With A Thankful Heart

Last time when I took one of the modules from English department, English for Academic Purpose during my first year, I thought it was the last English based- module I would ever take in my university life because it was not that easy for a non-English native language speaker like me. However this semester, after reading the module description of ES2007S Professional Communication, I found that this module sounds very interesting and useful from a future perspective. At that point of time, the possibility of how it might pull down my CAP point (due to my poor English) was already not my concern anymore. Thus I decided to give myself a try.

It was indeed a very challenging module compared to the other modules that I have taken in NUS. It gave me a lot of “first time experiences” that I would never expect from other modules in NUS: my first blog, first resume and biodata, first interview experience etc. All the experiences that I have gained from this module have enriched my communication quality, equipped myself with job seeking capabilities as well as broadened my horizons.

What is worth to be mentioned here is the blogging part of this module. Before taking this module, I have never tried any blog writing as I think that it’s really “awkward” to share my personal thoughts to friends whom I am not so familiar with. Thus I treat blogging as a waste of time. However, now I have a totally different point of view towards blogging after I have stepped out from my comfort zone. Honestly I enjoy the moments of sharing blogs with my other blogging group mates now. Through sharing with them the conflicts that I have experienced recently, I have learnt a lot from them. They have been giving me some useful advices generously and helpfully that tell me how to deal with the troublesome situation. On the other hand, through their sharing, I also found myself to get to know them better. This kind of friendliness looks rather unlikely to be achieved merely through group learning in class.

Last but not least, I would like to say “Thanks!” to Mrs Richardson and my blogging buddies who have made my learning experience wonderful. 

Biodata of Me

I am Ng Hsuen Huey, currently a 3rd year undergraduate pursuing my life sciences courses in National University of Singapore (NUH) and expecting to graduate this coming May.

I am currently taking the role as an Executive Committee in Chinese-Varsity Christian Fellowship (CVCF) in NUS. This job requires me to plan and organize activities every week. This provides me a good opportunity to build up my leadership, management, communication and organizing skills. My heavy workload in both the academic and CCA has equipped me with the ability to handle stress and time management to achieve a balance between both fields.

I am an outgoing person who loves to interact with people. As such, I enjoy learning new things and meeting new friends from different countries who have broaden my horizon. Besides mastering English, Chinese and Malay, I have also chosen to study Vietnamese and Bahasa Indonesia with the purpose to interact with people regardless of different cultures. Last August, I had even attended East- Asia Regional Conference (EARC) held in Tokyo, which has built up my network with friends from universities of different countries and with varied cultural background.

Apart from interacting with people of similar age, I am also interested to making friends with children and teens of secondary school age. I am currently taking the role as a teacher or mentor in a teens’ fellowship to lead a group of teenagers of secondary school age. Besides teaching, I enjoy listening to their spiritual sharing and guiding them through different difficulties. Every year, I would also join CVCF mission team to organize children and teenagers’ camps in different regions of Malaysia.

Before I enrolled into NUS, I have taken up a few tuition teaching positions in both tuition centers and home tuition for 4 years, which have enriched my teaching experience. As a result of my past teaching experience, I have a great enthusiasm for teaching and am ready to choose teaching as my future career path.

Struggling

Recently I am troubled by a conflict with a very good friend of mine, MY. We enjoy sharing with each other during the times when we need a listener.

Around two years ago, he fell for a girl, SH, but SH had rejected him. Although feeling hurt, he still continuously treats her as a very good friend. However, it was obvious that his concern for this girl was more than that towards a good friend. His close friends have noticed this and have reminded him not to immerse too deeply into this “relationship” as they are afraid that he would get hurt again.

Nevertheless he always assures us that he has no feeling to this girl anymore. But somehow we still can observe “something odd” from his way of treating this girl.
However, a couple of weeks ago, I heard some rumors about my friend, MY. Obviously SH was spreading to some friends about the matter that MY likes her. I do not know what is her intention of doing so. What comes into my mind at the moment is that I want to protect my friend from being hurt again.

