Level-II_Reflection_0926

Just imagine…if you receive lots of emails every day, how you will give priority to it without reading all? Confused? Yes, me too!!!

This is what a learning process for me in a session of today. Session started with a small and intelligent game. Participants were divided in to three groups and they have been given cards of different colours. They need to read out content and explain to other members within the group. As soon as first process got over, members were shambled. Again members asked to explain content to group other members in their new team without help of card. Of course it was a bit tough task. Sill almost all has done a good job. How this could be possible? Whether every member could remember whole of the content and explained in the same manner? No!

The second part of the game started later on. Cards were again given to members with headings. As per the exercise, we need to match heading with content in respective card. Our team did a phenomenal job. We committed mistake in two cards only.

Take out from the game is to increase memory power, reading ability (called as bird’s eye) explanation power. Question may arise as to how we can do this?

Very simple…!

Just memorized some important words and based on that explain to others. Remember important words from heading, specific words and or content. We may mark underline topic if needed. This exercise can be useful even in story telling too. We need to remember that essence is more important than going through each and every word of the story. What we generally do is try to remember each and every word and consequently loose control over natural expressions. Here if we may jot down some important points and memorize then I don’t feel it may be difficult to express.

Now let me to come to my first question. When we have several emails then it may be a cumbersome process to read each and every. If we know this technique then from subject line/heading and focusing eye on some of the important words, we can justify crux of the email.

I got good feedback on writing task. Mistake I did was excessive usage of continuous tense “ing”, which should be avoided. I’ll take care in my redraft.

The third phase of the session started with long awaiting process of story telling. It’s an art. Some of us have done a phenomenal job. General feedback we got was to focus more on expression using key points, be natural and make use of gestures. It should not be as artificial which resembles like student in a school telling story to classmates in a free periodJ. I feel it as an important process which we can apply during our presentation to attract audience.

Level-II_Reflection_0923

Today was the day of result and everyone was anxious to know their score. As expected, session began with result of test taken on last Friday. That was the end of our curiosity. I did reasonably good job in vocabulary, reasoning and true & false statements. I could do better in report writing but because of shortage of time I could not do, which was reflected in my result. Major mistakes we all did were in grammar exercise. There was some sort of misunderstanding which has created disaster. Of course I should still work upon my listening skill going forward. That was the major area where I lost my marks. In report writing I should avoid using lone sentence and repetitive words (like Asia Pacific). My performance was poor in tense exercise. Exam gave some sort of wits to take care about common mistakes. I’ll take care about all such things in upcoming exercise and do effort by which same or similar mistakes may not happen again.

At middle of the session, Pragnesh and Payal have delivered presentation on “Who are you?” They have delivered theme in a wonderful way. Lesser number of slides and larger emphasize on content made session live. Self evaluation process and judgment based on drawing (one sort of exercise) made it more interesting and could easily understood thought.

At the end of the session, Payal gave an excellent performance on story telling. No one was ready to tell story after that looking to her superb performance. Sanjay has extended time duration for story telling to next session so that we can be well prepared like her. I appreciate her wonderful performance. This is what exactly expected from us. Of course she could do her hard work. Intonation was perfect and that has made story interesting.

Level-II_Reflection_0920

We had an extra session on 20th September emphasizing on phonetics. In this extra session, large emphasize was given on vowels, consonants, syllables and word stress. This was explaining about how North American ascents.

There was a good graphical presentation of a tongue showing where we should put stress to utter different vowels. We did practice of vowel 1, 6, 10 and 11 (namely “ee”, “ea”, “ah”, “oo”). English is a stress timed language and therefore vowels and consonant carries out a higher weightage. Wrong usage of sound may carry different meaning. We did practice of different vowels and made a clear distinction among four.

It is observed that we don’t care of phonetics while talking with others and therefore it creates problem while speaking with US counterpart. We should do practice and bring out improvement over a period of time. I learned as to how we should put stress on abbreviations like US natives are doing.

