#6: Reflection on learning

I can't belive that 13 weeks passed too fast. It seemed like I just had my first "Professional Communication" lesson yestarday and here I am now, the last day of classes of this semester, writing my last blog post for hte module. I'm so happy to have chosen this class; it was a complete experience for me, not only for the educational part but also for the multicultural enviroment that I lived in the classroom.

Throughout the course, I had many opportunities to practice and improve my English as I had never done, I believe ES2007S has provided me with the knowledge and skills to become more conscious of my grammar and realize of some of my mistakes.

During the semester I practice my listening skills because my native language is not English, sometimes was hard for me to understand what the people say (sometimes for the accent, sometimes because I didn’t pay attention for the conversation) so this push me to be more aware in every conversation; from the class discussions to interviews to questions and answers to peer teaching, but also for my presentations, I think that everything that I did in and out of the class required me to be an active listener. Therefore I consider that this module help me to improve this skill in a great way; now I can understand almost everything in the conversations regardless of the accent of people. Additionally, I find myself paying more attention to the speaker and interpreting his/her non-verbal signs, showing that I am listening making small verbal comments like "uh huh" and "mm", moving my head, providing feedback and clarifying by asking questions, and deferring counter-arguments. I am more confident in taking up such tasks in the future. I believe that this skill will be extremely useful to me when I enter the working world.

Apart from active listening, I have also learnt other communication skills (writing, presenting, etc) during the course. Today was a surprise to me to review all the skills that we covered in the course (we covered almost every single skill, one way or another). One other communication skill of mine which I feel has vastly improved is my presentation skill. As I mentioned in my previous post, it was hard to me to improve but right now I feel more confident during presentations.


Thank you, Dr Radhika, for all your help, patience, feedbacks and guidance for the past 13 weeks. Thank you, my classmates, for all the honest opinions and comments that allowed me to improve. Thank you this amazing experience! :)

#5 Reflection on Oral Presentantion

My previous oral presentations had not been the best: “You need to articulate more your words. Try to present in a more formal way. You don’t need to make many movements”. I recalled these were the comments given to me during my presentations in the class. From then on, I worked hard to try to improve my diction and my self-awareness during presentations.

I needed to prepare myself in the best way for the big day, so I started watching the TED’s videos, in order to learn and observe the movements of the speakers, I don’t remember how many videos I watched but I learnt about many things. Additionally, I recorded my speech and reproduced later in order to practice my articulation of each word.

On the group level, I must say that I had the best team. We worked together along all the process. Sometimes we had different ideas (how we should write the proposal, how we should present our idea, how we need to make the slides…) but we always kept open the communication channel. In addition, everyone in my team was very responsible and committed to this project.

The time pass too fast and after 3 weeks of preparation, meetings at midnight, different versions of the presentation and more that 100 surveys conducted the day of the final presentation arrived. In mind I just only thought “you need to relax, be professional and articulate every word that you are going to pronounce”.

The content of the presentation is well-organized and cohesive. The power point was professional looking with minimum amount of words. My colleague started with the presentation and after a few minutes it was my turn to continue the presentation, but something happened… I started having problems with slide controller, I was nervous at the start, but then I calmed down and continued with my part. After a few minutes I had finished with my participation in the presentation.

It came the crucial part of the presentation:  the Q&A session and feedback. For the questions part I think all the questions were answered, and were answered well. I answered too some of them, so we showed that the whole team was aware of the topic that we exposed.

For the feedback part, I had the feeling that I would hear again the same comments as in all my oral presentations, but this time was different, my classmate and my teacher congratulated me for doing a good job, finally was succeeded in articulating words correctly. However this time I use a pet phrase (Aaaaahh) also my classmate made the comment that this time I present in a more serious / formal way.

I think I did a good job after all, but especially I took this opportunity like a great experience; I know that I need to continue improve my articulation, but also I need to differentiate between formal and serious, because formal not mean no smile,  so I must not forget to smile and reflect a relaxed posture.

#4: Evaluating Intercultural Behaviour

I have never thought about evaluate my cultural life and how this can help me to improve my intercultural communication. However I think this is a very good opportunity to analyze myself in the sense that I need to question myself if I have the enough knowledge about my actions, ideas and perception of my culture and of the other cultures.

I need to start writing that I am Mexican, but right now I asking myself what I know about  Mexico?, How other cultures impact in myself? What are the festivities that I celebrate? I can say that I had the opportunity to travel around Mexico, this gives me the advantage to know a little more of my country and depends of your location in Mexico you have a different subculture (traditions, customs and food). Nevertheless I think we are adopting some things of the American culture.  For example, in Mexico we celebrate the 1st and the 2nd of November like the day of dead (“Día de muertos”), in this celebration we go to the cemeteries to clean the tombs of our deaths and put some flowers in the tomb, but also we make an altar to remember the person who is dead, so we put some of the personal stuff, the favorite food and drinks of the dead. However we are forgetting this tradition because in U.S.A. celebrate the Halloween and this festivity is the 31st of October, so many people in Mexico celebrate the Halloween but they forget to celebrate the day of dead.

In this sense I consider myself one of the persons trying to keep the most typical traditions and customs of my country. I need to clarify that the majority of the people in Mexico are Catholics, so almost of our traditions are related with the religion. Here are some of the festivities I still celebrating (if you want you want Google it): King’s Ring (Rosca de reyes), Candlemas Day (Día de la Calendaria), Easter week (Semana Santa), The independence day, “Posadas” and Christmas.

