Formal Letter (Descriptive Reflection)
Dear Professor Brad Blackstone,
I am writing this letter as per the assignment for week two of this module. My name is Hairee Omar and I am from your T5 class.
Before I came to Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT), I studied at Republic Polytechnic pursuing a Diploma in Aerospace Engineering. Whenever I say that I studied aerospace, people assume that I love to fly and I love aircraft. While that may be true, I am actually interested in the whole idea of engineering. I love to understand how machines work and how a specific object or system was created etc. This may sound very weird but I look forward to the satisfaction when I solved a particular problem.
I guess my strength and weakness in communication lies in the same thing and that is public speaking. I am not afraid to go up in front of people and give a speech. I can talk. When I was 16 years old, I went up on stage with my other friend and we both gave a speech about our co-curricular activity and it was the National Cadet Corps at that point in time. I was fine or I choose to believe that. On the other hand, my weakness is not knowing how to engage the audience sometimes. I do get nervous sometimes when I need to be in front of people to talk but it also depends on who my audience is. I feel like sometimes I may bore the audience because I just do not know what to say.
By the end of this module, I want to be able to communicate very well with anybody and write a better letter. The first part might sound a little vague but it is really what I mean. To communicate better basically covers the whole aspect of it. I want to be able to talk to anybody and I mean everybody with ease. I want to be able to understand and be understood by anybody that I converse with. I don’t want people to have a perception of me that I am bad at speaking or I have low intelligence. Also, I want to be able to write a very good letter be it for work or for school. I personally believe that it is a skill to be able to write a good letter that will capture the reader’s attention.
I guess what differentiates me from the others is that I am not afraid to make mistakes. I believe that committing mistakes and then learning from them is the best way to improve ourselves. It is because only when we know and understand what went wrong the first time, we can try again and be better at it.
Thank you for reading my letter, Professor.
Regards,
Hairee.
Thanks, Hairee, for writing and posting early. I look forward to commenting after your peers have given feedback.
ReplyDeleteHey Hairee, this self-introduction and reflection letter that you have written is very comprehensive. You were clear in describing your weakness, and gave further clarity on the need to overcome it. The structure of your letter is logical which allows me to make sense of your reflection. Although I would like to suggest conciseness in writing, this might help you eliminate unnecessary or repetitive words in your letter. Anyways, great work!
ReplyDeleteHey Alimah, thank you for your feedback. I myself believe I should have written a more concise letter. I'll do better next time.
DeleteHai Haireeee,
ReplyDeleteThis self-introduction letter is definitely a gem as your character definitely showed itself when i was reading it. Other than a few grammatical errors such as "not knowing how engage the audience sometimes" , the letter managed to hit home with all the requirement. I feel that you can also work on the tone more to make it more formal. Here's to graduating and achieving our goals together :D Thank you !
Hello 5, thank you for your feedback! I believe the errors made was due to writing this letter in the wee hours of the morning. I will try to do my work when I am most aware next time 5! Yes 5 let's get this "moolah" together.
DeleteThank you, Hairee, for writing and posting this letter. I like your honesty in the letter. I am able to know more about you from reading this interesting letter. All the necessary content was covered in your well written letter. The purpose, strength, weakness and goals were well specified. However, I believe there were parts in the letter where your tone was informal. An example would be the paragraph in regard to your strength and weakness. Next, I like how you are able to provide evidence to support your stance. Hairee, I am sure that you are able to achieve your goals with the mentorship of Professor Blackstone. Your positivity of not being afraid to make mistakes, I am sure you will go far and achieve your goals faster!
ReplyDeleteHi Hairee,
ReplyDeleteBy reading this letter, I got to know more of you and I feel that it is well written that projects your inner characteristic as a person. You have a good flow in how you execute your self-introduction letter. I managed to pick up key points of you which we may not came across while conversing verbally.
I do share the same sentiments as Zulfadli and Faizal regarding the formality of this letter. Maybe a thing to take note of as well is to restructure some of your sentences.
Apart from that, I enjoyed reading your self-introduction letter. Hopefully, by the end of this module all of us will improve on our weakness aspect and communicate better. Cheers!
Regards,
Shafiz
Dear Hairee,
ReplyDeleteIt’s a pleasure to read this fairly clear, generally concise letter and to discover something about you. Thank you for sharing.
I’m happy to learn, for example, that you are confident enough to really believe that learning from one's mistakes is effective. I agree, and I think most people would. Of course, it's easier said than done. We might say we like to know when we have done something wrong, that we appreciate the feedback. But what is the proof of that axiom? In this letter, it would be ideal if you gave an example of how you have put that into practice.
You have also explained how your strengths and weaknesses in communication are connected. Of course, we can see in class that you are not shy, that you like to speak. I might also imagine that unless you have a clear idea in mind while presenting, or even while talking about a pre-arrranged topic, you could have a tough time staying focused and keeping an audience's attention. That starts with ourselves. I see that also in our class. At times I feel like you have 'mission drift" as we are talking about one thing but you're thinking (and maybe chatting) about something else.
My challenge to you is this: Now that we are moving to online, Zoom classes, I want your utmost attention, and I want you to be able to keep engaged, and keep others engaged, in our specific conversations as much as possible.Doing that will help you up your own game interms of focus, and it will help our class proceed accordingly. Do you catch my drift?
The bigger problem going forward with our lessons, since they will be online, is that we won’t have the opportunity to learn with each other in a more impromptu fashion. How do you think you might be able to overcome that to some extent?
In terms of your language use, there are a few minor issues:
1. verb issue
-- This may sound very weird but I look forward to the satisfaction when I solved a particular problem. > (verb tense consistency)
This may sound very weird, but I look forward to the satisfaction when I solve a particular problem.
-- On the other hand, my weakness is not knowing how engage the audience sometimes. > (verb form) On the other hand, my weakness is not knowing how to engage the audience sometimes.
-- I do get nervous sometimes when I need to in front of people to talk.... > (word order?)
2. word forms
-- I believe that committing mistakes and then learning from it.... > (use of pronoun) I believe that committing mistakes and then learning from them....
Some of your readers have said you need to be more formal in tone. That probably means making your letter less chatty. See if you can address that in the next draft.
I look forward to reading more from you this term and hearing more from you about our communication topics.
Cheers,
Brad