Level-II_Reflection_0919

Session started with feedback on writing task of “Waterside Industrial Park”. We’ve largely discussed feedback of group members and noticed that still we are struggling with words and committing mistakes. In my writing I’ve used bullet pints which should be avoided. Some of the inappropriate tones and redundant words I’ve used, which should be ignored. In business writing, communication should be crisp and meaningful. Lengthy business writing defeats the purpose. I’ll take care of feedback in my next draft.

We had a test of 90 minutes immediately then after. Test was based on several exercises we had done. There were I found the test simple. I feel that proper time management is necessary to attempt all the questions in an effective manner. Q3 on reasoning has confused me a lot and I consumed lot of time there. All the 5 options were logically correct and difficult to find out a correct one. Due to that, I got bit shortage of time at the end. I have attempted 23 vocabularies as against required 20. Looking forward to the class result for mid term test.

Level-II_Blog on Blogs

I have reviewed my blogs from 7/18 till 9/16. I observed that in my initial blogs, size of writing was tiny which was gradually increased day by day. After getting feedback from Sanjay, we came to know that we should explore our thoughts and bring variety of writing. In subsequent blogs I saw usage of new words that we learned during the classes.

I felt that style of writing blog till 7/31 was monotonous. We again got hard feedback from Sanjay and got some examples of writing a blog from him. Not even that, he has also provided one of the material containing how to write a blog. I brought improvement in my subsequent blogs which is apparent from writings.

We did an exercise thrice about finding mistakes from blog. Blog writing is not a process which we write just before class starts just to comply with formality. I have seen that thoughts were not synchronized properly in earlier blogs. Sanjay gave some of the tips about. Based on the same I started reading blog once I complete my writing. When we write a blog, numerous thoughts are coming in to mind. When we read it again, we can edit or modify by finding mistakes from own writings.

Gradually I have observed that content in writing was increased with variety. Usage of some of the wrong words eliminated like: use of having. Wherever necessary thought were linked with examples, which was lacking in earlier blogs. It’s a good exercise to evaluate performance based on practice and exercises done.

Laziness was observed in writing blog in-between; consequently norms were decided to serve the purpose. One of the conditions we have framed was to put blog within 24 hours. It worked well for a while. Some time later, again laziness observed in some of the group members and one more rule added by Sanjay was to write reason in the diary for not entering blog within a time frame.

Overall, I would say improvement is noticed in expressing thoughts. However as discussed earlier, if I may get comments on my blog then I feel that it will be helpful so that I may know as to how much improvement I have brought in to.

Level-II_Reflection_0916

Session started with a game of “Speaker and Interlocutor”. Participants were divided in to pairs where in one has to play role of speaker and other has to interlocutor. Based on rules framed, we have played and enjoyed it.

Takeout from the game was to see how many follow up questions are asked by interlocutor. It’s a game to develop listening and understanding ability. While playing role of interlocutor, it is important to what extent we can link idea. If we want to connect idea then first of all we should be a good listener. In my experience so far, have seen several time interlocutor focuses on question without bothering about answer given by speaker. This was an exercise to express thoughts within a stipulated time and at the same time; interlocutor needs to frame crisp questions. This found more or less a same game we have played earlier but here we didn’t find that much difficulty to generate and express thoughts. My partner was Nehal and he could express thoughts quickly, although he has under utilized time frame given to express.

In a next round, I played role of a speaker. My partner was Hiren. Initially I didn’t get various thoughts to express. Gradually I’ve started giving examples and started linking topics with other scenario and ides suddenly sparked in my mind.

Seema and Chirag became volunteer to give a presentation on "Telling The Story Right". This was really a good topic to peak a lot and they did their best. They could still do it better by giving live examples and incorporating story in their presentation. They have largely covered crux but as the title suggest, they should make it live. Telling a right story at the right time is an art. Excessive use of story and irrelevant example may make the topic boring. It should be used appropriately at an apt time.

We have discussed about the grammar exercise “Present Perfect Tense” (use of have and has). Good to know that this tense is to be used when something happened in the past but effect is still there. Still there is a confusion about using “have” or “has” for anything that is plural. For E.g. People, data.