After hesitating for a while, I decided to tell MY about the rumors that I heard and hope that he could keep a distance from SH if he really does not like her. I did not comment much about this girl since I do not know much about her. I thought my well-meaning advice would be understood and appreciated. But unexpectedly MY reacted quite aggressively after I talked to him. He sent several long SMS to me saying that I have wrongly blamed this girl all these while. I don’t understand why he reacted so aggressively at the moment. I don’t think it’s appropriate to continue arguing with him over this matter. Thus I just briefly replied him, telling him that I don’t want to comment anything about this girl and what I wish is to say something which is concern about him.

Unfortunately, a couple of days ago, MY had chosen to tell the girl about what I have said. This caused a stir among us and the misunderstanding getting even worse. I don’t understand why MY has the need to do that. I feel that I was given away by a friend whom I trust and concern so much. I am confused now. I am not sure whether have I done wrongly by telling him that matter at the first place? Can anyone tell me what I should do now?

Fruitful Japan Trip

Last August, I had a wonderful and fruitful journey to Tokyo for an international conference. We enjoyed the intercultural exchange with students coming from many countries who have their different native languages, interest, background etc.

However, throughout the whole conference, what actually stroked me was Japanese’s time perspective. They tend to follow the timing exactly as it was stated in their plan. If you offend their “norm”, they won’t be so easy on you. I experienced this when I was still in the canteen eating lunch during the moment when we supposed to gather in the hall for a seminar. The time-keeper suddenly turned up and stood by my side, staring fixedly at me with an unpleasant look and ordered me to immediately dash to the hall without any delay. Honestly, I was quite shocked and unpleasant with his attitude. Yet I knew that I shouldn’t be late at the first place. This unpleasant feeling became more intense at one of the nights when the time-keepers sort of chasing all the attendants out of the hall by shouting and putting up the blocks surrounding the hall right after a night event has ended. I was just wondering… Is that any more appropriate way of keeping a good time than being rude on people?

I couldn’t deny that Chinese has a very bad habit which is “being late”. Usually when we are invited to a wedding dinner, if the starting time stated is 7pm, the dinner would for sure start at 9pm instead as most of the guests invited are expected to be late. Thus, obviously Chinese’s time perspective has a marked contrast with Japanese’s punctuality. To Japanese, time is precious. This is more or less associated with their hectic and stressful life style. The competitive working and studying environment which they have to face everyday trained them to be more disciplined than we are to keep pace with it. Apart from that, they might expect us to show the same respect to their culture (since they are the organizer) when we have stepped into their country.

After knowing more about their culture, I started to understand why they tend to behave this way when people didn’t keep the time well. From the other way round, I also see Japanese’s time perspective as a virtue that we ought to learn. Thus, I am instead grateful to be given such a good chance to know friends from other countries who give me a deeper insight into their culture which are so different from mine.

Critique on Business Correspondence

From: Frederick Wong
Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2009 6:08 PM
To: GR-MAPL All Staff
Subject: Building Announcement: Car Park Barrier

To all staffs,

Please be informed that the Car Park Barrier will be turned ON during Friday Off Days, Weekends and Public Holidays.

Please reduce speed when approaching the barriers and be cautious when maneuvering through the barriers.

If you need any assistance or have any feedback for improvements, pls kindly contact Tan Sin Bee (ext 28726 / 91 16 16 15) or Fred (ext 28688 / 961 62 123).

regards,

fred...

This is an email written by a company facility manager who intended to inform the company staffs about the setting-up of car park barrier during company off days.

This business letter supposed to be formal since it’s delivered to all the staffs in the company regarding the changes made. The tone used in this email sounds rather instructive. Nevertheless, the reason why the car park barrier is turned on was not mentioned here. Besides that, some important format which is supposed to be included in this email was missing, for instance a proper salutation. To my opinion, it’s advisable to start the email with “Dear XXX (Company) Staffs” instead of “To all staffs”.

Apart from that, it was found that the grammar in this email has violated the rule of Correctness in the 7C principles. Both the first alphabet of the word “regards” and the name of the writer “fred” at the end of this email are supposed to be written in capital letter. And I suggest that the word “Regards” could be replaced with “Yours Faithfully” if the salutation used above is Dear Staffs. Short form like “pls” and the dots present at the back of the sender’s name seems inappropriate as well.

