Firstly, I would like to thank my team members, Ruth and Yuanhua for the hard work during the past six weeks. It was a great experience working together with the girls and I truly enjoyed it.
For the preparation of slides, our team decided to use visual aids to enhance our presentation. In addition, we felt that the use of visual aids would better captivate the audience’s attention and hence making our presentation an interesting one.
However, I was extremely disappointed with my performance. I had a nervous breakdown and my mind went blank for a few seconds during the presentation. As a result, I was lost for words at some point of time and could not deliver my messages to the audience effectively. Thankfully, I became more relaxed halfway through the presentation but still, I felt that I had let my team down due to my bad performance.
From this incident, I have learnt that I should rehearse my speech well before the presentation. I could have done better if I am more prepared for the presentation. Overall, the oral presentation was a good learning experience for me as I have realised my mistakes and hopefully I can improve on my presentations in the future.
Lastly, I would also like to thank my classmates for their encouraging nods and smiles during the presentation. You guys (and girls) definitely made me felt much calmer after that. And thanks Brad for the big hug, I really appreciate it! =)
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Dear Pei Ling,
ReplyDeleteI can easily sympathize with you. Actually, I'm a shy guy and I used to find giving presentations a chore as well. At the same time, I've **learned** not to fear an audience. I think I did this by performing music in front of crowds. Nowadays, I'm not so bothered.
I think that experience is the key. You knew your material, I'm sure. You were well prepared. However, you were intimidated by that mass of humanity in front of you. The key in future presentations for you is to get control of your mind first. Find one friendly face in the crowd and look at that person, the just **talk** to him or her. Eventually, you'll realize that whether one person or a hundred, it's really just the same. It's you and your confidence with the topic in a discussion with **one**, really.
Thank you again, Pei Ling, for your strong effort and your resolve to improve!
Hi Pei Ling,
ReplyDeleteI just want to say, don't be too disappointed. We all learn from previous experiences and improve from there. Jiayou! =)
Oh Peipei!!
ReplyDeleteAs your teammate and friend, I will stand by with you regardless of what the situation is. So, you do not have to feel you had let us down. I believe everyone will have a nervous break down too if they are in your position. I too, was very nervous when I was presenting. I was very tense and could not stop shaking.
*Gives Peiling a big hug!!* =D
That aside, just a few side notes I like to bring up. When you were presenting, I felt that your volume was rather soft. Standing next to the podium, I could hear you perfectly but perhaps the last row may not be able to.
I think you are rather well-prepared for your speech, we rehearsed before the class and you were perfectly fine. Perhaps you were too nervous and lost your confidence. Maybe next time if you are feeling nervous, you could opt for a later slot to present. That way you could be well-prepared mentally.
I'm not disappointed with you, I felt we had presented our main key points rather clearly. So, I am proud of our team. Thank you for your hard work!!
XD~
- huahua -
Hi Pei Ling,
ReplyDeleteDon't be too disheartened! We should take this as our learning experience and improve our presentation skills for our next try!
During your presentation, I can tell that you were very nervous from your expression. Don't worry, I have such problems as well! To me, being natural and confident is one of the biggest challenges to giving good presentations. In addition, you were the first person to present for the day and it is normal to feel extra nervous. However, as Jing Ping had mentioned during class, "it's all in the mind". Perhaps you can pretend that you are giving your presentation to one single individual instead of the whole audience mass to calm you down? Try looking for friendly faces and focus your eye contact on him or her instead! That gives me lots of encouragement and ease my tension during my presentation =).
It is good that your group decided to use visual aids to enhance your presentation. However, the pie charts used in the slides were not clear. The colours of the "pies" were not distinct and the video turned out bluish. Perhaps your team should have tested the slides on the projector screen before presenting? Or dim the lights in the classroom so that the fifferent colours stand out more distinctively?
I felt that you had good prounciation and you spoke in an appropriate sppech. Hence, I was able to catch your points easily. However, maybe you could have elaborated more on your points? =).
Overall, I think it was a good and interesting presentation. Thank you for your effort!
Hazel =).
Sorry, typo error! For the first sentence of the 4th paragraph in my comment, I meant "you spoke in an appropriate speed".
ReplyDeleteSorry for the confusion!
Hazel =).
Dear Peiling :)
ReplyDeleteBig hugs! I want to say that you did a great job on that day, as even the blankout incident happened, you were able to remain calm in the end and finished your part. I admired your courage! :) I remembered when I first stand in front of the tuition class, I was overwhelmed as well. I could not speak well, I stammered and I even knocked onto the standing fan when I was merely walking across the students that proved how nervous I was. But each time I felt better than the last when I told myself that I should not be afraid of how they think as long as I do my best. :) Peiling I believe you will be able to overcome it as well as each experience is a step to success! :D Hugs :)
Love,
Nappy
Hey Peiling!
