Reflective Journal 3

This reflective journal will be reflecting on the student presentations that were presented to us during the past few weeks on certain questions based on particular tutorials. This presentation will be graded in our termly report card as a term grade. Personally, after experiencing so many presentations, I have some comments that I would like to make and also talk about the most interesting thing I find about the presentations.

After going through so many of them, I feel that there are many things that one should be taking note of while presenting, and they are mostly the basic skills of presentation. When presenting, not only should the presenter remain eye contact with the audiences constantly, projecting his voice and sounding clear is also very important as not taking note of these points will potentially lead to the presentation being very boring, especially for the audiences. These are my reflections on the presentations done so far.

Firstly, I realized that most students that went out to present were very monotonous and dull when talking. They were unable to engage us audiences very deeply and thus, whenever I turn my head around, there will definitely be three or four students who are yawning or sleeping, if not more. Even though many might disagree, but I feel that this has been somewhat interesting as after the student has finished presenting and the teacher gave comments on the presentation, what the other students do is they divert topic by talking about contents in the particular tutorial instead of about what the student has presented without knowing it, even if the teacher posed a question pertaining to the individual presentation. Hence, the student just presented to the teacher to get the marks and not for learning purposes. Thus, the extra information in his presentation will not be known unless the teacher mentions it in class.

Secondly, there was one specific presentation done by a student from 3A2 that I couldn’t possibly forget. The student engaged the audiences deeply by using many, if not mostly, bombastic words in his presentation. Many of us were amazed at the presentation because not only was his script filled with words that are not as simple as those used by others, but the voice of the presenter was very clear, and not as if he was mumbling like what many before him did.

However, I feel that there can be things that could take place in order to make our presentations more meaningful to the audiences.

Personally, I think that after the students presented, the teacher should make each and everyone of us to take turns to comment on the presenter’s presentation, either by agreeing or disagreeing with the presenter’s point of view. The student can also add on to what the presenter had mentioned. This will not only be beneficial in a way that students can learn from the presentation instead of not gaining anything from it, but students can also earn their Oral Participation points which play a huge role in their academic result.

In conclusion, I feel that I have learnt a lot just by watching others present. I will try to do my best for my own presentation and hope that I can do well. I will learn from other people’s mistake and not repeat it, in order to strive for a better result for myself.

Reflective Journal 2

Having going through the class discussions about the Google Way and the Apple way of managing workers, I learned more about the "system" in almost every China company, and thus, I think that the Apple way of managing and innovation through extrinsic motivations is more suitable to be implemented in Chinese companies, comparing to the Google Way of providing intrinsic motivations.

The Chinese are used to a hierarchy system where people of lower reputation or workers of a lower position in the company are supposed to follow whatever orders that are given to them without question. Even during meetings, when the boss, director or even manager suggested some new ideas, the worker do not speak out even if he has an idea greater than all of the others. This is a total contrast with the Google Way, where everybody is supposed to be giving their own opinion. Thus, this would not be able to maximize the potential of talented workers.

Unlike the way Google is encouraging their workers to work hard, people in Chinese companies work hard solely for one reason: money. The extrinsic bonuses such as a promotion, raise in salary, etc. that a person get when he/she finishes her job perfectly is the main motivation as to why the workers are working hard. In their point of view, doing a job well done means improving the company, which brings to the point where the company earns more and so, rewards the workers. On the other hand, most workers in Google work hard in order to improve the status of the company, as they will feel that they owe the company due to all the free food, 20% free time, etc. that the company gives. Hence, I feel that the Google Way is not suitable to be implemented in Chinese companies because of the hierarchical system that the Chinese people are used to.

Now, to the second part of this journal, I would like to talk about the role of Confucianism in modern China. I will be talking about the Confucian ideology of moral values, and about people living together in harmony.

I feel that the Confucianism is just a temporary revival in modern day China. First, the idea that moral value is over money is not quite possible in modern China. People in China act in their own self interest to such an extent that they streets of China are well known for being dangerous and that people walking alone at night is almost impossible to escape from being robbed. Not only that, but in the current society, it is extremely difficult to find somebody who would encourage moral values over money. This is due to the fact that money is now the root of everything, even respect. Even though some people may argue that moral values are indeed more significant than money, but if you put a 50 dollar note on the ground and a stranger picks it up, at least 60% of the people who found the note would keep it to him/herself instead of even trying to find the owner of the money. If the person is to bring the money to a police station of ask around, most likely the police that is on duty or the other stranger being asked about the cash would simply just slide the note into his/her pocket when the founder of the money leaves. Hence I feel that the role of Confucianism in modern China can be described as "easier said than done".

Not only that, but in a survey done in year 2008 shows that China is ranked 10th among 13 major Asian economies in terms of how corrupted a nation is. On a scale of zero to ten, where 0 is the least corrupted, Singapore scored 1.13, coming in top of the list. However, China scored 7.98, which is an increase of 1.69 comparing to the previous year. China was ranked even lower than India, who scored 7.25 to come in 8th. It is evident that Confucianism is just a temporary revival in modern China as the people in China were not capable of living in harmony and have a mindset of unity. This directly leads to the fact that people in China are not willing to help the poor, which is also one of the ideologies of Confucian. This can be seen from the fact that if people in China are actually doing something to help the poor, China won't be so corrupted because some people won't be "forced" to commit illegal acts.

In conclusion, I feel that the Google Way is not suitable to be utilized in China companies as shown in the way Lenovo failed to improve their market sales after hiring a Westerner with the mindset of the Google Way. Not only that, but I also feel that Confucianism is just enjoying a temporary revival in modern China because it is obvious that the ideology of Confucianism is not working on the people's way of thinking.