Every Beginning has its End.

It has come to the end of the semester which means it’s the end of the journey for ES2007s. Just like most of my classmates, I took this module as it has no exams and it took me only a few points to bid for this module. I decided to bid for a different class from my other friends who were taking the same module, so that I will have he opportunity to get to know new friends and worked with different group of people. And looking back, I did not regret making that decision.

Initially I felt slightly intimidated attending the class. However, Brad being fantastic tutor and having such a lovely group of classmate makes me look forward for the upcoming classes. The content of the module was very relevant and practical. I do believe that I manage to gain much knowledge about the different aspects and forms of communication. In addition, I managed to gain self confidence.

Looking back at my previous post, it amazed me how interested I was in discussing communication related issues. Since the 1st day I learn how to write, writing complete sentences is something that I would LOVE TO AVOID. I guess that explains why I’m in the Mathematics department.

I guess this is the only module that I am not very consent about the grade that I will get at the end of the day. As I believe that knowledge and experience gain from this module is incomparable to the grade that will be written in my result slip.
Before I end my very last post, I would like to thank Brad for all the knowledge about communication, making the class interesting, very interactive and the guidance. And to all my classmates, thanks for all the encouragement and the comments. I had never experience such a class in NUS were everyone was so friendly and willing to help one another. A million thanks to everyone. ALL THE BEST FOR THE EXAMS.

ORAL PRESENTATION

Yeah it’s over! But I think I could improve on my presentation skills. I was so nervous and it got worst when I saw Wan Yu expression while I was presenting. I stumble a couple of times and spoke too fast throughout the presentation. But it took me tones of guts to agree to the group and did a skit. Although the skit was a bit exaggerative, I believe that our group did manage to put across the main points. However due to the humor, the audience might not realize that the humor contains a main point. Overall, I was happy with the group presentation, it was unique and I believe some of the humor remains in the audience mind after they left the class. I hope we did brighten their day.

P.S To Daniel and Yuka, you guys were fantastic.

AYU'S BIODATA

I am Nor Ayuni Binte Mohamad Saleh. I’m a final year student in National University of Singapore (NUS), majoring in Applied Mathematics. I am self-motivated, organized and a driven person. I take pride in my work, constantly putting in my best effort.

Back in secondary school, I was actively involved in the Student Council and National Police Cadets Corps, represented the school in various activities at cluster and national level. In Junior College, I was in the Touch Rugby school team. Again, I represented the school at national level and participated in many touch carnival. In NUS, I was involved in the Malay society, where I was part of the organizing team for Malam Pentas, which is one of the annually event held by the society.

During school vacations, I had worked at places such as Metro, MOCCA and Chomel. The past work experiences had allowed me to have a glimpse of the real working world. Punctuality, independence, responsibility and confidence is some examples of traits that I have learnt while working.

In life, I aspire to educate the younger generation. To me, this is one of the ways that I could contribute back to the society. This explains my interest to tutor and teach in areas where I am capable of.

On top of the busy academic schedule, I managed to attend a couple of baking classes where I pursue my interest. Baking is a field which I would love to explore after graduating. I desire to attain a qualification in baking. Besides baking, I love vacations. Visited places like Bandung and Mount Kinabalu where the natural sceneries were breathe taking. In the near future, I would love to visit places like Mount Fuji and Taman Negara in Malaysia. After exploring Asia, it is my dream to venture the other beautiful continent of the world to enjoy what nature has to offer.

Edited 31/03/09

LOVE AND MARRIAGE

BEGINS WITH

Love is an emotion related to a sense of strong affection and attachment. Love can be express verbally or non-verbally. Simple actions such as, a peck of kiss on the cheeks and the warmth of a hug, speaks a thousand words of love.

With love, two individuals are brought together and they vow to be life partners. However, the number of people keeping to the vow has been decreasing.

Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports Dr Vivian Balakrishnan said, the general divorce rate increased from 3.8 per 1,000 married resident females in 1980 to 8.0 in 2006.
He also mentioned that, two decades ago, only 2.6% of civil marriages registered in 1987 lasted less than five years, now 3.8% of the 2002 marriage cohort divorced before the fifth year. In addition, about 21% of divorces in 2005 were between spouses who had been married for 20 years or more.
Therefore, it is not true to mention that the trend is only increasing among the young couple.

