My ES2007S Adventure

Reflection: Looking Back, Looking Forward

2009-04-14T13:28:00.000+08:00

My ES207S adventure has come to an end this week. Although I did not give the best presentation, I believe this is a learning process for all of us. The skill of communicating effectively, either verbally or non-verbally is especially important in many aspect in life – working, academics or even in an informal situation.

I come to realise that writing a business letter, or even a cover letter is never been easier, especially the tone and the words used are different. This indeed comes in handy in the future. Each type of business correspondence has its individual tone and style.

Another skill is writing a report and presenting it assuming that my target audience have read my report. It has not been easy as we tend to present the whole report instead of presenting the study in a more interesting and digestible way. Sharing views and accepting opinion of others in the process of writing the report and later the presentation indeed help to develop the necessary skills for working life. After all, the title of this module is Professional Communication.

Biodata

2009-03-26T18:37:00.003+08:00

As a second-year undergraduate in Life Sciences, concentrating in Molecular and Cell Biology, Fabian has a dream of discovering new things in research and development. Although he is pursuing a Science degree, he has the flexibility of being in other fields such as graphic design, publications and IT. His laboratory experience in secondary school sparked off his passion for research and laboratory work. While working for the International Soil Science Conference of Malaysia 2007, he was exposed to scientific journals by his employer, and thus deepened his interest in research. He also has a strong belief in importance of experience in trial-and-error, challenges and feats rather than studying for examinations.

Academics aside, he enjoys music, both listening and performing. He was a Senior Member and Secretary in his secondary school band. He held several responsibilities to teach junior members on music (theory and practical), conduct the band and design formations for state-level competitions. Heavy commitments in the school band have taught him excellent time management skills, which is applicable during his time in the university. He currently holds several positions in NUS Students’ Union (NUSSU) Standing Committees and other students’ societies.

Believing in continuous learning, he is currently developing his written and verbal communication skills through different platforms.

Communicating with the Academy

2009-03-16T22:51:00.000+08:00

I am taking another Centre for English Communication (CELC) module, i.e. “Communicating with the Academy”. This module gives a general background on how knowledge is constructed and disseminated in the scientific community. I also learnt how scientific information is communicated to the community in general.

One of our tasks is to write a 3000-word journal article of which NUS undergraduates will be our target audience. Communicating scientific information to a general public is difficult as we need to tone down our usage of scientific terms and jargons, as they may not understand them. We can assume they have the general idea of a certain topic but not the details of it.

It has not been easy for me to analyse many texts from many different sources and put them in writing as it is my first time writing a scientific article. Otherwise, I am learning. Indeed, communicating with the academy and professional communication complements each other.

Evaluating Intercultural Behaviour

2009-03-05T06:42:00.000+08:00

Anthropology (culture, religion, etc) is a fascinating field in social sciences. Intercultural competence is the ability of successful communication with people of other cultures. Without looking beyond Singapore, NUS itself is a place full of culture and thus, fostering intercultural communication is important. Customs and etiquette in Japan are considered very important and the Japanese have high expectations of social behaviour.

Bowing

Bowing is deemed tremendously important in Japan, so much so that, children normally start learning how to bow from a young age; firms provide training for their employees on how to bow properly. Generally, the longer and deeper the bow, the stronger the emotion and the respect expressed.

When meeting with the non-Japanese, most Japanese will shake hands. As many non-Japanese are familiar with this custom of bowing, this usually leads to a combined bow and handshake. When bowing in close proximity, it is necessary when combining bowing and shaking hands, they turn slightly to one side to avoid bumping heads.

It is a way Japanese show respect to others who are older or of higher social status. If the non-Japanese are not comfortable with this practice of bowing, I believe the Japanese would just bow slightly when shaking hands.

Working and service ethics

Japanese generally arrive early and are ready to commence working as soon as work hours begin. They also commend other workers for support, even when they have been of little aid in succeeding. When leaving work, the greeting otsukaresama deshita (You're tired) is often used to those leaving, and the person who is leaving often says osaki ni shitsurei shimasu (I'm sorry to leave before you). For many workers, it is considered discourteous to leave before the boss goes home.

Generally, service employees will rarely engage in casual conversation with a customer with the intention of forming a closer as sometimes occurs in Western cultures. The service employees are expected to uphold a more formal, professional relationship with every customer. Private conversations among service staff are considered inappropriate when a customer is present.

Critique: Business Correspondence

2009-02-15T11:58:00.001+08:00

From: BioBiz 2008
To: Fabian Kong
Date: 26 March 2008 13:25
Subject: BioBiz 2008 Important Information

Dear Participant,

Thank you for joining us in BioBiz 2008.

