Critical Reflection

This module has been a bumpy ride for me, and I can recall at the start of this module, I had a lot of troubles in starting my writing assignments, as I haven’t produced an essay over the past two years. I had a hard time gaining momentum and inspiration to write and adapting to school life after two years of ‘holidays’ had made it worse.

This module has gradually improved my command in English in general, especially in my grammar. With the guidance of Prof Brad, I relearnt many grammar rules, for example, avoiding run-on sentence, using parallel structure, and most importantly, adhering to subject-verb agreement rules. I have also learnt essential report writing skills that I will apply in my future reports. For example, I know neither citation nor quotation from texts, and this was an eye-opener. This effective communication class has also improved the problems I had in converting my ideas into proper sentences. However, I still feel my speaking skills always has a lot of room for improvement as I am still stuttering often and unable to duel with the nervousness I have from speaking out in the front. Nevertheless, I will work on it on my future semester in hopes of being a confident speaker.

It was a pretty tiring but eventful journey throughout this semester. For example, the process to get the summary reader response done was a challenging journey. This process was very tedious as I was very lost at the start of the essay, and did not have a clear idea of what smart parking even was. It took me multiple hours and drafts to brainstorm for ideas to arrive on the structure and flow of the essay, and three drafts to finalise to the final copy. The journey to complete the technical report wasn’t comfortable either, but I feel blessed to be working with Angelo and Wei Ying for it. I’m thankful for how smoothly this challenging project and couldn’t have done it without the excellent team rapport and mutual support for each other. This journey wasn’t comfortable at all because we had many issues brainstorming for an idea which can benefit both our technical report and sensor’s module project. We had two ideas rejected by Professor Zhou Yi before arriving on this project idea. Still, we had more issues on research because there weren’t many research articles relating to sensors used to detect fire. Despite all the setbacks we had, we managed to complete the assignments for both modules and even did rather well for the presentation. The presentation was the most challenging task I have to face because I lacked the confidence to speak towards crowds, but thanks our nightly group practice sessions, I manage to do well during the presentation. I even felt that it was my personal best, as I always had stage frights during my polytechnic studies.

The constant changing of groupmates during tutorial classes has also improved my adaptability to work with new people. I wouldn’t have had the chance to know my classmates and find out their chemistry and work style without this initiative. I find this useful for future team assignments, and this also improved my interpersonal communication skills.           

 In summary, the learning process for this module was full of ups and downs, but I am glad that this journey was fun. “Time flies when you’re having fun”, in a blink of an eye, it is the end of the trimester, but I am glad the time here was productive, and it had been a great learning experience for me.