Being a third year student, I heard a lot positive news about this module and I was eager to put myself to this challenging task. Though I wanted to take it the previous semester with my friends, I was outbidded and eventuallytook it up again this semester.
Even though I wasn’t able to do this project with my group of friends, I was glad that I came alone and this has helped me meet new friends. It was also through this that I had to adjust myself to an environment and engage in skills I picked up with different people.
Furthermore, with an already cramped timetable, my project group members (Valerie and Joyce) and I had to work on our project while pushing back some of our deadlines. Even though we had to put up long hours to do our project, losing some sleep in the process (Anyway, no pun intended even though our project title arose from the lack of sleep!!), we had great fun while understanding the plights of one another. Compromise had to be made so that we could finish our task at hand.
In this course, I realised that an effective communication is not an easy task, and it requires an active participation of the people involved. However, it is not ideally possible to achieve many situations, due to the fact that there is not enough time for anyone to explain everything to each other and that not everyone is as open about their problems as how we would want them to be. Eventually, it boils down to being accommodating to one another and how we can convince others while not threading on their toes.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Biodata
Isaac is a third year student in the department of Science Faculty in National University of Singapore (NUS), studying life sciences, majoring in biomedical sciences. While undertaking his honours in NUS, Isaac has participated in various activities outside school to prepare himself for the rigours of the working world.
On top of rigorous workload in University, Isaac has to constantly juggle between managing his academic results and limited time while doing his part time job as an administrator at Pasir Ris Zone 13 Residents’ Corner.
Back in his secondary school and junior college days, he was an active member in the Prefectorial Board and Students’ Council respectively. During this period of time, he had taken part in planning many school level activities and has experienced a large number of activities which require large amounts of teamwork to pull off an event.
Recently, he was promoted to a Weiqi (the equivalent of Go in Japanese) trainer from a trainee and has nurtured 2 students at Primary 1 and 3. They achieved 10th and 7th position, in a year end Weiqi competition, respectively. This Whampoa Cup is an annual competition where the top players around the nation gathered to compete.
Not just fulfilling his role as a student in NUS, he is also actively involved in activities outside school to improve his credentials, and gathering traits like being an active team player, gaining an time-management skills and patience in dealing with young children.
On top of rigorous workload in University, Isaac has to constantly juggle between managing his academic results and limited time while doing his part time job as an administrator at Pasir Ris Zone 13 Residents’ Corner.
Back in his secondary school and junior college days, he was an active member in the Prefectorial Board and Students’ Council respectively. During this period of time, he had taken part in planning many school level activities and has experienced a large number of activities which require large amounts of teamwork to pull off an event.
Recently, he was promoted to a Weiqi (the equivalent of Go in Japanese) trainer from a trainee and has nurtured 2 students at Primary 1 and 3. They achieved 10th and 7th position, in a year end Weiqi competition, respectively. This Whampoa Cup is an annual competition where the top players around the nation gathered to compete.
Not just fulfilling his role as a student in NUS, he is also actively involved in activities outside school to improve his credentials, and gathering traits like being an active team player, gaining an time-management skills and patience in dealing with young children.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Free and Easy - Me, Myself and NVC
As a saying goes, a picture says a thousand words. In communication, the actions that we do drop plenty of hints to the people receiving our signals. Shivering while talking to a superior, slouching when approaching another person, or winking at another person while you are talking, all these seemingly unconscious actions give others an idea of what one is thinking and the message they’d want to convey. No matter how much we can try to lie, our actions will eventually give way to be in tangent with our thoughts.
Speaking to anyone is like singing a song; you can’t keep the same tone throughout the entire session. Apart from comic sitcoms, rarely anybody is able to keep up with that same tone; either they would bore themselves or they’d put their listener(s) off. The tone of speech is another method to get our point across. A boss when dissatisfied with his employee’s attitude, is expected to use a harsh tone to tell his employee off.
A famous researcher Albert Mehrabian did a research on non-verbal cues in communication and came up with the well known 7%-38%-55% rule, with each numbers referring to choice of words, tone of language and body language respectively. This helped us to understand that the non-verbal cues play an extremely important part in communication in the sense that the passive part of communication takes a much heavier weight than the choice of words we use.
I’m ashamed to say that the people who are deaf tend to be better at paying attention in conversations than most of us. With their disabilities, they have to be one hundred percent focus on lip-reading and the speaker's non-verbal actions. Unlike most of us will tend to drift away or lose focus once in a while during conversation. While we look at the many ways to improve on our communication skills, the answer that we have, is so close that we are oblivious to it. In short, being a good listener is a start to all communication. Maybe we should all start to use sign language to communicate so that we can change all the rules of speech or the lack of it! :)
Speaking to anyone is like singing a song; you can’t keep the same tone throughout the entire session. Apart from comic sitcoms, rarely anybody is able to keep up with that same tone; either they would bore themselves or they’d put their listener(s) off. The tone of speech is another method to get our point across. A boss when dissatisfied with his employee’s attitude, is expected to use a harsh tone to tell his employee off.