Level-II_Reflection_0912

Session started with presentation on “Telling the Right Story”. Me and Jasveer took a lead to deliver it. Topic was so nice and interesting that even an allocation of full day will be a lesser time to express thoughts and ideas. We did our best but still we could do better. Learning objective from the presentation is to know art of telling story to make presentation live and interesting. We have heard about presentation by Sudha Moorthy in IIM-Ahmedabad. She delivered speech without any presentation keeping interest of the audience intact.

We have seen lots of presentations and one common thing among all is “Examples”. However one should note that excessive story telling makes the presentation boring. Story should be told at a particular point and create nexus with the topic. If story has no relevance with the topic then it may create bad inkling. Gestures/expressions/pauses, beginning-middle and end plays imperative role to attract curiosity of audience. It’s not always true to say that positive stories can create positive environment. Even negative stories can creative positive environment if one knows art of telling. For E.g. if some one got a failure then he can mention that he learned from the experience and that failure show him way to success.

After the presentation, we got a feedback on writing task. The common feedbacks all of us have got are: use of repetitive structures, lacking in having range of vocabulary (Sanjay has given an example that Pragnesh has used about: Ubiquitous mobile phones). Our writing should be impressive. Most of the writings were in a mechanical form.

Rather making it as a monotonous task, we should make it interesting for readers to read. We should use collocation and idiomatic language wherever required, keeping large focus on interpretation on numbers. Payal read out task written by Pragnesh and it was awesome. He applied different approach in writing task. Sanjay said earlier too; that we should apply variety of writing rather than getting satisfied with the stuff of vocabulary we are having. When I saw my feedback, I comprehend that I had used word “irritated” excessively. I could use different words following different patters. I will take care of such things in my next draft.

We have replayed 2 minutes game on giving speech on topic assigned. Last time we have identified topics relevant to SNL. Quintessence behind this game is to identify how quickly one can think and deliver speech spontaneously. Last time my performance was poor. This time I could able to complete full time and staying on top in heaving thoughts. Even several participants did good job this time.

Takeout from the game is to build up premise which can be built on: 1) Cause and effect 2) Chronological order-Historical time 3) Reframing time and length 4) Describing thought 5) Comparison 6) Parallel happening 7) Linkages 8) Suggestions/instructions/prescriptions 9) Examples/illustrations 10) Sequence 11) Usage of schemata and 12) Keep speaking/Don’t stop your thoughts in between.

It was observed that we were stuck at a points/topic assigned. I think, we had created frontier and focusing largely on topic itself and that’s why we were not getting ideas. This situation leads us to failure. I think if we go little out of the phrase/word of topic then definitely we can do well. I liked the session most.

Level-II_Reflection_0909

Session started with a game of gestures (actions and expressions). Members were divided in to pairs. We have been given cards backed by different expressions. Based on this, each and every member has to show expressions and the other has to interpretate it. My partner was Nehal.

We’ve seen that people in US usually use gestures while expressing their thoughts. This is a one sort of body language. Communicating through expressions is very important as one can easily convey significance to other w/o speaking anything. Some of the expressions usually they follow are: time is up, fantastic, get out of the room, something is boring, cheerful moment, admiring some one.

In the last session, we have identified some tough words from the article given by Sanjay. He has synchronized all those words in a word documents and took a test of memory. We were able to give synonyms of some of the words but majority of them largely left out. It calls for rigorous effort and constant updation. He has explained as to how we can memorize words. No need to cram. E.g.: Word-Rehabilitation. We can link this word current situation of Bihar and Florida. By this way we can memorize word for ever.

We learned prepositions from Asia Pacific Video. During our conversation, we use prepositions like: at, on, in etc. We learned as to where we can use it. When we are talking about time, then we should use “at”. We should use preposition “On” while talking about days and “In” while talking about season or different day times. E.g. In the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening. But here one should remember that we should speak at night and not in the night. Same was use of %. If number comes first then we should use % sign otherwise we should write percentage. For e.g.: 100%. Here number comes first. These are the small things but very important in conversation.

