Critical Reflection

 At the beginning of this module, the two goals that I set for myself is to improve my public speaking skills and the ability to apply critical thinking for all of my assignments. 

I always struggle whenever I need to converse in proper English. Speaking with friends and family was never a struggle because we use broken English or Chinese. Whenever I meet new people or work with new colleagues I always don’t have the confidence to voice out my opinions during a discussion or meeting. Apart from my communication skills, my writing skills are also another area that I am weak in especially my sentence structure. 

This module has definitely helped me in my writing skills, communication, and my critical thinking ability. At the beginning of the module when I first hear that one of the assignments is that we need to write a complete summary reader response. My initial thought is that this is going to challenge my writing skills. However, the first thing that we learned in this module is how to apply critical thinking using the Paul-Elder Framework. Paul-Elder Framework provides an efficient method to evaluate arguments and ideas through rational reasoning. This framework is the foundation of the entire module as it plays an important role in all the assignments given. 

Speaking in front of the whole class was always a challenge to me as I’m always not confident in my own language. There is this quote that says “practice makes perfect” in Professor Brad’s class there is definitely a lot of practice. In his class, we will either do a mini presentation in front of the whole class, in front of a small group of classmates or have to voice our opinion. All of this builds up my confidence level and gives me a chance to practice using proper sentence structure. Whenever we have this opportunity to speak in front of the whole class, it is good practice for us to apply Paul-Elder’s Framework to ensure that I can clearly elaborate my point of view.

Personally, my writing skills improved the most. Paraphrasing and sentence structure is something that I have to relearn for my technical report. There is a lot of information online when I did my research during my technical report. Online information can be very lengthy and carries a lot of information. Information that might be not relevant to my report. One of the challenges I faced was the difficulty to translate the online information into what I needed for my technical report while ensuring there is a good flow in the report. 

Another area that I am weak in will be my communication skills. I realise the importance of being a good listener and being open-minded to any opinion. This is very useful during the technical report, as everyone will have different ideas but we can only choose the best idea. When others are voicing out their ideas, we as a listener have to use Paul-Elder’s framework to understand where they are coming from. 

One key takeaway from this module is the importance of communication that is exchanged among the team. Voicing our opinion is essential in this module as this is how we learn from our mistakes.