Final Reflection

I'm so glad to join ES2007S in the semester. ES2007S covers many topics which I think it's easy at the first glance, but actually I find it's really hard to practice, especially well practice. I really appreciate Dr. Jaidev who has great patience to bring us go through this course. And I learned many things from this module. To be specific, I would like to choose three parts which I gain skills most, there are delivering presentation and writing cover letter.

First of all, from practice trial of peer teaching, true peer teaching, mock final presentation to final defence, it seems a long journey, but it had been done in a short period of time. Actually, in Taiwan, I am seldom practice my speech skills. Every time, I just write the notes and knew what I want to address, then I go on stages. When I recall those experience, they are not really bad at all, but they always left flaws to improve. However, after the fist trail of peer teaching, I realized that I can't use the past way to treat my learning in this English-speaking environment. Even I had notes with me, I got stock at all when I was presenting. I felt so sad that I can't help myself to address speech fluently. Yet, there is no time to feel bad, because the real peer presentation is coming soon. When I prepared this peer teaching, I have had mock presentation with myself for ten times. I imaged that I stand before the audience in order to let that nervous feeling go through my body. With this nervous, I force myself to address the speech again and again. Even though, I still feel nervous at the tenth trails, I started to look forward to present. Because I realized presentation is not just saying what you know but sharing what you have. What a wonderful thing if you have something good you want to share with your friend. With this attitude, I feel more excited to tell the story of different culture, even though I still have to overcome speaking problem. At the end, although my peer presentation still left something to improve, I felt good to have this presentation:)

Second, writing cover letter part is so essential relating to our future. In this section, I learned writing a cover letter is not something expressing yourself but selling yourself. The most important thing in cover letter is pursuing your receiver that you're the right person to that specific position. Therefore, I think before writing any cover letter, we must have to know what exactly we want and what indeed the company want. Following this, we can target our special brand and the company need. As a result, coming out a worthy cover letter. I will keep this in mind deeply.

In sum, ES2007S gave me great opportunity to learn many things that I neglected in the past. And I improved my several skills which is influential in my future life. At the end, I would like to thank Dr. Jaidev, my group mates and all of my classmates.

Final Presentation Reflection

It's a really nice experience to have this final presentation. Both our oral presentation and the Prezi tool we used led us great success to convince our audiences about our idea.

I would like to thank all of my group members who have great patience to listen my pre-presentation for three times! Every time when I got stuck, they gave me a warm smile to encourage me carrying on. Firstly, I used my usual way to present which is more enthusiastic but speaking too fast to well connect all my words. After that, I tried to address slowly first even it was a bit plain. Doing this let me feel bored quickly. Surprisingly, I found my weakness in this kind of attitude reflection, which is I always wanted to be successful quickly and didn't like to practice step by step. Thus, I told myself "you have to be fluent first then any others." I forced myself to speak slowly but fluently several times. I knew only organize every phase in my mind, only I really familiar with our product, I could convince our audience to buy it!

Secondly, using Prezi was a wise choice! It was not only fresh audiences' sense but also let our presentation more interesting. Furthermore, the most important thing is it did emphasize the point we want to highlight, especially, the "zoom in" effect at certain point. It made it easier to stress the problem and solution. Also, giving the clear organization.

In sum, there is no short cut way for me to perform as excellent as my classmates did but I could overcome my language barrier as long as I practiced it step by step. Besides, we could learn more about Prezi, thus, we could have a more effectively detective organization next time.

Intercultural communication

I went to Canada three year ago, actually it's my first time to go to Western country. Every time when I meet new people, they introduced themselves and shacked hand with you naturally. At that time, I started to suppose that this kind of action is one way to show you're friendly. For me, it's comfortable to learn this greeting way. I even don't notice it's become part of my way to say hi gradually, so I did this greeting to my both of new and old roommates after I came back from Canada. One of my friend told me in private, she shocked when I did so. Until she said that, I didn't notice that this is “so-called” culture difference.

In Taiwan, we may not introduce ourselves actively expect someone asking you to do so. Also, we are not familiar to shack hand expect in the business context. After this experience, I started to think what is Taiwan’s culture. When I lived in this little island for a long time, nothing looks special unless comparing to other culture. I felt when you do know where the differences are, you would start appreciate your own culture, and put yourself into others shoes to learn others culture.

I still leave a question here. When I studied at Canada language school, most of student shout out they question when they don’t know what teacher’s saying or answer teacher’s question quickly and actively. I think this is a really good interaction to enhance my learning. But when I try to use this leaning phrase in my Taiwan’s class, I can feel that my classmates unfamiliar with my behavior, even my teacher gave a great grade at the end of class for me. So the question is it properly to interact with teacher like this way and ignore what your classmates’ feeling?

Resume

CHUANG TZU-.YUAN

BLK15 37 Prince George’s Park Rd. 118430 Singapore

(+65)8459**** . wordbrick@hotmail.com

Objective

As a professional counselor to help college students understand themselves deeply and adopt multiculturalism to overcome life issue.

