Learning about professional communication written and oral was a new thing for me. English is not my first language and before this class I never had to write memos, proposals and any of the assignments we did. I learned so much during these ten weeks and I think I improved a lot. As I said in one of my blog posts “Writing is one of the things I would like to improve this term, this was one of the goals in the beginning of the term, but I feel like it just got even more important.”
I was a little nervous about writing my first memo because I honestly had no idea how to do it. I got 5 points out 40 on my first draft, which is really bad. I went to see the GTF’s many times and they helped me understand how a memo should look like. I worked on the revision for long hours, but it was worth it because I got 36 points out of 40. This and the fact that I never got a grade worse than a B on any of my papers show how much I improved these 10 weeks.
Oral communication is very hard for me due to the fact that I am not a native speaker. I got a chance to present twice in front of the class, which helped me to get better at it. I am honestly not satisfied with myself because I don’t think I did a good job presenting. Professor Bramhall’s comment on my part of the presentation was: “Good eye contact. You weren’t enthusiastic about the things you said. How will your audience be interested if you don’t seem like you are interested?” I think I really tried to focus on not to mess up the sentences and speak proper English. Therefore, the way I said things did not get the audience excited about our project. I was not persuasive at all, which I really want to work on in my future. However, I think I did a better job on my second presentation than on the first one, which is a little success, but I need to be better at oral communication.