In the last week, we had played two minutes game on expressing thoughts. Overall performance was not satisfactory expect for few members. This time, we have prepared topics in context with SNL on which all of us have to give spontaneous thoughts in the next session.

Level-II_Reflection_0905

Session started with two minutes game. This was the same game which we played earlier in a group (and assigned one minute everyone) to express thoughts. I felt exercise tough than played earlier. Might be because of the reason; I was presenting thoughts to a larger audience than earlier. My performance was very very poor which I haven’t expected so far. I could not express as many thoughts as I should be. On the contrary, I like performance of Nilam, Seema and Ankur. It was feeling like as a natural speech. Take out from this game is to learn formatting sentences. We should increase reading and activate schemata to have variety of thoughts. This sort of exercise becomes helpful to scan emails and hidden meaning behind.

Presentation on argument was a group exercise. Based on material provided for reading, I felt it tough. We tried our best to present in a cogent manner and in a different way than provided in a material. We have presented valid and invalid arguments. It was an interesting topic. I personally feel that presentation given by team of Nilam was excellent. Out of the three topics assigned, their topic was the toughest one. However they explained in an astonishing way. An example given by Pragnesh on Intelligent buffalo was confusing. Still I am confused as to whether buffalo can be intelligent? :). I learned to match premises with conclusion. Conclusion may not be true unless argument is valid.

Level-II_Reflection_0902

Session started with 1 minute game. Before starting the game, members were divided in to three groups. Each group contained three members (except my group). I was accompanied by Nehal, Alpesh and Chirag. As per rule of the game, we need to speak on the topic written in the card. For giving any new thought on topic, I need to put one pin on the table.

In the first round game was going bit slow but it picked up from the second round (as all got some what experience). I’ve enjoyed and found it a brain storming exercise. It’s a thought exercise where we can judge ourselves as to how quickly we can throw suggestions. I felt that some where I was lacking in flow of thoughts. Initially I was feeling that I can speak a lot in just a 1 minute (60 seconds). But when I started, I was having 15 seconds excess to speak but lacking in flow. Based on the exercise, I feel that it is not important how many counts are there rather it is important, how precise thinking is? At the end of the session when Sanjay explained meaning of idioms used in different topics, I came to know that some where I was lacking in creating nexus between topic assigned and thoughts delivered. Wisdom came after Sanjay explained meaning of idiomsJ

Some of the drawbacks I saw in general that spontaneous example didn’t come up as expected. It justifies that we want lot of thinking before expressing our ideas. According to me, this exercise is helpful to give a quick answer.

I want to mention here one of the real scenarios. There was convocation in IIM, Ahmedabad some times back and dominant personalities were invited as speakers (like: Vijay Malya, Saurabh Patel, N. Narayana Murthy, Karsanbhai Patel and so on). Vijay Malya gave comment on prohibition of liquor in Gujarat and explained how much losses State Government is incurring because of such type of rigid approach. An immediate next speaker Saurabh Patel (Minister of Industry) answered in an appropriate manner in his speech. Such type of spontaneous answer comes in to mind if we have developed ability. Even we have seen that Ministers in a debate. They are very quick in responding. Even once can cater humor if he is having such ability and make presentation more interactive.

Next to game, each of us has been given different articles and asked to find out difficult words and expressions. While going through a single page article (A silly season?), I got 11 new words and few expressions. Basically I saw those words for the first time and therefore it was new for me. As Sanjay mentioned, such usage of words in article or news paper are very common and once we go through every day, we will get familiarize with those words. Normally while reading an article, we understand meaning of a word based on sentence. Here we ignore to go in to the root and update our vocabulary. As mentioned in my earlier blog, vocabulary is important to bring variety in writing.

We took recap of grammar exercise given in the last session. We largely discussed about usage of Simple Past Tense and Past perfect tense. I believe that now I can understand when to use Past Perfect and Past Perfect.