally but he is not able to convey a message or understand others? Is this communication an ability that people should really concern about? Sometimes the barrier of communication comes from the external factors such as language, whereas most of the time the reason that affects a person from communicating effectively is from internal. Such factors may be emotions, lack of subject knowledge or even stress. You may not possibly be able to listen to your mother’s words when you are under the stress of the examination.


How do we solve these problems during communication? A good way of starting this is to use simple words to convey message in order to avoid misunderstanding. Apart from that, one must learn effective listening, that is, listen attentively and proactively. Listening is actually a two-way communication. When two persons are communicating with each other, an effective process of interpersonal communication will require the use of asking questions while the other person is speaking. One last thing might be trying not to put your negative emotions into the communication while expressing yourself or listening to others.

CG1413 Communication and teamwork: what they are tome?

“The most dangerous thing is not something you do not know, it is something you think you know but actually you didn’t”.

From movie STAR TREK

Here is my first post about my communication lesson, I hope anyone who get the chance read it enjoy it. =)

The first principle of effective communications is to really connect with your audience. Communication is a two-way process, and you need to be really careful with that. Before you start to communicate with others, you should ask yourself what is your purpose of this conversation. Knowing your plan will make you engage your audiences as well as emotionally connected with them. Look them into the eyes, try to express what you mean, and say it.

The second principle of effective communication is to get appropriate feedback. When you told someone to do something and he did exactly opposite to what you said, would you get pissed off? No, you should not. What you should do is reflect what the problem with your communication with him is and figure it out how to get a proper feedback. A good feedback should give you a message that he understood you and he agreed with you or not. For me, a good way of asking for a feedback would be “You feel me?”

The third principle is to understand that communication is more than the surface meaning of words. As a listener, you need to concentrate on the one who is talking to you. Do not let other things distract you. Hearing is not listening, you need to understand not only the words but also the meaning deep inside the words and reflect from that.

The fourth principle is respect. Respect your audiences when you are talking to them, ask them for feedback. I shall say I have seen some politicians of Taiwan government arguing in a parliament meeting and the impression they gave me is purely a lack of respect to each other. They do not allow their opponents from other party to finish talking. Apart from that, they even fight with each other when they are angry. A simple improvement would be respecting your enemies and it will be very easy to reach a common approach between you two.

So, what I learnt from this lesson is to be a efficient communicator, you have to show your respect to your communication partner, connect with him as much as possible, try to understand the deeper information from the message, and at last , ask for or give a valuable feedback of what you have been acknowledged. I wish I can memorize all of them and really apply them.