Counseling services were offered, marriage talks were organized and Family Day was celebrated for the past years. Many activities were introduced to enhance effective communication between partners but the trend shows otherwise.

What are the main causes for the trend? Is communication the main problem? Or are there other barriers to ever lasting marriages? Where is the LOVE?

ENDS WITH

COMMON CULTURAL TRAITS, DIFFERENT VIEWS

As mentioned in class, culture is a practice of values or beliefs that are accepted by the society. In this blog post I would like to talk about a culture which I believe has only emerged recently in the Western countries. Pre-marital sex is becoming a norm and practiced by most Westerners, both adults and teenagers. Surprisingly, the society seems to be very open and receptive towards the idea of pre-marital sex. In fact, it is “uncool” for an adult to remain a virgin.

Culture is something that is not stagnant. Culture could also be passed from one society to another. However, when the idea of pre-marital sex was brought to Asian countries, it was not accepted by most of the societies here especially among the older generations. Just take Singapore for example; pre-marital sex is more of a trend than a culture among the teenagers but it is seen as a problem to the society. As we know, the society in Singapore is still quite conservative thus making sexual topics a taboo. In addition, most of the religions practiced here disapprove pre-marital sex.

The question is how such culture managed to influence a conservative society like us. This may be due to exposure from the media and the easy excess to the cyber world. Thus, parents play an important role to educate their children about such issues.

However, problems that is related to pre-marital sex such as abortion has been on the rise in Singapore. This may be due to ineffective communication among parents and their teenage children. As mentioned earlier, sexual topic is still a taboo in our society, thus teenagers turn to alternatives such as experimenting to find answers for their curiosity. This could also be a result of ineffective communication between the media and the viewers. The producer might have intended to convey message A by including some intimate scenes, however the viewers could only remember the intimate scenes from the show instead of capturing the intended message.


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Why did I choose to talk about this culture trait? Recently I and my guy friend, who is Malay, had a conversation with two other friends who are Chinese. I was shocked when they actually asked me and my guy friend if we “had done it” and they were surprised when we told them we have not. To me such topic is still pretty much a taboo even among friends. After the meet up, I actually asked my guy friend why such question was posted to us. According to my guy friend, it is common for his Chinese friends to practice pre-marital sex and some of them even cohabitate. This trait is becoming a norm and they are opened to discuss about it among friends.

The next question that came to my mind was, what about their parents? Do their parents allow them to stay together even before they got married? I guess the Chinese parents are becoming more opened about such issues as compared to the Malay parents. But surprisingly, statistics shows that 248, or half of the 495 newborns registered without a father's name in 2006, had Malay mums. A third of the 495 mums last year were aged 19 or younger. Thus, it is wrong to say that the activity is more common among the Chinese teens than the Malays or teens of other races.

I guess in a country like Singapore, such culture trait have influence the younger community but the acceptance level differ between the different age group and the different races.

Edited 04/03/09

Critique

(Click on the image to have a better view)

COURTESY
CORRECTNESS
CONCISENESS
CLARITY
COHERENCE AND COHESION
CONCRETENESS
COMPLETENESS


Purpose of letter: To inform graduating students about online declaration of graduate modules for credit.

In my opinion, the letter was courteous and concise. The language used was clear and minimal words were being used to describe situations in a comprehend way. The writer also used numberings to indicate clearly the different important points that she wished to inform the reader. In addition, the information was assembled in a cohesive and coherence way which enhances the understanding of the reader. Useful links were also provided to ensure that students would be able to access the website efficiently.

However, the writer could make some changes to improve her letter slightly. Firstly, writer could have included the phrase “Dear Students” at the beginning of her letter to address the students. Secondly, she could have rephrased the following statement in the forth point “If you fail to file for ….fulfillment of the Undergraduate Degree” to make it sound more subtle. She could change it to “If you were to miss the declaration period, it will be assumed that you wish to use the Graduate Module(s) for fulfillment of the Undergraduate Degree” Thirdly, she could have signed off with “Regards, XXXX” at the end of the letter. And lastly she could have included and email address or a phone number that students could turn to for further enquires.

Edited 17/02/09

Conflicts between siblings

Characters: John and Peter

Scenario:
John’s dad had just bought a family car in the middle of last year. However, his brother Peter, uses it most of the time since his dad is driving a company van and none of the other family members have a driving license.

