Final Reflection

At the beginning of the semester, skills in active listening, interpersonal communication and oral communication were important to me. However, after taking this module, it has changed my understanding a little.

Now, I feel that skills in job search communication are very important too. Writing resumes and cover letters and experiencing mock interviews made me realize that there are many things to learn and discover about job search communication. The first step to impressing your potential employer is your cover letter and resume. In this course, we learnt to write effective cover letters and resumes to convince the employer to arrange for an interview with us. Mock interview sessions were then carried out to teach us how to answer interviewers’ questions intelligently and honestly. Therefore, job search communication skills are vital in my application for internships or jobs.

However, skills in active listening, interpersonal communication and oral communication are still important and useful to me. Without these skills, we would not be able to communicate effectively with other people. In this course, the research project experience has helped me to develop many communication skills. During project meetings, our group always ensured that we gave constructive comments and listened actively to what each other had to say. Besides that, interpersonal communication played a huge role in reducing conflicts. Working with people whom you did not know very well initially might be difficult, but having the willingness to understand each other definitely made the process easier. Interpersonal communication is important because we needed to communicate effectively with one another whenever we had different ideas and opinions. The final part of the research project was the oral presentation. After looking at the comments from our classmates and tutor, I realized that a successful oral presentation requires many different elements and I still have a lot more room for improvement. The Question & Answer session was also a good channel for us to learn to use the correct language and attitude to answer queries.

On the overall, taking this course has definitely helped me to develop different communication skills and it encourages me to learn more about them.