A famous researcher Albert Mehrabian did a research on non-verbal cues in communication and came up with the well known 7%-38%-55% rule, with each numbers referring to choice of words, tone of language and body language respectively. This helped us to understand that the non-verbal cues play an extremely important part in communication in the sense that the passive part of communication takes a much heavier weight than the choice of words we use.
I’m ashamed to say that the people who are deaf tend to be better at paying attention in conversations than most of us. With their disabilities, they have to be one hundred percent focus on lip-reading and the speaker's non-verbal actions. Unlike most of us will tend to drift away or lose focus once in a while during conversation. While we look at the many ways to improve on our communication skills, the answer that we have, is so close that we are oblivious to it. In short, being a good listener is a start to all communication. Maybe we should all start to use sign language to communicate so that we can change all the rules of speech or the lack of it! :)
Monday, March 2, 2009
Evaluating Intercultural Behavior
Dealing with people from different cultures requires different skills compared to dealing with the locals. “In Rome, do what the Romans do” rule does not generally apply all the time; the visitors will try their best to follow the rules of their host. It would be courteous of us to give them the same respect that they have given us initially. Like all systems, culture play an important part in communication and it has slowly but steadily changed as time passes.
Dressing and personal grooming play an important part on first impressions when dealing with these people. Just before any visit, they would do some research on how to dress appropriately and we should also do the same. Although it is not possible to dress completely alike their culture, at least some compliance should be followed. For instance, the people from the Muslim community tend to not allow their female gender to expose too much flesh to the public eye. When these people come to visit us on formal situations, we cannot simply ask our female counterparts to either disappear while they are around or wear tudungs and wrap their bodies completely to the extent of only exposing their eyes. A best compromise of the ladies could be wearing long skirts and showing little flesh below the neck.
Dealing with cultures would also mean dealing with their peculiarities with respect to food as well. Different cultures have different ways of expressing their thanks to their hosts, although their behaviour might irk us in some way or other. For example, in certain Asian countries like China, it is fine for you to burp after a meal to tell your hosts that they have prepared a good meal, while the French people find belching a rude act.
Overall, dealing with people from different cultures is generally the same as how we are to deal with people from our culture. The main point is that we have to be more tolerant to differences.
Dressing and personal grooming play an important part on first impressions when dealing with these people. Just before any visit, they would do some research on how to dress appropriately and we should also do the same. Although it is not possible to dress completely alike their culture, at least some compliance should be followed. For instance, the people from the Muslim community tend to not allow their female gender to expose too much flesh to the public eye. When these people come to visit us on formal situations, we cannot simply ask our female counterparts to either disappear while they are around or wear tudungs and wrap their bodies completely to the extent of only exposing their eyes. A best compromise of the ladies could be wearing long skirts and showing little flesh below the neck.
Dealing with cultures would also mean dealing with their peculiarities with respect to food as well. Different cultures have different ways of expressing their thanks to their hosts, although their behaviour might irk us in some way or other. For example, in certain Asian countries like China, it is fine for you to burp after a meal to tell your hosts that they have prepared a good meal, while the French people find belching a rude act.
Overall, dealing with people from different cultures is generally the same as how we are to deal with people from our culture. The main point is that we have to be more tolerant to differences.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Dear friend:
Welcome to visit our website: www.Enet588.com
We are NOKIA, CANON, SONY, ACER and so on several brands, in the
Chinese biggest trade proxy, we may use the most bottom the price,
the highest quality, the best service, the quickest speed to deliver
the project in your hand.If you have some suggestions about our
products or our service, please tell us,and we must accept and
improve,and appreciate you very much.
Being a person who regularly looks out for spam mail in his email inbox, this is one of the undeleted spam mails which I thought is good to share, despite the content being extremely terribly done and it came from one of my friends.
The title of this was “Dear friends, I’ve just set up a portal that deals with cheap branded goods. Please help me spread this around.” From the title, it was extremely pleasing to the eye that someone had taken the trouble to write a decent title. Though it was a mass email, at least the sender had actually taken the trouble to make his email as attractive enough for the reader to take the next step in reading the email. It would have been better if he could actually send it to each person individually with their names replacing Friends.
Upon opening the email, it came to my horror that the content had so many grammatical and spelling errors that even Microsoft Word or any other typewriting applications could easily fix. These errors changed my opinion about the person writing this email. Furthermore, this email had made no slightest sense of respect to the reader as it did not state who the sender was and made even no attempt to say anything to convince their potential client. In turn, this made me very suspicious on the link the person sent me and I did not even dare to open the link, as I was afraid it may be some virus or spyware.
