Reflection

Throughout this semester, I had learned and gained a lot from this English course and the overall experience is pleasant and superb. During the start of the semester, I was quite nervous as I only joined the class during the second week. Luckily, the students and teachers are very friendly and guide me through my first day of class. During the course, I really like the environment of the classes as our lecturer, Miss Anita are very informative and guide us well throughout the coursework. My overall experience for this course was positive. The first aspect being new friends that I made from this course as they were very friendly and supportive of me. This course also helped me in gaining valuable knowledges in creating an actual research paper, which will benefit a lot towards my future assignments too. The most challenging moments I encountered during the semester is time management. It is quite difficult to manage my time as I was overwhelmed with the amount of assignments from all the subjects and it made me stress. Luckily, I was able to slowly adjust my time accordingly and manage my tasks properly to complete these assignments. Group discussions also become one of the difficulties I faced. Me and my teammates has different timetable, and only has English class in common. This makes it hard for us to do discussion and progress checking. To overcome this, we communicate through group chats or conduct online meeting to follow up on our progress. This is my first semester in Sunway University, and I enrolled with a mixture of Year 1 and Year 2 subjects as I am a direct entry student, and this make it harder for me to make new friends. Initially, I was planning to do one of the group assignments from a computing subject alone as I know nobody in that class and was too shy to ask. I learned that group assignments are called group assignments for a reason, and it is too much workload for one person to handle. In the end, I build up the courage to find group members and talk to people from my class. The process of creating and completing English research paper made me really appreciate my teammates. We all help each other throughout the process especially if one of us encounter any issues, my teammates will provide solutions to solve the issue. My teammates are also very supportive of my decisions and provided proper feedback and opinion. Most importantly, they make the process enjoyable and taught me many skills and knowledges. For the e-portfolio, I had contributed to manage the content of it and also posting this e-portfolio in social media. One of the things that I would do differently for future projects is that I will put in more effort and time in completing my assignments or projects. I learned that never underestimate any tasks or assignments given and to manage my time properly in the future semesters.

Throughout this whole project-based learning has been an experience for me. I made some new friends and learned a whole lot of new English. At the start of the course, I was confused at what we were trying to do as this is my first time doing a research project. However, as the courses went on, it slowly became more and more clearer as to what our final goal was. By the end of it, we had finished our research project. I’d say that my experience was 4 parts positive and 6 parts negatives. Most of the negatives was earlier at the course when I was mostly confused, and it stressed me out, but it sorted itself out as the course got on. The most challenging moment for me was doing the e-portfolio, as it was also my first time building a website. In a new environment, learning new things and doing another different new thing, it really was stressful. To deal with this, I took my time to slowly settle out things out, one by one in order. First was the written response with trying to find its sources and writing it out. Next is learning to use the website for my groups e-portfolio and doing my part of it, which is doing the layout of some sections and providing useful and constructive feedback to other groupmates work. Lastly was the research paper. The most profound impact on me was when my groupmates gave me encouragement and feedback to my work, giving me the opportunity to improve myself. My groupmates helped a lot with the entire research project, and it wouldn’t have been possible without them, so I extend my utmost gratitude upon them for this opportunity. One thing I would do for future projects is taking more time to find out more about my groupmate’s intentions and level of understanding, because in the beginning our group was confused and had different ideas on how to do the research paper and only until a little later during the course that we figured out what we needed to do. In the end, what I had learned was that we must communicate better and more frequently with each other to avoid more misunderstandings and mistakes in the future.

On the first day of the new semester, I was surprised to know that there is an English course for Computer Science major. I though that this course is going to be the easiest course for me in this semester. Unfortunately, I was wrong. In the first class, I failed to understand the instruction from our instructor and did the exercises wrong. Not only that, I felt confused and lost when I was informed that I need to write a research paper since it was my first time to write one. Besides, constructing an e-portfolio is also a new experience to me. Fortunately, I was required to work in a group to complete the research paper instead of completing it alone. I have met my group member who are smart and kind, allaying my concerns about the research paper. While writing the research paper, they have given me lots of assistance in completing both research paper and the e-portfolio. For example, we have a presentation about the brief explanation and the e-portfolio of our research paper. In this presentation, I completely forgot about the script that I had memorized before the presentation was conducted. Thankfully, one of my group members helped me to get out of the trouble when I was trying to recall the script. The most challenging moment for me was searching for and reading the articles during the writing of the research paper. I need to spend a lot of time in reading the articles and looking for the main point that our research paper needed, which is a bit difficult for me as I have always been procrastinator. Gradually, I began to learn time management and how to collect and organize the information needed for the research paper. When we are writing the research paper, we seek help from each other to make our paper better. I have provided some ideas on the layout and design of the e-portfolio to make it looks better. Furthermore, I tried to edit and combining the video of the presentation for the e-portfolio as well. Overall, my experience in this course were mostly positive as my team member always reached out to me whenever I faced any difficulties. By writing the research paper in this course, I have learnt what teamwork is. Not only that, I also learned how to manage my time and organize the information collected better. I have always had procrastination, but after these 13 weeks I have started to learn self-discipline.

Embarking on this academic journey, I was filled with anticipation as well as anxiety. The first stages of English course are critical because they set the tone for the entire semester. As I reflect on my overall learning experience, I believe it is critical to examine three key phases: the beginning, the middle, and the course's nearing end. Furthermore, I believe in the beginning of the course it has benefited me because I normally have difficulty communicating with others, which concerned me; however, I was surprised to find that the environment is more welcoming than I had anticipated. Throughout the course, I have had many instances where I struggled to manage my time well and where the assignments given clashed, causing a lot of stress towards studies. The positive aspect of this course is that I felt most at ease when working on a task with a friend I met during an ice-breaker session. As a result of my friends' knowledge, which inspires me on my course which It was an adjustment period as I worked my way through the syllabus and identified my strengths and weaknesses with my friends. The course unfolded over the weeks, presenting both challenges and opportunities. I began to understand the subject matter more deeply as I participated in lectures, group discussions, and assignments. However, it was during the group discussion that I encountered the most difficult moments due to my commensalism. To be more specific, the conversion is strange because I think a lot, which causes me to have other thoughts that are not related to what they are talking about. To overcome this, my group members patiently guide me through the assignments and clarify my concerns, which is the best support they provided me. Not only that, but I'm learning to understand it myself so that I don't annoy them. I'll do some research on the subject before entering the classroom so that I can have a great conversation with my group members. Throughout the semester, there were pivotal moments that contributed significantly to my personal growth and understanding. One such instance occurred when I was faced with a difficult assignment and group discussion that necessitated a thorough understanding of the subject matter. After feeling overwhelmed, I decided to divide the task into smaller, more manageable chunks. This not only helped me understand the material better, but it also improved my problem-solving abilities. I will continue to do the same thing in future approaches.