ReplyDeleteDon't be disheartened! Take this a learning curve and you’ll definitely improve as you go along. I guess it had been quite awhile since we had such a formal presentation that is graded (apart from the more relaxing peer teaching). It’s inevitable that one would get rusty after being out of it for quite some time.
I guess being the first person to present had been very stressful and nerve wrecking. If I were you, I would not have handled it as well, so don’t feel as though you had let down your team mates.
Being nervous was the biggest issue as it made you look very uneasy and lack of confidence. You look intimidated by the audience as you delivered the speech in a very soft tone. Like the many who had commented, you can try to look for friendly faces and perhaps you’ll be less tensed. (Actually, I was quite upset with myself for busy copying the rubics for the presentation and not focusing on you. If I did that, maybe you wouldn’t feel as nervous.)
However, you looked more relaxed later in the presentation as your speech became more fluent and you maintained good eye contact with the audiences.
As a group, I think the use of visual aid was a good way to illustrate many important points and it kept the slides very neat. Being a visual person, the tables and charts help me better understand your proposed project. In addition, the presentation was interesting due to other interesting facts and examples(e.g. NUS world ranking) and personal experience mentioned. I like the topic of your project because as a chemistry student, I have thought about why we didn’t have compulsory internship. Hence, it is likely a topic that is closely related to students like me.
However, the colours of the pie charts used were rather dull and many of the results did not stand out from the background. Hence, it’s quite hard for us to read. Like what Hazel commented, maybe your team could have tested the slides on the projector screen before presenting. What my team did was to have a white background. Or maybe your team could have used a black background with white words (Ji Wei’s group did that).
On the whole, I felt that the presentation was interesting and your speech was clear (apart from being too soft). I believe you have learnt from the embedded lesson.
One point I wish to share: to capture the attention of the audience, use primary colours in the presentation slides.
Love,
Shiny
I mean if I looked and you and smile, perhaps it'll help you relax.
ReplyDelete*hugs*
Love,
Shiny
Maybe you can try smiling more during the presentation as it might help to ease the tense feeling. :)
ReplyDeleteLove,
Shiny
Hey Peiling!
ReplyDeleteI would like to applaud you for gathering courage to continue your presentation despite the nervous breakdown.You were still able to maintain eye contact, and spoke clearly.Contrary of what you thought was letting us down,I was proud of you!
Like what we've discussed in class, smiling is one of the ways we could do to help release some nervousness. You could also take a deep breath before presenting. It helps me sometimes.=)However i felt you could improve by having more variation in the tone of your voice.
I felt we worked well as a team, and i am glad to be part of it. Thank you for your hard work in making this project a successful one!
Ruth
Hello Peiling,
ReplyDeleteDon’t worry, I think you did fine! After your initial breakdown, you managed to pull yourself together to carry on the presentation and I think that this is all that matters! You can take this as a learning experience, because this is what this class is for. Now that you have chalked up more experience, I’m sure that you have “levelled up” in your presentation skills, and you know what to avoid. Maybe next time you can just practice speaking using the main points as your backbone so that each time you rehearse, you will be using different words but still conveying the same idea. In this way, you will never be stuck again!
You have by far the most comments! See, so many of your classmates love you!
Cheers
Russell
Dear all,
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for the suggestions to improve on my presentation skills! It’s so heartwarming to receive so many encouragements from you guys (and girls) and I really appreciate them. The presentation was indeed a valuable learning experience for me and I look forward to perform better for my future presentations. =)
Hugs,
Peiling
Don’t be disappointed, PeiLing! I made a number of mistakes in my presentation as well. :) I can understand how it feels like to be the first of the first group to present after our presentation. It is pretty nerve-wrecking! But I’m proud that you managed to pick yourself up after the stumble and I could tell that you seem calmer towards the back.
ReplyDeleteHowever, you can work on your volume and tone while you were presenting. I feel that you got softer during the presentation and it gives people the impression that you are not confident or you are not sure of your work.
Other than that I liked your pace. You were not too fast and I can catch up with your speech and the slides. :) I like the way you always smiled at us during the presentation too.
For the slides, I realized that the formatting for pie charts is not standardized. Some are in 2D while the others are in 3D. In addition, some of points in the charts are in short form eg. den for dentistry. I understand that it might be due to space constrains but I spent some time deciphering them and I feel that we should not give audiences the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps, you can try type them out in full. Besides that, you guys can improve on the standardization by running through the slides and making changes on it together. In that way, all of the parts will have the same format and audiences will not be confused.
Nevertheless, I like the usage of tables in Huahua’s part whereby your team compare the different internships side by side and evaluate them point by point. I felt that much clearer after that slide. :)
Your team definitely did a great job! :)