The first part of the course intrigued me deeply as I realized that there were more words that I was pronouncing wrongly than correctly. This is despite previous examples that my teachers in school gave me, such as reservoir and oil. I distinctly remember that Mr Lim said that the differentiation between someone of higher caliber than another is the pronunciation of these words: proper pronunciation can and will demonstrate our abilities and instill confidence in the audience as well. After going through the phonetic aspects to improve pronunciation, I am more confident in verbal communication now, and I believe that this confidence can perpetuate into my teaching career, be it talking with students, peers, and even higher authority personnel whom I usually have a sense of fealty to previously. The introduction to phonetics have interest me, where I no longer look at unknown words and try to piece together the pronunciation, looking like a klutz.

The oral communication skills that I have learnt placed all experiences that I had into perspective. I realized that a speech is not simply something that one presents offhand without prior preparation. I used to think that delivering a good speech was innate, where the extent of excellence can only be slightly molded from the baseline that we are naturally equipped with, be it from environmental influences or nature. From this, I discovered that ‘natural’ speakers appear natural because they have so much experience not only in delivery, but also preparation, such that it comes instinctively to them, appearing as if they are born with the gift of the gab. This encourages me in my future career to be more proactive in taking up chances to speak in public, to garner that additional experience so that one day I will become sufficiently excellent. The presentation that I did brought light to me: I have always thought myself sufficient but the video showed reality where small actions to me were actually glaring and distracting. The self-analysis gave me an opportunity to identify and create little mental reminders to myself when presenting next time, so as to better hone my skills of oral presentation.

My most important takeaway from classroom communication is the type of question that I have been asking in class, which are only convergent questions. This may be applicable to science, but through this I might have stifled interest in my class, as well as limit the space for my students to learn more outside the syllabus. While I still find it a challenge to pose divergent questions in the discipline of science, this part of the course has helped me open my perspective to other possible approaches instead of the usual direct teaching delivery style.

I received my first ‘official’ email writing training from a senior, who passed on a certain style rooted in tradition, and specific to the point. While that formed my basis of email writing, the written communication part of the course made me question whether the short and simple approach contained sufficient details. In addition, the importance of a subject title, which I tend to forget when sending a mail, was raised significantly when my tutor explicitly mentioned. The skill required to craft an informative, engaging, and short subject title is not yet fully developed in me, but my awareness of this issue have placed me in good stead to spend more time on the subject title than previously.

I attended all my classes for the face-to-face instead of having any online sessions. Other than circumstances, when I made the choice, I felt that it would be more beneficial for raising doubts immediately so that they can be addressed. The materials available on Moodle served to complement the knowledge that I obtained from class, which made me thankful that I chose face to face for all sessions.