Education

National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (NTUST),
Bachelor of Material Engineering 09/2007-Present
Bachelor of Industrial Management 09/2007-Present

Experience

Multidisciplined Student
Enthusiastically pursuing study opportunities in psychology and education Oversea
Exchange Student Program, National University of Singapore 01/2011-Present
Education Program, NTUST 09/2009-Present

• Research Project in Cognitive psychology in NUS


• Related coursework: Counseling Theory, Developing Psychology, Personality Psychology, Educational Psychology, Research Method, Statistics of Psychology (Including SPSS)

Leadership
Building relationships of trust and enlisting the participation of team member
Chairman of Youth Fellowship, Taipei Hoping Church 09/2010-12/2010
Floor Leader of Girl’s Dormitory, NTUST 09/2007-06/2010
Chairman of Teenager Fellowship, Tainan Lien Church 09/2005-06/2007

• Strong meeting planning and executive skill . Listening others carefully and patiently


• Respecting others perspectives and communicating interactively

Volunteer Service
Great insight to find others’ need and give feedback to society
Volunteer with Disabled Youth, Britannia Community Centre, Canada 07/2010-08/2010 Volunteer in English Teaching, YMCA, Taiwan 07/2008-08/2008
Volunteer in Children Summer Camp, YMCA, Taiwan 07/2008-08/2008

• By imitating behavior of disabled youth to understand their feeling and world


• Probing the motivation of children behavior and learning situation for inspiring their gifts


• Well-down communication with parents in order to facilitate children learning and help them adopt varies environment.


• Total Hours: 690 Hr volunteer work during four year university life

Awards
Scholarship of Excellent Student for Oversea Exchange Program 01/2011
Scholarship of Top 5 Excellent Student 06/2010

Cover Letter

Chuang Tzu-Yuan
BLK15 37 Prince George’s Park Rd
118430 Singapore . (+65)84591300 wordbrick@hotmail.com

11-Sep-2011

University of Maryland CSP Program
3214 Benjamin Building College Park, MD 20742

To Graduate Admissions

“If this world change too fast to catch up hot occupation, why not follow your gift?” By literature review, no matter in personality, career choosing or overcoming past and nowadays issue, youth is the most critical period to give a change. Because youth can make a decision him/herself by deeply understanding his/her owns. As a result, youth could take on this responsibility to change society actively. This is the main idea why I would like to pursue being a professional college counselor as my life career. I would like to be a mirror to reflect their thoughts and conflicts in heart in order to helping youth to understand themselves. During the university education, besides my majors, I studied in psychology and educational coursework. I learned the most important things in counseling psychology is to respect individual differences, because I believe that everyone have their values toward the world.

In order to learn more various perspectives, I participated the volunteer work in Canada and went to National University of Singapore (NUS) as an exchange student. When I stayed with disabled youth, I learn to observe their every little behavior carefully to know their expression and feeling. As counseling work, we should have great sympathy to stand on clients’ feet. In addition to taking psychology course in NUS, soaking myself in different culture environment is the greatest challenge during this exchange year. Like even using the same language to communicate, you can’t exactly understand each other unless you put yourself in their culture contexts. For challenging myself, I seek the opportunity to do a research project with various kind of people to learn effective communication and understanding in living of multiculturalism.

To sum up, being multiculturalism is an unavoidable trend in current world. I really want to pursue this opportunity studying in Maryland CSP program to become a professional counselor helping college student to overcome inner conflicts and adopt this complex life environment. Thank you for your consideration.

Best regards,
Chuang Tzu-Yuan

Interpersonal Conflict

There are six people sharing a dorm room in my home university. Three of us living left hand side are roommates when we are freshman. We have same living styles such as being quite and clean. Another three persons living in right hand side are close friends who like to do their homework which is making architecture models in the midnight.

Every time when they work on their model in the midnight, three of us can't fall sleep until they finished it. Besides, sometimes they made loudly noises when they got up early. In addition to their living styles which we can't deal with, they brought friend home for overstay twice a month. Three of us who are always tolerated these things but not communicate with them at all. Finally, the conflict burst out during final exam week. Both sides of us don't talk anymore. They started getting up really early and making noise for purpose. One of our friend started slammed the door when she went out. And me, at the end, got up when the noise raised and went out studying for avoiding these nervous moments.

I would say the main problem could be bad communication. Since everyone living in this room have their right to use it. No matter deciding being quite or doing projects lately. Final exam week may also contribute this outburst. Since everyone is under their pressure, and have no more tolerance for irritation. What we should improve may be we should tell them our sleep styles and all of us can decide how to get the balance especially in final exam week.

I think at the first time when they move into this room, we make our own group already. As a result, they may feel that we are not friendly people at all. Also, even when we disturbed by lately sleeping, we didn't tell them. They may not know what always we feel unhappy with them. They may think we had the feelings of hostility with them.

If we accumulate this kind of bad emotion for a long time, how should we have wise to say it out and don't hurt others feeling at the same time?

Effective Communication Skills

Effective communication skills are really important to me since I would like to be a counsellor as my career. To make counselling work, how to deal with the dynamics between a counsellor and a client by interacting is the most significant thing. Today, I would like to mention three skills about why effective communication is important to me as a counsellor.

In counselling environment, first of all, listening skills would be the first thing we concerned about. Not only every word the client said needs to be considerable, but also the gesture he post, the behaviour he show and he emotions he express unconditionally can tell a lots. When you "listen" all of these signal carefully, they can transmit what client really want to say. A good counsellor should draw a client's thought from his expression which is unconscious.

Second, in personal counselling, questioning is more important than telling skills. Because counselling put more emphasis on letting a client to figure out the his own solution than telling him how to solve the problem.To point out a good question can help a client to defined clearly what situation he is in. Also Asking good question can force a client to think the problem deeply and find his way to adopt difficulties.

Thirdly, in group counselling, telling skills play a big role. A counsellor need to create a safety and comfortable environment for those who join this group counselling by telling good stories. By doing this, helping clients feel they are not alone when they dealing with their hardships. At the same time, a good counsellor should let clients know they will achieve a common goal during this counselling worship.

In sum, being a counsellor, the most important thing you have to do is drawing clients' difficulties from communication. On the other hand, no matter listening, questioning or telling skills, any kind of effective communication skills could play important roles in counselling.