YangYie

My Oral Presentation

2009-04-14T05:13:00.000-07:00

As I am not very confident about my OP, I have prepared the slides few days before the presentation, typing what I want to elaborate into slides. Also I have been practicing it for about 10 to 20 times by looking at my slides, talking to myself. In fact, I am very nervous before OP, especially after seeing so many impressive and confident presenter before me.

Besides that, there are many things happen before and during OP. Firstly, I am seeing the compiled slides for the first time when I am presenting. The order of my slides changed and a cover slide added. I am a little bit shocked when I know I have to introduce my group members before I started. But overall, I am glad to complete my OP fluently although I feel that I am a little bit fast in presenting.

Biodata

2009-03-22T06:50:00.001-07:00

My name is Sio Yang Yie, currently single, born in Kluang, Malaysia on Oct 31, 1988. I am a male undergraduate student currently studying in Science Faculty of National University of Singapore, majoring in life science. Previously I took my high school education in Malaysia. As my specialization is life science, I am interested in biology since I was in high school and like to read books concerning biology during my free time. Besides that, I have decided to be specialized in molecular and cell biology in this field. I can speak English, Chinese and Malay. In secondary school, I joined the Chinese Literature Society while in NUS, I joined the Chinese band society. I like Chinese literature and have read a lot of Chinese poems and novels. Being able to work in the field of life science has been my dream since I was in secondary school and my ultimate goal in my life is to become a successful oncologist which can hopefully develop a kind of drug with high chance of curing any kind of cancer completely.

Intercultural behaviour of the Nyonya

2009-03-01T19:05:00.000-08:00

My aunt, who is a Chinese, married a Malay guy since she was young. At that time, my grandfather was a very strict father and opposed their marriage. As a result, my aunt ran away from home and lost contact with her family until my grandfather passed away. It was many years later when she told my father about her situation and her family was called Nyonya, which means a family of marriage between Chinese and Malay.

In fact, I am curious on how people from two different cultural backgrounds live together. Although we all live in a same country, there aren’t many interactions between my family and Malays. Through observations, I have found out many situations where cultural interaction occurs between my aunt and her husband.

In Malaysia, only a Muslim can marry a Muslim. My aunt, who has become a Muslim officially since married, still celebrates Chinese New Year with us every year and goes to Chinese temple with us occasionally. This might show that the cultural traits, which are behaviors we have learnt since children, cannot be changed easily. In contrast, my aunt also celebrates Hari Raya with her family and learns from their cultural behavior.

Malays don’t eat pork and most of them love beef. On the other side, some Chinese don’t eat beef and love pork. In my aunt’s situation, neither any pork nor beef is found in their food. However, there was a situation where my cousin and I went for breakfast, she actually had a bowl of noodle with pork and kept picking away pork. For Muslims, they are not allowed to have any food with pork inside and they usually think that pigs are very dirty creatures. This kind of cultural behavior is probably lost as my aunt didn’t tell her children about this.

People from different cultural background may usually have many problems in communication. For some unknown reasons, my aunt divorced her husband several years ago. Now she lives with her children and my family usually visit them during Chinese New Year.

Critique

2009-02-12T16:24:00.000-08:00

Dear students,

Are you looking for CCA points or experience in doing business? We are recruiting bazaar helpers. CCA points will be awarded.

Details are as follow:

Date: 16th - 18th February 2009 (Mon - Wed)
Timeslots: 8am-10am; 10am-12nn; 12nn-2pm; 2pm-4pm; 4pm-6pm (Mon - Wed)
6pm-11pm; 11pm-8am (Mon & Tue only)
Venue: LT00

If you are interested, please send an email to xxx@gmail.com with title "Bazaar Helpers 2009" along with your Name, Matric No., Contact No. and preferred timeslots.

Thank you,
Xxx
----------------------
This is a very short and simple letter of request for recruitment of bazaar helpers with information like time slots, venue and date given. The opening is quite clear and straightforward. It directly asks for your need and explains what they need from you. In my opinion, the writer should merge the second sentences with the third. For example: We are recruiting bazaar helpers and CCA points will be awarded. The sentences might become more coherence in this way.

In the second paragraph the email presents the details in point form. This makes sure we do not miss out any important point and read easily. In the last part, it also suggests what action could be taken if we are interested in this activity. Overall this email is presented in a very clear and concise way.

