Professional Communication

Saturday, September 20, 2008 2:54 PM

Evaluating Intercultural Behaviour

Intercultural conflict often stems from miscommunication between two parties of different cultural background as they have different perceptions of objects or things. Such situation arises as individuals bring with them different verbal and non verbal practices, languages, traditions and beliefs. As such, we can attribute the cause of conflicts to cultural ignorance as people do not possess extensive cultural knowledge of others around them.

Language differences is usually the cause of misunderstandings between two parties. The incident happened while I was on holiday to Taiwan with a group of friends. On the first day on foreign soil, we were very lost and decided to seek the assistance from the hotel reception regarding the location of some tourist attractions around our hotel area. During our conversation with the receptionist, we found that it was difficult to bring our questions across even though we were communicating in Chinese because we are using different forms of the same language. Besides that, a common term to us like ‘Karaoke’, which is understood by all Singaporeans, was not understood by the receptionist. After throwing in descriptions of the term ‘Karaoke’, it was then that the receptionist exclaimed: ‘Oh! Do you all mean the KTV?’ We were left shell shocked at that point of time because KTV is not how we would perceive K-box to be normally. It was after much clarification that our group found out that both parties were referring to the same object and cleared all misunderstandings eventually.

This incident taught us a very important lesson. When we are overseas, we should be familiar with the way locals speak and their language forms to prevent any misunderstandings from occurring. We should never take anything for granted and have assumptions that we will definitely be understood. Ultimately, different nations do have their distinct languages and cultures which makes them unique from the others.


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Sunday, September 14, 2008 2:21 PM

Proposal

The implementation of Vacation Internship Programme (VIP) and Industrial Attachment (IA) in the Life Science Curriculum

Research Questions

We would like to know:
- Whether there are difficulties in securing an internship?
- What are the difficulties students are facing?
- What students think of the advantages and disadvantages of IA and VIP?
- Whether students are interested in doing a VIP/IA?
- Whether a collaboration between NUS and Life Science related companies is possible

Hypothesis

Life Science students are having difficulties sourcing for industrial attachments and are interested in doing Vacation Internship Program (VIP) and Industrial Attachment (IA) if they are given the opportunity to do so.

Problem Statement

The objective of the study is to analyse if the implementation IA and VIP programme would solve the difficulties faced by Life Science students in their search for internship opportunities.

Audience

The target audiences of the research project are NUS science dean and Life Science Undergraduate planning committee

Purpose Statement

The objective of this report is to
1) Inform the Science Dean and Life Science undergraduate curriculum planning committee of the difficulties that Life Science are facing when sourcing for internship opportunities.
2) Discuss the feasibility of a possible collaboration between Life Science department and industrial companies for IA and VIP programme.
3) Convince the Life Science undergraduate curriculum planning committee to provide modular credits for students who undertake the IA or VIP programme.


Methodology

A either-or and scaling online questionnaire using surveymonkey was used to seek students’ opinion regarding the VIP and IA programme. One hundred finalized forms were each distributed to 2nd, 3rd and 4th year Life Science students randomly during the recess week. We provided different links for year 2, 3 and 4 students so as to aid us in our tabulation process. Results automatically tabulated by surveymonky were used in our report analysis.

In addition, a different set of questionnaires were handed out to Life Science related companies to seek their opinion on the feasibility of the possible collaboration with NUS Life Science department.


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Saturday, September 6, 2008 12:37 AM

Research Project

My group’s research project mainly aims to study the lack of career development and job searching skills among NUS students. Through the understanding from friends around us, we discovered that many of them are not equipped with the knowledge of some career development skills such as the skill of writing a proper resume. To make matters worse, some of them do not even have a well written resume prepared in view of their graduation in 6 months time. Thus, my group plans to analyze the possible reasons that are holding NUS students back from attending the necessary courses provided by the NUS career center which might help enhance their career development skills.

Firstly, in order to study the problem, we hypothesize that students will be equipped with career development skills if they attend the courses made available by the NUS career center. Since the problem lies in the lack of participation in the courses made available, the objective of this research study is to determine the possible reasons of the lack of interest in these courses from the student body.

In the process of the study, surveys will be handed out to NUS students to gather their opinions and views to justify their disinterest in these courses provided by the NUS career center. From the data, we aim to consolidate inputs of solutions from the student body so as to rectify the problem.

Finally, the objective of the report is to inform the NUS career center of the possible reasons leading to the lack of student participation in their career development courses. From there, we aim to convince the NUS career center to adopt some measures in order to improve on the participation levels such as enhancing their advertising methods.


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