In terms of clarity of the information given in this email, the manager who wrote this message also did not mention clearly what is the actual date that the implementation of this measure is going to be started. Meanwhile, the actual post of the sender is not stated here as well. Thus, it’s advisable that the 7C’s need to be revised again in this context to generate a more effective writing of business correspondence.

Anyway, overall the whole message is considered concise; hence it’s believed to be able to enhance reader’s interest to finish reading it at the first place.

Love Never Fails

I always feel that the relationship between mankind is very delicate. Mankind is destined to cling to each other throughout our whole life and find the satisfactory from our relationship with each other. However, the closer we are to each other, the more often we would experience the conflict that turns our relationship unpleasant to both parties. Anger is always the fuse that touches off the war.

There was an email I read before that is still vivid in my mind, which was about the delicacy of human relationship. It questioned why people tend to speak louder or shout to each other when quarreling. While the answer given made me stunned and prostrated. The reason is that our hearts are getting far apart from each other during the moment when we quarrel with each other, thus we hardly can listen to each other.

We can find that most of the time when we get angry, the person who is close to us especially our family will be the victims that we usually give vent to. I have two close friends who are twin brothers. We always have a wrong perception that twins are close to each other. However, this stereotype has to be changed now. These two brothers are physically close in their life. They are studying in the same university, taking the same course, having the same interests. But somehow they are far away from each other spiritually. Maybe due to some unknown psycho reasons, they tend to compare with each other in many aspects. They are also sensitive to each other’s way of speaking and behaving. Moreover, both parties could be easily got hurt or provoked by each other for even a very trivial thing. Every now and then one of them will confide to me about their relationship problems, which I don’t know how to advice other than asking them to tolerate and understand each other. One of the twins seems aware of and very concern about this conflict, whereas another one seems much more passive in this situation. I can see that the latter one tends to avoid talking about this problem. Neither of them wants to bow and gives way in this situation. To some extend, I feel that I am in the position to do something in order to break the ice between them. However, I am lacking the communication skills as a third party to bring reconciliation between them. Nevertheless, I am contradicting myself by believing that no relationship is so entangled that nothing can bring its reconciliation, provided that they are willing to hold back a bit and be humble to each other.

In my personal point of view, forgiveness is one of the best remedy to cure broken relationship or reconcile a quarrel. But my friends always laugh at me saying that it’s not as easy as what I expect. Anyway, I have tried and it works. Apart from that, we must accept the fact that we are made different from each other in many aspects from cultural background to perceptions to things. So it’s nothing more regrettable than not appreciating people (who care for us) in our life. Truly hope that the two twin brothers will reconcile and start to appreciate each other in the future.

My Love and Hatred to ...

As for me, English is not my native language since i was very young. I usually feel more comfortable to have a passive communication (like listening) with the other in English rather than an active communication such as speaking in English with friends. However, when i first came to Singapore, i know i can't avoid communicating with each other in English. Rather i found that it will affect me so much from my studies to my future career. Thus i decided to take this module ES2007S this semester hoping that it will put me in the practice of having professional communication skills in my daily life, and it is in ENGLISH!!!

After roughly browse through the textbook of this module, i found this module is very useful as it has given us an insight that communication is so important that it involved almost every part in our life. This module seems has broken down our daily communication to those very small and detailed skills that we will look into in depth for the whole semester.

First of all, we are reminded of the barriers of having active listening which is one of the key problems in our poor communication. I can't deny that I have poor listening skills in a way that i always slow in listening but quick in speaking. In many times I thought that I have already understood the speaker's meaning, but finally I found that I didn't actually. Sometimes i even tend to judge a person's meaning and behaviors before i truly lending my ears to listen to what he/she is going to say. By learning the barriers of active listening during the 1st few lectures, I think it will help me to achieve a better communication with the others in the future.

I also wish that through the practices that we are going to have in this module, my fear and resistance to converse in English will be overcome. Somehow I believe that I will enjoy this module with our class fellows seeing that we have a lot more to learn together in the next few lessons. :)