Due to the large number of attendees we will be expecting, please remember to arrive promptly at 8am for the registration. All attendees are expected to be seated by 8.45 am. Please remember to bring your matriculation card and official receipt along for registration. Only those who present both will be admitted to the conference. The conference pass, which also admits you to the career fair, will only be given out during the morning registration.

Conference Pass MUST BE WORN AT ALL TIMES. Anyone without the conference pass will not be admitted.

The dress code for this event would be business wear (i.e. For females: shirt and skirt or pants; For males: shirt and tailored pants, tie not needed). Please be appropriately attired as there will be many distinguished guests present. Details on the conference are as follows:

Date: 29th March 2008
Venue: Matrix@Biopolis
Time: 8.45am to 4.30pm (Registration starts at 8am)
ALL ATTENDEES MUST BE SEATED BY 8.45AM

Please note that the career fair and resume collection will only take place after the conference. You are strongly encouraged to bring along your resume as we will be collating the resumes to send to the participating biomedical companies."

Please also note that attendee will only be allowed to hand in their own resume.

We look forward to seeing you at the conference and joining us in Exploring Singapore's Biomedical Horizon!

Sincerely,
BioBiz 2008 Organizing Committee

My Analysis with the 7Cs
Courtesy
The author started off with a good note. However, by using capital letters in the body of the email, it sounds that the author is shouting. Personally, I prefer important instructions to be in bold and underlined. Courteousness is lost when the author uses uppercase to emphasise certain instructions which are to be adhered to by participants of this conference. Take paragraph 4 as an example - ALL ATTENDEES MUST BE SEATED BY 8.45AM. It should be ‘All attendees are to be seated by 8.45 am.'

Correctness
I noticed a couple of minor mistakes in the aspect of capitalisation and reflexive pronoun use in paragraph four and six respectively. Usage of ‘please remember’ sounds informal and it is used twice in the same paragraph

Conciseness
It is reasonably concise without necessary elaborative sentences. Some minor redundancies still present.

Clarity, and Coherence & Cohesion
The second and third paragraph should be revised. The issue of conference pass should be put together in a paragraph. The same idea must be put together.

Concreteness and Completeness
The author has provided the information needed for me to attend the conference in this email.

Resolving Conflicts

2009-02-02T23:26:00.001+08:00

Stephanie is the second child among all three siblings. Her elder brother is currently in first year junior college while her younger brother is still in primary school. Due to a reasonably large age gap between the two brothers, problems happen in the household. Her parents are divorced three years ago.

Stephanie’s brothers stay together in the same room. Her younger brother, Danny is sitting for PSLE this year. Being a very studious person, he usually spends a lot of time revising in his room. However, the eldest, Steven usually listens to loud music, disturbing Danny. There have been many times since Danny complains this matter to their mother but to no avail, Steve continues to do such inconsiderate action. The elder brother may sometimes disturb and play pranks to irritate Danny. Steve often invites his friends and messes up the room, especially Danny’s belongings.

Until recently, Steve started to ask money from Danny and Stephanie almost daily. Danny realised his coin box is half empty. He refused to tell his siblings the reason and threatened them not to tell their mother. This causes them to be suspicious. Both Danny and Stephanie cannot let this issue to continue further. They are still in dilemma on whether to confront their brother directly or to tell their mother directly. They are not able to bear Steve’s character and attitude. Stephanie is caught in the middle as she does not want the relationship between her brothers to be badly affected.

Effective Communcation

2009-01-28T16:32:00.001+08:00

Let’s face the fact: We cannot actually escape from interpersonal communication in any way. Without realising it, a simple “goodbye” and “hello” with peers is considered an interpersonal communication. We can even have miscommunications among friends at times. According to Northeastern University College of Business Administration website [link], people in organisations on average spend over 75% of their time in an interpersonal situation. This gives root to poor communications, which leads to misunderstandings and other organisational problems.

Effective communication is important especially when we want to convey a message from one person to another. By the end of the day, the message may not be the actual one you are trying to get across in the first place. Take the game of charade for an example. When we try to pass on a message, even just a sentence, the length may get shorter or longer along the way.

Take another. Misinterpretations of what the employer says are very common. It is actually very much dependent on the subordinate’s point of view. So, some managers hesitate and struggle when they try to give useful and constructive feedback to subordinates because the former fear of the other party’s reaction. I would usually take supposedly negative comments as challenges for me to improve further.

Indeed, this science of effective communication is essential when we step into the rat race. The time in the university is a platform for us to put what we have learnt into practice.