Critical Reflection draft 2

At the beginning of this course, I came to the class with the mentality that I would just try my best to pass the course. I expected the lesson to be mundane and we would be doing grammar practices every lesson. However, during the first lesson, we had an ice-breaking session which was quite unexpected to me. In Brad's class, we were also expected to post all of our assignments on our personal blog. The blog served as a platform for us to evaluate each other's work and gave us the chance to interact with one another. I valued this opportunity and find that it really helped me in accessing my weaknesses and improving on them.

One of the most important academic skill I picked up in this course is the correct usage of grammar, mainly on sentence structures. Errors in sentence structures are common in my writings yet I have never realised them! Being aware of problems now, I would take extra caution to avoid such mistakes while writing chemistry lab reports. I am sure that writing skills are also important in other areas outside the field of chemistry such as in resume writing and these skills will benefit myself in the future.
Through ES1102, I appreciate the fact that essay writing is not about putting in all the content that you know but more of focusing on the right ideas and organising them. In this way, our ideas can be conveyed clearly to our audience.

Despite learning a lot from this course, I feel that I have not mastered the correct way of citing and referencing sources. I made such mistakes for several drafts of my essay but still could not get it right. However, in academic writings, citations and references are extremely important.  I need to read up more on the APA style and other academic reports in order to fill up this gap of mine.

Having the oral presentation in this module has given me the opportunity to experience how it would be like in the working life and in higher levels of university life. Presentations are inevitable in these aspects of life and though I am still afraid of presenting in front of people, I have decided that I need to step out of my comfort zone and embrace every opportunity out there to practice on my presentation skills. I have to be more confident, and need to be louder and clearer for my presentations in future. With more practice, I am sure I can manage it.

Through ES1102, I have learnt skills that would benefit myself in the future. I feel that I have gained as much as I had put in. It is really fortunate for me to be part of this class where lessons are made enjoyable because of the teacher and classmates.