Reflection on Oral Presentation

Last week, we presented our proposal to CDTL (centre for development of teaching and learning) about the teaching qualities at NUS. I was well prepared and knew my content well. I felt confident before class, but as soon as we entered the classroom, I started to feel nervous.

My part was the introduction and the background, which means I was the first one to speak. With only half of the class present, it was easy to connect with everybody. In the beginning I tried to pull in my audience using an “attention getter”. I explained that all of the team members were from different faculties and said

-                      -So as you probably noticed we do not have so much in common, [ ;) haha ] no we do, but we are all spread out on different faculties and we all have experienced both good and bad teachers during our time at here.

This “attention getter" can be seen as quite weak, but with the amount of people in the audience I think it was good enough. I also feel that it connected to the point I wanted to make.

I think that I need to bring more to my visuals, but right now I am not comfortable enough multitasking while speaking English. Therefore, I created my slides in the way that it would work for me during my presentation. Looking back, I feel that it was a good idea. Hence, the rest of the presentation was going well. I felt that I was stumbling on the words sometimes, but I feel that my ability to present in English has improved a lot during this module. So, even if it was not perfect, I am proud of how far I have come.

BR Helene