QLK
520 Communication Skills for Teacher, one of the modules I studied in NIE,
has provided me with the oral and written skills necessary for effective
communication.
Although this course is conducted in English and as a Chinese Language
teacher, I rarely use English in my teaching, I understand that there will be
some circumstances that English language will be use, for example,
administrative matters and communication with other colleagues, as well as
parents. Furthermore, besides English language pronunciation, I have
learnt about voice production and voice health, oral communication, classroom
communication and written communication in this course. These are more than
just speaking, but how to deliver clear messages in an appropriate way to our
audience, and these are important skills that a teacher must possess!
I enjoyed and benefited a lot in several activities during the course.
One of them was about oral communication skills, where we are given an
opportunity to deliver a speech in front of a class. I have learnt that there
are 3 conditions which determined the successfulness of our speech delivery:
Audience, Context and Purpose. A good and effective speaker could not simply
say what he like to share, but should clearly understand what the audience's
needs, knowing the context in a way that using different tone of speaking when
facing different audience and context, and knowing the purpose of our speech, in
order to convey our message in a most effective way. By looking back and
assessing my own performance, ,
I could realized my insufficiency and the improvements I should make.
In written communication, I have learnt how to write emails that are
appropriate and have proper phrasing so that I do not offend the audience. This module is very essential and
applicable for us teachers as we have to write formal emails very frequently in
the near future. Besides the format and paragraphing, proper salutation and
signing off, the 3 conditions, Audience, Context
and Purpose are also needed to take into consideration when writing an email.
Besides, a healthy voice is our most important asset as a teacher. It is
essential to know how to protect it. Therefore, I found that the e-learning
session about vocal health and voice projection was very useful. The videos
explained the
diaphragmatic-abdominal breathing and the correct postures which can be applied
during lesson time. This helps me to understand the principle of the breathing
style and the ways to practise it. Besides, I have learnt about how to warm up
my voice before extensive use. The use of retraction and twang are also very
interesting. I never realized that we can use so many techniques to add impact
to our voice without hurting it. The last part of the learning session also
reminded us to modify our teaching environment and personal lifestyle in order
to maintain our vocal health.
Lastly,
another lesson that benefits me was the different level of questioning used in
classroom communication. I realized that by asking different level of question,
we can help to stimulate students' higher level of thinking skills, and meaningful
learning can take place for both teacher and students. In conclusion, QLK 520 is
definitely an useful module that will benefit my future teaching career, hope
that I can put all that I have learnt in this module to good use.
