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Friday, 6 April 2012

Reflection on Oral Presentation


One more hurdle—the oral presentation for our research proposal—OVER. :)

Preparation-wise...are we ever fully prepared for something? Everything can always be further refined. The more time we have, the more mistakes we spot. We might be even going around in circles trying to achieve perfection—something that is much beyond our abilities. However, as long as I have tried my best in preparing, I should be satisfied with my level of preparation. I can safely say I have tried my best in preparing for a presentation, given the short duration for preparation. In fact, I think this is the shortest time I've been given to prepare for a presentation? Usually my slots are positioned in the middle, so there's more time for me to prepare.

I felt that my delivery was rather...bad. Perhaps the volume of the voice was alright, but I could feel that what was spoken didn't flow very well at all. Well, in comparison to my peers.  

I feel that I could have presented my gestures in a more 'natural' way. Natural as in practiced to the point that it doesn't look too awkward or repetitive, like what I did for the presentation itself. The last time I presented, I gestured too much. Now, I tried restraining myself from showing too much gestures, but it didn't work out very well. Filming oneself and cringing at the footage would most likely banish the brain from engaging the audience with awkward gestures. 

I only recorded myself twice, and it wasn't that effective since I was reading verbatim directly from the paper, so I didn't look into the camera. Besides, there's only so many times one can practice speaking before the throat protests.

Though, my group members and I spent quite some time rehearsing everything and commenting on each other's delivery, so I was rather satisfied with that.  

I knew I was going to be somewhat fast for the first few slides, seeing that there were only 1-2 points per slide, but I'd rather have the points on separate slides rather than combining them together. Initially I tried combining some of the points together, but everything look so cluttered, so I decided to compromise on letting the audience view some of the points, than present messy slides. Hence, I should have organized my points in a better manner.



As we only have around 5 minutes of 'screen time', the medium of Powerpoint slides was chosen. I guess we are all used to using Powerpoint slides to convey our ideas to a crowd, rather than using a whiteboard to write out the points, or simply talking without any points to show the audience. One, it's easier and faster to present the ideas without having people to wait for you to finish writing on the whiteboard and risk turning your back on the audience. Furthermore, I feel that the method of simply talking without any points for the audience to look at will risk having the audience forgetting what you said earlier.


All in all, I think the overall presentation was done adequately well, all thanks to the feedback from everyone from previous sessions, the support from my fellow group mates Isabel, Huiping & Qu Kui and the effusive response from the audience during Q&A. 



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8 comments:

  1. Reynold.tan8 April 2012 at 19:35

    Contrary to your belief that you didnt perform well, i must say that you and your group had set a high standard for the remaining groups. Even though the time given to each person was short, you have stand out well and presented your materials clearly, taking into account all the skills that was taught in class. I believe all of us have gained from this module and i could see the difference in how you presented at the beginning of the module compared to last week.

    Personally, i like the way you presented. Your voice portrayed confidence and your gestures were not distracting or unnatural.Preparation of the slides was good as appropriate animation was introduced. I believe you have captured the crux of presenting to the audience.

    Keep up the good work! Presentation skills are very important and its great that you have learned them in year 1.

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  2. huiping9 April 2012 at 07:59

    Hi Ming Yan,
    I think you think too much, I think your presentation is good. Much better than the rehearsal we had the day before. I like your voice and projection which was much much better than our first peer teaching together.

    I'm quite satisfied by the amount of time we spent together as a group to rehearse too as it really help us to shape our presentation to a better one. :D Thanks for all your comments and ideas to my presentation part during the rehearsal.

    I think you should click the slides at a slower pace. I know your content for presentation is the heaviest among all of us , hence it was really difficult to squeeze in all of these things inside a 5 min presentation. Therefore i think you had already done a great job.

    Thanks for everything you did for the group and I like how meticulous you whatever you do. Keep it up and I think you will definitely do well for the rest of your 3 yrs in NUS. :)

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    1. Ming Yan13 April 2012 at 07:57

      Haha...the day we had our rehearsal we were all rather shaky. Thank goodness it wasn't as bad as the rehearsal. It's like Hawthorne's Effect! :P Ecological validity stuff where we act differently when placed in a different situation.

      Yep! Working hard together in a group is much more fun and better than toiling alone. >.<

      Thank you for being such a great group mate too! Your last sentence sounds like a teacher's testimonial comment. :P But thank you for that and hope that no matter what route you choose eventually, you'll find satisfaction in what you are doing! ^^

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  3. Anonymous13 April 2012 at 10:07

    Hi Ming Yan,

    Do not think you are worse than you really are. I know, sometimes someone thinks: "Actually I could have done it better, it was not perfect"; but what is perfect?
    I think you performed really well. And I like your voice when you present; it sounds confident and professional.

    Go on like this and do not be too critical with yourself. A little bit is not bad, but too much is just stress. And we do not need stress, which we can avoid ;-).

    Cheers
    Yours Oliver

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    Replies
    1. Ming Yan15 April 2012 at 20:14

      I guess the adage that 'I am worst critic' somewhat applies to me. :P Thank you for your compliment. Are you being influenced by the rest? I'm not that stressed! >.< Lol.

      But true, we all need to avoid stress. :)

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  4. Qu Kui15 April 2012 at 04:51

    Ming Yan,

    You need to be less stressed!!
    Putting pressure on yourself is good, so that you would not slacken off, but you are definitely overloading yourself with pressure! ;)

    Seriously, I felt that you did a great job. Your voice was clear, each word was pronounced accurately. The content was adequate and sufficient, everyone understood what you wanted to say. I think that these already made up a good presentation.

    I think we all improved a lot since the last peer teaching. Speaking of which, Grace and I never exceed the time!! Back to you Ming Yan, have more confidence in yourself!

    :D

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    Replies
    1. Ming Yan15 April 2012 at 20:16

      Hey. I think that's my body language-which actually portrays fatigue is being misconstrued as stress by everyone. T.T

      Thank you for the nice remarks! :)

      Delete

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