Welcome to visit our website: www.Enet588.com
We are NOKIA, CANON, SONY, ACER and so on several brands, in the
Chinese biggest trade proxy, we may use the most bottom the price,
the highest quality, the best service, the quickest speed to deliver
the project in your hand.If you have some suggestions about our
products or our service, please tell us,and we must accept and
improve,and appreciate you very much.
Being a person who regularly looks out for spam mail in his email inbox, this is one of the undeleted spam mails which I thought is good to share, despite the content being extremely terribly done and it came from one of my friends.
The title of this was “Dear friends, I’ve just set up a portal that deals with cheap branded goods. Please help me spread this around.” From the title, it was extremely pleasing to the eye that someone had taken the trouble to write a decent title. Though it was a mass email, at least the sender had actually taken the trouble to make his email as attractive enough for the reader to take the next step in reading the email. It would have been better if he could actually send it to each person individually with their names replacing Friends.
Upon opening the email, it came to my horror that the content had so many grammatical and spelling errors that even Microsoft Word or any other typewriting applications could easily fix. These errors changed my opinion about the person writing this email. Furthermore, this email had made no slightest sense of respect to the reader as it did not state who the sender was and made even no attempt to say anything to convince their potential client. In turn, this made me very suspicious on the link the person sent me and I did not even dare to open the link, as I was afraid it may be some virus or spyware.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Resolving Interpersonal Conflict
Eric, Sharon, Sena and Kelly were good friends since high school. Eric, Sharon and Sena went on to further their studies in a university, and in the same course; Kelly was bored with studying and decided to go into the modelling industry.
Eric is a well knowledgeable person and was constantly improving himself through reading and gathering information from the Internet. However, he has a quiet personality and usually bottles his problems, except to Kelly. His family is dogged with debts and that his parents were abusive to him, constantly scolding and beating him for everything. As a result, this led to his timid and withdrawn character. Recently, he had developed feelings for Sharon but was unable to her his feelings and was fumbling whenever he sees her.
Sharon is an outgoing but obnoxious person. She has always liked Eric since the first few days she met him, but him being the soft-spoken person, she dated other guys while waiting on him. Bring an obnoxious person, she does not bother much with what she says and usually tramples on the guys' feelings that she dates and was comparing them with Eric. Furthermore, coming from a rich family, she display airs to the people around her, making her an 'enemy' to others. She was not very good with studies and often looks for Eric to get help with it. The two of them had a couple of dates, but she refused to acknowledge that they were dates and insists on keeping it secret from Sena and Kelly, which made Eric confused as to where he stood. She is shy about going into a relationship with him and she also wants to maintain her current friendship with him for a little longer.
Sena was a famous quarterback in American Football in his university and his team mates often look up to him to make plays. Recently his team's winning streak was stopped by a weaker team and they lost by a large margin. This dented his team's morale severely. He was tried various methods to restore it, but his team took a further nosedive. Desperate for ideas, he wanted to seek Eric's help as Eric had always saved him. Only this time he was unable to ask as they previously had engaged in a shouting match over a misunderstanding. Their lecturer had made a last minute change to their test schedule due to unforeseen circumstances and that their email had some bug which sent their lecturer's mail to the spam instead of main folder. Eric somehow found the info but he had forgotten to inform Sena. Though he was late for the test, he was allowed to sit in the test; Sena reached the test site near the end of the test and was not allowed a re-test.
Being the bubbly cheer person in the group, Kelly arranged a dinner meeting for the four friends the following week as she had a week off from her hectic schedule. Despite being friends for such a long period of time, she did not know of the recent issue between Sena and Eric and some of their background issues. Moreover, a few just before the meeting, there was an uproar of edited naked pictures of her spreading around the Internet and became worried about her modelling career. Whenever she was worried, her appetite would drop and being a prideful person, she did not like to reveal her fears to her friends. After hearing that Eric and Sena had a quarrel, and Sena may not attend the meeting because of this issue, it somehow affected her performance at work.
Just a couple of days before the meeting and the four friends had a terrible night sleeping and they were thinking of how they should face one another during the meeting and in their daily lives, without hurting their status quo.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Effective Communication Skills
In most of the time that we are awake, we are communicating with people, be it one-to-one or to a group. In every situation, everyone responds differently to the same message that is put across to them. Furthermore, in this technological age, where everyone uses short message services and live chat messaging services to communicate with one another, cutting a long sentence short by using internet lingo are used ubiquitously and unconsciously. This could hamper our regular communications where much confusions take place. For example, insignificant gestures, situation of communication taking place, role of the communicators, background of each person, tone of speech, phrasing of sentences and the type of activities which the people are involved at that point in time are just some of the factors that can affect the receptivity of responses to the same words used.
There are large comparable differences in communicating behind a screen and seeing the people face to face and bridging or switching from casual and formal communication is a huge challenge. If one takes too much notice into factors and what to say in every situation, it would appear to the other party that what s/he is doing is too robotic. When all goes wrong, give a sincere apology or a simple smile, one may be forgiven.
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