Tuesday, November 11, 2008
7. Final Reflection
Final Reflection
“Active listening contributes significantly to an effective communication, even though many people consider talking to be more powerful or important than listening.” Unfortunately, I am one of those people and was taken aback when I learnt about this during the first lesson of this course. Since then, I have been attempting to practice active listening such as listening for details in order to gasps the finer points of the whole picture before I make any response. With this active listening skill, I am able to express myself as genuinely concerned about the speakers and hence, encourage them to share more with me. Active listening can prevent many misunderstanding and even helps to build rapport between my friends and me. On the other hand, I am still feeling difficulty in “listening to evaluate” especially in face of “value difference” and “gender difference”. In order to communicate effectively in the presence of such differences takes more than skills but also understanding and acceptance. Currently, I am reading this book, The Female Brain, by Louann Brizendine. The authors gave many real and interesting examples about the differences between men and women in interpreting the same words. The journey to becoming an effective communicator certainly takes a life time.
I am grateful for the skills taught in constructing resume and job application letter. Prior to this course, I was constantly held back by uncertainty when it comes to writing resume to apply for jobs during school vacation. Furthermore, this course presented me with many opportunities to practice communication skills, from interacting with group members to oral presentation. The experiences of learning and communicating with peers have been a fruitful and enjoyable experience. Not only have we built new friendships, we also accomplished various assignments thought teamwork and effective communication. The requirement to present for the report made me realize how much confidence I had lost over the years due to the lack of practice and opportunity to present ideas formally in front of others. This experience from oral presentation will always serve as a reminder that communication skills need to be constantly practiced in order to achieve desirable results.
I would like to thank Miss Happy, my group members, Derek and Mongshi, and all the classmates for giving me such a wonderful learning experience. I hope we have the chance to work together in future.
