Critical Reflection

  

From the start of the module, the goal that I had laid out is for me to improve my effective communication skills, refine my grammar skills and lastly Improve my communication and writing skills. However, this module has allowed me to learn much more.

 

At the start of the module, we learned about critical thinking and reflection, tapping into the different communication and critical thinking skills, learning about the Paul Elder framework, the 7 C’s of communication and much more. In the beginning, I thought that this module was similar to a general education subject in my polytechnic and I thought I couldn’t learn much from it. In actual fact, it was so much more, the content of the module has allowed me to learn and relearn much information which I once thought I was familiar with. I had improved the fluency of my sentences, being able to better paraphrase and summarise text, learning how to use the APA 7^th Edition reference style, being able to properly give a good peer review and how to handle criticism. One of the contents that I learn that I find impactful was being able to handle criticism and learning from it allowing myself to improve, I feel that this skill which I had to learn from this course is applicable to everything in life. In the future when I received criticism,  I’m able to link it back to this module and apply the different principles that I had learned to further improve myself. The second point I had learn which has helped me tremendously was the identification of language errors, for example, sentence fragments, run-on sentences, comma splices and many more. During my polytechnic days, we didn’t have this module where it explain and teach us the importance of the accurate use of language, thus I didn’t think much importance of this part until I had to apply it to my writing, comparing the template that was given by the instructional module I realise that my writing had many flaws which I had to improve on.

 

In the later part of the module, I had to team up in a group and create a technical report. I feel that the assignment had given me the opportunity to showcase what I had learned in the past weeks. My team had to prepare a technical report and give a presentation. I applied what have learned in the past week and implemented it in the technical report itself. Taking reference from the Paul-Elder Critical Thinking Framework, I used it to craft the report and cited it in the APA 7^th Edition referencing style. In addition, I used the writing skills of paraphrasing and summarising skills that I had gained to aid in my report as well. At first, I thought it was going to be a breeze in implementing the skills that I had to learn in the report, however, there were many situations where my team and I had to rattle our brains as we weren’t able to link what we had learned and using it for the report. Thus, we went back to relearning the topics that were covered and ultimately this helped us in completing the report. Completing the report gave me a broader perspective of the module itself and realising that the module had helped me in many ways. My team also had to give a presentation about the report as well. I had learn about the various presentation skills, from Garr Reynolds’ presentation tips, how to open and close a presentation and lastly crafting an elevator pitch. This part of the module has humbled me as I learned many skills of presentation which I thought I had mastered, applying to what I had learned from accepting criticism and making it to a learning point, I learned to improve myself and my presentation skills.

 

Over the course of 13 weeks, the module has constantly allowed me to improve my communications skills, from learning new critical thinking methods, improving on my presentation skills and relearning how to properly compose a technical report. I’m hoping that I am able to carry over the knowledge and skills that I obtain from this module in the future when I am working on university assignments and in the working industry.