Reflect on the student presentations given so far. What has been the most interesting about them?
After listening to almost three weeks of presentations of different topics covered in the CDE course, I had benefited a lot and what most enriching is that I was able to see things in different perspectives provided by different presenters. Some of the presenters’ answers were simply off, but in the other hand, some presenters provided their excellent point of view on the pertinent issues. In general, the presentations by our classmates are satisfactory.
I realized the fact that we can actually learn from each and every student presenter. Each presenter have their own strengths and weaknesses and thus we should learn from their strengths and avoid their weaknesses. In my opinion, eye contact with the audience is the utmost important when it comes to presentations. On the other hand, I felt that the speed of presenting is also very important. Take myself as an example, during the presentation, my speed of presenting is really fast and after the presentation, some of my friends gave me their honest feedback saying that they couldn’t digest what i said. I then realized the importance of tones and speed of presentation and I will certainly take note of that in my presentations in the future.
During the presentations themselves, I managed to discover that each presenter have their own distinct style and approaches. At the same time, I was surprised to find out the fact that in oral presentations, it is a must for us to give really precise opinions and there is absolutely no way for us to get away with some copying and pasting from the Internet. The above is very likely caused by the fact that the audience is only listening and there is no visual aids to help apprehending the content the presenter’s was trying to present.
Besides that, I found some of the presenters’ speech particularly interesting and they are for instance Ming Kit, Gee Yang and Xin Ling.
Let’s start off with Ming Kit. Ming Kit was presenting on the differences between the East and the West and I believed most of our classmates including myself were impressed by his confidence during the presentation and his well-paced speech. He answered the question from multi-perspective and they were relatively strong points that we couldn’t miss which included the technological, religious, values and education aspects. His points were well developed and his impressive presentations skills made them even easier to understand. What even more marvelous was that he also touched on the recent changes of all these similarities and differences caused by different factors.
Up next will be Xin Ling’s speech. He was presenting the exactly same question as Ming Kit. Generally, he was focusing on the ideas of individualists and collectivists ideas between the east and the west. However, there was a major problem in his speech. He totally missed out the fact that the Chinese had changed due to globalization. He mentioned that Chinese are collectivists society and harmony and unity plays a main role in eastern competitions but it was absolutely contradicting to the issue the chinese government is trying to tackle ! The chinese government is now trying to let the chinese society adopt the Confucius ideology and hoping that they would have a harmonious society which we covered in Tutorial 2.
Last but not least, Gee Yang’s speech. He was doing the exactly same topic as me, “The factors that can account for the differences and similarities between the East and the West”. To be honest, this is a fairly hard topic as internet resources barely touch on this aspect. To our disappointment, Gee Yang’s speech was driven towards the differences and similarities and not the factors that account for them. From his failure of answering the question, I realised how important is interpreting a question and if we managed to interpret them correctly, there is definitely a high chance that we will not be presenting irrelevant ideas.
All in all, the presentations are all very insightful no matter they are good or not so fine. Just like what I mentioned, we should always learn from the strengths and avoid the mistakes made by our fellow classmates.
Hello Alvin!
ReplyDeleteFirst and foremost, after reading this journal, I am deeply inspired. I am very happy that you have liked my presentation and I will definitely strive harder in the next term so as to not disappoint you.
Well, let's get back to the journal. I have always admired the way you develop such nice and strong supporting points to support your point of view, and this journal is again no exception. Your structure is well-crafted and it is evident that you have processed your thoughts well before penning (or, in this case, typing) your thoughts down.
Your raised the point that no matter how good the presenters were, the presentations are all very insightful, and "we should always learn from the strengths and avoid the mistakes made by our fellow classmates". I agree with you to a large extent. It is very apparent that all of us have done significant research before going up to present our topic, and it is definitely a must to learn from each other in order to improve and obtain a win-win situation. I must say that I was very impressed that you raised this point.
One area I felt that you could have emphasized more on is the area regarding Xin Ling's presentation. Although Xin Ling's presentation had its share of disadvantages, it cannot be denied that it had some advantages. You could have elaborated on how he raised the interesting example on China's uniformity (remember the lesson on drawing cats?) and applaud him for coming up with such an example instead of merely talking about the negatives of his presentation.
All in all, you did a great job in this journal. I could sense the effort you have taken to write this journal and I feel that it is definitely one of your best journals you have written.
Hi Alvin,
ReplyDeleteAfter reading your reflective journal, i feel that your journal is well crafted on the overall. You clearly and distinctly split your analysis of the presenters into three paragraphs each, and beginning with an introduction of how the presentations benefited you, and then end with a conclusion, reiterating your thesis statement.
I like the fact that you mentioned about how you could learn from the mistakes and good points of the presenters and then further hone your presentation skills. You basically analyzed three different presenters, namely, Xin Lin, Ming Kit and Gee Yang.
I agree with you on the point that Gee Yang’s speech was off-point as i had the same idea as well. Although i did not witness the presentation from Ming Kit and Xin Lin, from your journal, i can infer that you provided great observation skills of the presentation by Xin Lin and Ming Kit, and actually summarized their good and bad point in a very professional way.
Furthermore, i am glad that you were able to identify that eye contact was an essential aspect during presentations. You have also managed to point out your mistakes and shown efforts to correct them. I feel that this is exactly what a good reflective journal should comprise of. The journal, especially in the first 3 paragraphs, provided evidences of deep reflective thinking of not only other presenters but also related the weaknesses and strong points of them to oneself.
However, i would like to state that your reflective journal unfortunately have some weird expressions. For example, “ no matter they are good or not so fine ” , i hope that you would reduce the number of these mistakes in your future reflective journals.
All in all, i definitely enjoyed reading you reflective journal. It contained concrete analysis of three different presenters and provided great reflective thinking about your own weaknesses and indeed stated hwo you could actually rectify them from the lessons learnt. Nonetheless, i hope to see better reflective journals, with the reduction of weird english expressions. All the best!
Regards,
Clarence Lee