However, this email has a very serious problem of incomplete information. Firstly, they are asking for a bazaar helpers, but obviously they forget to tell us what kind of bazaar they are organizing. This is quite important because if they do not state it clearly, how are we going to know whether we are interested in?

Secondly, they also forget to tell us the deadline for application. This might mean that we can apply at anytime we desired. Besides that, we usually see a statement like “if you have any enquiries, please email to ......” This statement is also lost from the email above. What they provide is an email address for application. Can we make enquiry to this email?

Completeness is one of the elements in 7Cs for effective writing. In conclusion, this email is quite short and incomplete. Probably it will attract those students who want to get CCA points desperately and they will apply for this activity immediately without considering anything when they receive this email.

Interpersonal conflict

2009-01-30T00:15:00.000-08:00

Conflict between people can happen everywhere at anytime. Sometimes it turns two friends into enemies. However, if we handle it well, this conflict might cause us to know each other more and learn to be considerate. This incident about interpersonal conflict I wish to describe happened just a few days before the Chinese New Year. It was a very small and seems not more complicated than a small quarrel inside a supermarket but makes me thinks a lot after this incident.

I was going out shopping for the Chinese New Year with my parent and my aunt. When we paid at the cashier, my aunt was just in front of me in the queue. All seemed to be normal until my aunt’s turn. When the cashier was entering all the prices into register, my aunt suddenly took out a pen from her stuff and told me in Mandarin, “this pen is for you.”

“No ma’am. I have entered the price into register and goods sold are not returnable,” the cashier said in Malay. She obviously thought that my aunt was telling me to return the pen as she was not buying it.

And my aunt immediately shot back in English, “Why I can’t give my things to my nephew?”

Unfortunately, the cashier is Malay and she doesn’t know English. The next thing happened is the cashier tried to explain that goods sold are not returnable in Malay and my aunt shouted back at her as she doesn’t know Malay. Luckily I immediately stopped them and explained things to them before that incident turns into a fight. And my aunt scolded her, “What a lousy service!” Leaving the cashier looked very stressed and embarrassed when she serviced the next customer.

What I am thinking is, do we need to learn English while working in Malaysia? Obviously most of the Malaysian understands Malay. However, when we are communicating with tourists coming from foreign countries (My aunt came from China), how can we avoid interpersonal conflict?

When you are experiencing the above situation when your customer doesn’t understand your language and neither do you understand his, what should we do to avoid misunderstanding?

Do you understand what I said?

2009-01-22T05:02:00.000-08:00

When I was listening to others, whether they are expressing their ideas or explaining facts, most of them will usually ask, in English or other language: Do you understand what I said? Maybe just because they think that you are not listening. And sometimes peoples of different races might get into a fight just because of messaging mistakes.

Maybe we all need to think about what is effective communication and why we need that.

This remind me back to year 1969 when the May 13 incident take place in Malaysia, a very terrible incident where different races begin to assault each other. The Chinese hide in the forest and Malays holding knife and attacking every Chinese people they saw. Although now the actual reason of why such incident occur was not being told by the government to the public. But it is probably because most of the Malays are very poor compared to Chinese; they thought that their rights are being snatched away by the Chinese. Hence the race riot taken place after general election. After this incident, the government comes up with the New Economic Policy. However, this does not solve the problem. Under this policy, some part of what the Chinese earn goes into the Malays' pocket. And so the hatred still existed among the two races until now.

There is always a barrier to communication between different races. The problem cannot be solved by just simply asking "Do you understand what I said". This shows that an effective communication is very important and is needed to solve this problem. Holding a different language between different races, and different cultural among us, the first thing we need to do is to listen to what each other wants to say.

As a citizen of Malaysia, I feel that the effective communication skill is needed badly not just for me, but everyone. There are many races in this world and the same things might happen in any places. Before you knowing the world, there is a need to know how to communicate with it first.

Hello!

2009-01-21T01:06:00.001-08:00

Since this is my first blog, I will introduce something about myself and this module. Initially I consider for a long time and had sent a mail to Mr Blackstone concerning the S/U option before taking this module, as I am afraid of pulling down my CAP or not doing well in this module. However, I am interested in this module after reading the module poster and I do want to learn to communicate with peoples. Hope we can get along very well and have fun in this module!