I learned various ways and techniques on essay writing. I realise that one does not need to use fanciful words to write a great essay. In fact, using a 'common language' would allow you to present ideas in a clear and concise manner and convey points to the readers.
I also learned the format and language use for writing a technical report. In the beginning, I was unsure of how to write a proper report and essay. With Brad's feedback, I was able to learn from my mistakes and improve on my sentence structure. He told us about rewriting essays over and over, not as a punishment but to make the essay even better. Along the way, I would also pick out my grammatical errors and remove unnecessary words which may confuse the reader. This helped me improve my essay writing for other modules.
Of all the assignments given, I was most nervous on the presentation as I last presented six months ago. But after reading the comments through the peer evaluation forms as well as the feedback from Brad, I managed to pinpoint my mistakes such as the volume I projected during presentation too soft and how I did not adopt a proper stance. Additionally, I learned some tips to get my information across more effectively by using short phrases or replacing lengthy sentence with pictures or charts instead.
Despite the short twenty hours of lessons, technical communication was fun and enriching as I get to interact with my classmates and lecturer. For the first time, I actually felt there was a connection between lecturers and students themselves compared to similar communication modules I took back in Polytechnic. I had the opportunity to know more about my classmates and how it was like to work with different groups of people.
Overall, the module has given me valuable takeaways and I believe that to be truly effective in communication, practice is always the key.
