Javier's critical reflection

 Critical reflection

From the start, my goal for this module was to gain more knowledge on effective communication and better language use. I tend to have this stuttering problem during normal conversations as I don't usually speak English at home. Through this module, I hope that it could improve my communication skills a little. As I’m quieter, I’m more of a thinker rather than a speaker and I thought that critical thinking would be relatable to me but it isn't that straightforward. Critical thinking to me is the art of digging deeper when a piece of information is presented. I have to think deeply about whether this information given is accurate or reliable, does it has the details required and most importantly does it has the evidence if the information is an assumption. This can be seen when we started writing for our reader’s response, the content had to be specific and with pieces of evidence supported by journals or articles. I remember that I took quite a long time to research the scholarly articles on the ‘different types of wingtips’ and see if they supported the content of my reader’s response. This technique was also used in report writing. Critical thinking I feel is also not a fixated type of thinking, it allows you to think from different perspectives and minimises the bias that a person may have towards a specific topic. I have not presented in years and my voice projection was an issue, to counter that during the mock practice sessions, I’ve gotten help from my team members to stand at corners of the classroom while I project my voice and see if they could hear me. At first, they struggled to hear me and I asked them for tips and someone suggested using the ‘ha voice projection method’ which I think helps. I should also slow down a little when communicating my ideas.

The presentation skills for the research project would be the highlight of this module for me. For this presentation, I’ve learnt new things that I’m not aware of such as my talking speed. I have never gotten feedback on my talking speed before so that was quite new to me. After thinking about it I was quite focused on completing my content and that might made me unknowingly made me speak faster than usual. For future presentations, I will take note of that and talk more slowly, also when you are talking a little slower, the pronunciation and sound will be a lot clearer and more precise. Meeting once a week to discuss our project progress is also not easy, as we all have different ways of managing our work, the time that we meet for calls for discussion is fixed and progress has to be made before the calls which means allocating some time for it. I have learnt many new things, not just only communication in this module. From forming specific and detailed arguments to presenting in front of a small group are applicable skills that can be applied throughout my life. Using the APA citation also took some time to get used to as the previous style I used was Harvard citation and I don't remember it being that specific compared to APA. This module is like a fast-paced but detailed english lesson that I think I would be struggling to complete at the start but after completing it and being able to get some skills that could never be learnt from engineering modules is meaningful. To conclude, I think that this module was useful for improving my communication and made me realise that I might not be as bad then what I expect when it comes to communicating.