Reflections on oral presentation

The group presentation seemed, for me, to be a daunting task in the beginning. Formal presentations were not exactly my forte so I was trying to compensate for that by preparing well. My team mates were an excellent help to me during this preparation. Since out team started discussing on our research topic very early, we had a rather decent idea on what our research issue was and we were rather well prepared; in theory.

On D-day, I felt rather light headed because of a bad night’s sleep. When the presentation started, I grew more anxious because my part, along with Hari’s formed the crux of our presentation: the proposal itself. When it came to me, my throat went dry and I could not present as well as I wanted to. I was too often at loss for words and had to look back at my script to keep me going. This eventually hindered me from keeping good eye contact. Also, there were a few problems with some of the slides: the screen ratio that I made the presentation for did not match the one I presented on. This meant that, in a few of my slides, only part of the slide was displayed.

However, there were a few silver linings. Md. Fazilah mentioned that I had improved on my voice projection. I had the issue of being too soft during my peer teaching. I did take a conscious effort to work on that aspect and I am glad that it paid off. Also, I did feel that our group handled the questioning session rather well. This was partially thanks to Wei Ling, who suggested we try and expect a few questions beforehand, and work on our answers to them.

In conclusion, I felt that our presentation was a good one. The team was unanimously happy with the final proposal and it was good experience, as a complete ‘non-Singaporean’ team, to try and propose a solution to one of Singapore’s gravest problems.