John and his dad are Liverpool fans while Peter is a Manchester United fan. Before buying the car, an agreement was made between the siblings and their father that they were both not allowed to decorate the car with either the clubs accessories. However a few months later, Manchester United logos were seen in the car. Neither John nor his dad said anything to Peter.

Recently, John got his license. John was supervised by his dad when he was driving the family around, while short driving trips were supervised by Peter.

Scene 1: (John and Peter were in the car alone.)

John was reversing to park the car when suddenly Peter yelled

“Hey step on the brake!"

Hearing the command, John quickly plunged onto the brake and looked shock.

“Why what’s wrong? What had happen?” asked John eagerly.
“Did you know that you actually hit a person while reversing just now?” said Peter.
“I did?” John looked blankly into Peter. He was stunned. John turned to look to the back of the car but he could only see a lady walking about 10 metres away and who seemed perfectly fine. Neither of them got out off the car to check if anyone was really being hit. Without questioning his brother, John just continued parking the car and they both headed home. Questions ran through John’s mind.

If I did hit someone, why didn’t Peter got off the car and check on the person? Why wasn’t anyone at the back of the car when I turned back? And if it was the lady whom I saw was being hit, why did she look so fine and how is she able to walk such a distance almost immediately after being hit?

Scene 2: (John and Peter had just finished having dinner outside with the whole family)

After the dinner Peter decided to meet up with some friends. So John actually volunteered to drive the family home.

“Pass me the keys. I feel like driving today” said John to Peter.
Ignoring his brother’s request, Peter passed the keys to his dad. John was puzzled with Peter’s action.
“Why can’t I drive?”
“Your driving is horrendous!” Peter told John straight to the face.
Although John felt really hurt at the moment he just took the keys from his dad and drove the family home. But John just could not understand why his brother was behaving cold towards him. After some thought, he realized that his brother’s attitude towards him had changed since he started driving the family car.

What should John do to resolve this matter?

Edited 07/02/09

importance of effective communication TO ME!

Communication is a medium used by everyone in their daily lives intentionally or unintentionally. For me, communication is a skill where I used to interact with different individuals for different purposes. Therefore, to communicate effectively differs from one situation to another.

Effective communication skills will really help me to present myself in a presentable manner. For example in a job interview, if I fail to communicate effectively, the chances of me getting hired will be very low. Effective communication skills will incorporate greatly with the paper qualification to secure a position in the working world.

On the other hand, the communication skills applied when I’m interacting with my friends and during a job interview differs. One of the main intentions of communication with friends is to build bonds. Through communication I will be able to differentiate the “hi-bye” friends and friends who will be there when I’m in need.

Other than bonding, communication is a tool used by me to tutor others. Tutoring is a situation where effective communication is very important. Without it, the students whom I’m tutoring will not be able to understand my messages and they are not able clarify their doubts.

Not forgetting, communication is a tool for me to get GOOD grades in school. Thus, effective communication skill is certainly important.

Last but not least, communicating effectively with my loved ones is the most important. To me, the bond with family members should never be broken. Thus having an effective communication is essential to strengthen ties and reduce the chances of hurting one another.

IMPORTANCE OF COMMUNICATION SKILLS

Communication is a form of interaction between humans to convey messages of different kinds. Messages can be structured to inform, convince and can even function as a medium for people to form bonds and judge other individuals. Thus, having effective communication is important to attain these goals and create good reputations.

Observers are able to judge the speaker’s characteristics and evaluate his capabilities through communication. For example in a job interview, questions are being asked to assess the interviewee if he or she is suitable to be a member of the company. In this case, effective communication comes in handy for him to convince the interviewer of his or her capabilities. Therefore having effective communication skills is an advantage to individuals.

Through communication, one can also educate others. For an example in an interactive seminar where the speaker is to deliver a talk and to answer queries from the audience, both the speaker and audience interacting are to have effective communication skills to optimize the time spent and gain as much information as possible.

In addition, effective communication skills may also prevent misunderstanding and clarify doubts. For example in a debate, two speakers may have two very different opposing views. Without effective communication, anyone may easily offend the other party and this may leads to confusion.

In conclusion, having effective communication skills benefit individuals in many forms.

INEFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION