Effective Communication

This is the post excerpt.

Subject: Self-Introduction

Dear Professor Blackstone,

I am writing to introduce myself as a student in your Effective Communication class. Having graduated from diploma in environmental science in Republic Polytechnic, I am keen on furthering my studies in a local university due to the huge emphasis and importance placed on educational qualifications in this modern world. As education and learning are vital in our life, I feel the urge and drive to enhance my level of competencies. I am interested in studying Sustainable Infrastructure Engineering (Building Services) offered in Singapore Institute of Technology after my polytechnic education as I’d like to experience an entirely different lifestyle of being an engineer.

Having interned in the department of biological sciences in National University of Singapore during my year 3 Industry Immersion Programme (IIP) in polytechnic, I’d definitely understood the importance of effective communication where I’d to present my findings of certain plant species that were tasked to me to a group of professional researchers. This was when I’d experienced and understood that presentations and written communications are inevitable and of utmost importance for wherever I go.

As my polytechnic puts a bigger emphasis on presentations as compared to other polytechnics, I am proud to be more confident and adept in holding a better presentation to a group of audiences. However, though I can definitely say that I’d improved on verbal communications, I still believe that my feelings of stage fright are still present.

Hence, I hope to enhance my effective communication skills that hold greater emphasis on better contextual presentations of findings and delivering of message to the intended audiences. Additionally, I hope to improve my confidence in presentations so that I’d know exactly how to control my stage fright and present myself as a more confident speaker.

I look forward to your teachings and guidance in class.

Yours Sincerely,
Wong Jun Peng
SIE2017 Group 5

 

Edited on 11 Sep, 11:30pm

Edited on 23 Sep, 1:22pm

Edited on 24 Sep, 9:21pm

Edited on 27 Sep, 12:36pm

Blogs read and commented:

Joel, Hong Yu, James (Group 5), Shu Han (Group 1)

 

 

 

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9 thoughts on “Effective Communication”

  1. Hi Jun Peng

    Would be great if you can also provide some real-life examples regarding the stage-fright you still experience so that we can all learn from it and become better speakers by the end of the module.

    I think there is a slight grammatical error in (paragraph 4 , line 1) at “As my polytechnic puts a bigger emphasis on presentations”. Since you used “bigger”, there has to be a comparison with another object. Bigger emphasis as compared to other polytechnics?

    Overall, your post is really well written and concise. Good job on it!

    Cheers,
    Shu Han (Group 1)

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    1. Hi Shu Han,

      One of the real-life examples of stage fright during my polytechnic days were such that I lost track of what I was trying to say during presentations. It might be because I got slightly more nervous when more people were watching. I’d to quickly change the subject and talked about an entirely new content regarding the topic that I was presenting.

      Thank you for your inputs about my self-introduction post. I had already made the necessary changes.

      Regards,
      Jun Peng

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  2. “As education and learning is vital in our life” – “education and learning” is plural, therefore the “is” should be changed to “are”.
    (e.g “As education and learning are vital in our life”.)

    “I hope to enhance on my effective communication skills” – the “on” seems unnecessary and should be removed
    (e.g “I hope to enhance my effective communication skills”.)

    “I hope to improve on my confidence in presentations” – the “on” here seems unnecessary too.
    (e.g “I hope to improve my confidence in presentations”.)

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  3. Hi Jun Peng,

    I see that both of us have difficulties with public speaking, I am sure that with practice, we can overcome it together!

    Here are some points that I have picked up after reading your formal introduction to Professor Blackstone. I hope that you will find my comments constructive!

    1. I noticed that you have used the contraction “I’d” multiple times throughout your letter. Although Professor Blackstone has mentioned that he was okay with us using contractions, I think keeping it to a minimum in a formal letter would be more appropriate.

    2. Grammatical errors.

    a) Paragraph 1 line 3, “I’d been keen” is short for “I had been keen”, that makes your statement past tense, which I believe was not intended.

    b) Paragraph 2 Line 5, In the last line “tasked to me to a group of…”, I think should be re-written as “tasked to me by a group of…”.

    c) Paragraph 2 line 6, “This was when I’d experienced…”. “This” is present tense, however you were referring to a past experience. “That was when I had experienced

    d) Paragraph 4 line 1, “enhance on my effective communication skills…”. I think enhanced is used incorrectly in this sentence. May I suggest editing it to, “enhance my communication skills…”.

    e) Paragraph 4 line 1-3. The sentence “I hope to enhance on my effective communication skills that hold greater emphasis on better contextual presentations of findings and delivering of message to the intended audiences.” is incoherent. I believe, correct me if I am wrong, that you were trying to say that you hope to improve your communication skills by learning how to bring your points across to the audience, in an effective manner.

    I hope that you will find my points helpful. I am sure that I have made some mistakes, so if you find any of my points to be wrong, please correct me! I look forward to seeing you in class!

    Regards,
    Jerome Teng
    https://jeromeeffcom.blogspot.sg/

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    1. Hi Jerome,

      For point (b), what I meant there was that my target audience is the group of professional researchers. I had to present what I was tasked to them.

      For point (c), I understand why it is ‘that’ for this case. However, I purposely use ‘this’ to make the reader feel close such that they can relate to my experiences better. Correct me if I’m wrong here.

      For point (e), what I meant there was that I hope to enhance my effective communication skills such that I can deliver concise content knowledge to the audience as well as to get my message across in both verbal and non-verbal communications concerning any matters.

      Thank you for your inputs for my post. I had already made the necessary amendments for the rest of your feedback.

      Regards,
      Jun Peng

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  4. Dear Jun Peng,

    Thank you for this self intro. You cover the key topic areas, and also let us know something about your developing passion for engineering. In that regard, you allude to your wanting the “entirely different lifestyle of being an engineer.” I just wonder what that is.

    You also discuss your communication strength quite concisely and tie that to your weakness as well as to your goals. As you can see, we certainly address presenting repeatedly in our module.

    As for language use, it is quite fluent and the couple minor issues have been addressed by your peers and in your revisions.

    I appreciate the hard work.

    Brad

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  5. Dear Professor Brad,

    With regards to my writings about experiencing ‘an entirely different lifestyle of being an engineer’, I am referring to the transition of learning about environmental related issues in polytechnic (which is more about factual information) to focusing about building structures that have huge relations with calculations that deal with concepts and theories.

    Regards,
    Jun Peng

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