Although I believe that we live in a multi-ethnic world so there is nothing wrong if you want to celebrate other festivities or if you want to try something new about another culture, but you need to be have the enough information about what do you want to try and what do you want to share. I remember a few years ago when one of my friend of Ecuador went to Mexico, we arrived at 3 p.m. to Queretaro (the city where I live), she was very hungry, so we decided to go to eat some typical Mexican food, every name of the food was new for her so she asked me which one are the best, I don’t remember exactly what I suggested to her, but she asked me if the food was spicy and I said "No, don't worry " … I had committed a big mistake, in that time I did not know there were places where there was no spicy food, and Ecuador is one of this places. My friend started to eat and after the first mouthful, she started to scream that the food was so spicy after that, she started crying, in my mind I thought, Oh my God what did I do?. After a few minutes my friend explained me that in Ecuador there are no chilies, so the food is not spicy at all. Believe that after this experience all the time that one foreign person asks me if the food is spicy in Mexico, all the time I answered with these questions: Do you have any chili in your country? Have you tried some other type of spicy food? Therefore it is very important to never assume that the daily activities that we do are the same in another country. In addition this experience helped me to be more curious about other cultures.

So, if I'm going to meet people from other cultures I try to investigate about the habits they have and something about their country, to try to avoid making mistakes or misunderstandings, although I know that it is impossible to have all the information about a culture and sometimes the information that we find are incorrect or are not complete. For example this last summer I went to Krakow to study one month there, so I search how to say hello in Polish and I found that the word is cześć, the first day of my classes I arrived to my classroom and there was my teacher and I said: cześć and he replied me with the same word. However after the class the teacher in charge of the exchange program, told us that is not common to use this word to greet teachers, because they take it as a sign of disrespect because the word does not show the respect that you have to your teachers. So with this experience I learned that it costs nothing to ask about what you do not know.

Finally I think that every day we can learn something new about our culture and the other cultures, but the important thing is that we need to be a little open mind and appreciate and recognize what makes us different from others. Similarly I believe that we must continue to learn from these experiences to enrich our person culturally and continue develop skills that help us to communicate with different cultures in one future.

#3: APPLICATION LETTER CRITIQUE

Juan Osvaldo  Mora Marmolejo 

XXXXX Hill

Singapore XXXXX

+65 XXXX XXX8

mexicanstudent@gmail.com

September 11, 2012

Queretaro State Government

Plaza de armas

Santiago de Querétaro

México

 Dear Mr. Salinas,

I am writing to express my interest in the Washington internship program offer by the Foreign Secretary of the Government of Queretaro. I confident that with my passion and commitment, as well as my desire to contribute to build a more technological country makes me a suitable candidate for this internship

During the last year of my undergraduate studies, I have the luck to study abroad (Poland and Singapore).As a result of these experiences I had overseas, has taught me that every dream can be realized but also that we need to learn and compete whit other countries to improve ourselves.
An internship to Washington would allow me to be part of the workforce as well as improve my skills and expand my experience in a variety of working environment, I can grasp about American culture, make new connections, and comprehend the requirements needed to undertake projects but also broaden my perspectives of the relation between Mexico-U.S.A. Overall, I believe an internship to Washington would be an unique experience in the professional plane but also in the personal field.

During my undergraduate studies I performed various extracurricular activities, like: has been student advisor in ITESM, this help me to develop not only my leadership skill, but also various other skills such as be a good listening and a good observer. Alike I was president of one of technological group in which we promoted an engineering contest for high school students. In the other hand I was a salsa teacher for the student. Due to the nature of my activities; I have to constantly interact with the student population to ensure that their welfare has been met. I trust that these skills will be appropriate in helping me to adapt to a different environment and to work optimally.

I am optimistic that my abilities and experiences will allow me to perform in the correct way in the role of Queretaro student ambassador at Washington. Whether further information be required, please feel free to contact me at my number or email indicated above. I look forward to learning\working in Washington.

Yours Sincerely,
[signature]
Juan Osvaldo Mora Marmolejo


 

Juan Mora

                     Email: jxxxxx@hotmail.com                                                   Mobile: 9XXXXXXX

EDUCATION

Ø  Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM)        Aug 08-present

Campus Queretaro

o   Mechatronics Engineering

Ø  National University of Singapore (NUS)                                                       Aug 12-present          

o   Student exchange program

Ø  Akademia Górnizco-Hutnicza (AGH)                                                          Summer 2012

o   Student exchange summer program

PROFESSIONAL ASPECTS

Ø  Proficient in Microsoft Office, Solid-Edge, Matlab, Labview,

Ø  Fundamentals of Computer Languages: C++, HTML, assembly language.

Ø  Intermediate Course of plastic injection, lathe, milling and welding.

Ø  Basics in Italian language  and Intermediate in English

CO-CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES

Ø  President of TRONICOS

o    Student group focused on developing activities that promote the use of electronic components, mechanical and mechatronic

Ø  Clinical Professor of Salsa in ITESM

o   With this experience got several skills such as a sense of responsibility, leadership, the diversity meaning but more importantly, I realized that to achieve a goal must be constant

Ø  Member of the student group “ENSÁLSATE”

o   Student group focused on developing dancing activities but also I acquired skills to organize events, well as the ability to work in teams.

Ø  Spoken vocal technique class

o   Technical class where I learn how to make develop presentation skills (voice projection, body language, different methods of presentations)

Ø  Fitness with weights

Ø  Class of percussion

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Ø  Basics in Italian language  and Intermediate in English

Ø  Ethical Leadership Workshop                                                                       Sep 10

Ø  Student Advisor of ITESM                                                                Jan 10- May 12

Ø  TELMEX scholarship winner                                                            Aug 08 – Dec 12

Ø  Scholarship winner for a summer abroad                                          Summer 2012