Last post:(

Today is the day, the last post on the Language Learning Blog of Loran Seuters.
It's quite sad, because I just started enjoying it actually. In the beginning I wans't really enthousiastic, but now I am!

Well first I will post the feedback that I had received on my graded presentation:

Reflection on the graded pair presentation
Loran Seuters (S2194147)

Speaking for an audience is often something people are very afraid off. On high school I was actually quite good in it and I wasn’t really afraid for it. But, when coming to the University, things changed. Now I had to present in English for people  that I didn’t know. But, my presentation skills didn’t let me down. The first couple of times were sometimes a bit strange, but after that presenting went better and better, and of course, I’m still improving. The first I stumbled quite a lot. This wasn’t strange to me, because I stumble quite often, but most of the times that it occurs when I had a couple of beers. When I present in Dutch I never stumbled, but in English I did.  Now that I practiced a lot, the stumbling is (almost) over. The practicing presentation of English helped me a lot to achieve this, because then I was able to practice, without the pressure of being graded. This helped me to process the feedback I had received in a good way.

The feedback I’ve received on my graded presentation was mostly about the pace (a little bit too slow) and about the informal language I’ve used (wanna’s and gonna’s). I really tried my best to speak slow, because often I talk quite fast. However, it seemed that I tried too hard, because most of my fellow group members thought that the pace could be a little bit higher. This is actually quite a relieve for me, because that means that I can speak in, for me, a more natural way. The informal language was a total other story. I know I use quite often wanna and gonna, so I really paid attention to it. Then, when the first person gives you feedback and he/she says that you did use these words, it is frustrating.

So, improving my language towards a more formal way of speaking is my main goal to achieve. Further, I need to find to right pace, but I think I almost have it.

It is important for myself that I’m able to present in such a way that people find it real hard to find negative points, because presenting is something I quite like. I prefer doing five presentations in one week instead of making an exam or something. Because I quite like presenting, I expect that I also have to do it when I’m graduated. 

The most important tip that I want to give to you is the following one:
Prepare yourself in a proper way, but also in a way that fits you. If you good in improvising, then you should know what it exactly is what you have to present, and make the sentences while presenting. If you’re not that good in improvising, just make sure that you know the important/key sentences and words by heart. And when you’re prepared really well, there’s no need to be nervous!

and now you've readed that, you can read also read my last memo report, the Leatty Shanghai contrustion project report:

Leatty Shanghai Construction Project Assessment Report

To:               Board of Directors of Leatty
From:          Arend Loran Seuters, Architect from the leatty construction project
Date:           17-01-2012
Subject:      New strategy/actions to improve the Leatty Shanghai constructing project

IntroductionAfter 9 months of working on the Leatty Shanghai construction project, we can conclude that things are not working as they should. At this moment, we are 2 months behind schedule and 16 % over budget. To optimize the project, all parties involved organised  a meeting at which we wanted to look for point that should be improved. At 11 January 2012, we met at 10 o’clock in a conference room in Shanghai. The outcome of that meeting is described below.

Communication & Information exchangeBy far the most important point that has to be changed is the communication and along with the communication, the information exchange. Nowadays, lots of work gets duplicated or missed, due to the bad communication. Our solution for this is quite radical, but we think that is necessary. From now on, we want to start with meetings. One week per months, all parties will meet in Shanghai to talk about problems, discuss about risks that have to be taken, and so on. With this meetings, we think we tackle lots of problems and improve the communication and information exchange dramatically. For example, thanks to these one week meetings, there will be no problems anymore with the time. Currently, it is really hard to find a right time and a right way to speak with each other. When it is 09:00 in Toronto, it is 21:00 in Shanghai. Due to this time problem, meetings weren’t hold that often. The second problem was in which way to communicate. Are we going to use the telephone or e-mail? Video-conference or paper-based communication? With these meetings, we tackle all these and communication and information exchange will improve hugely. Also we’ve decided to only use e-mails between these meetings, because telephone communication has often troubles with the connection.  We also hope that, due to this meetings, the team morale goes up and all the work will be done in far more efficient way.

Construction workersThe construction workers are also a problem. Lots of them are (almost) over-worked and they lost the fun in their jobs.  The construction workers think that the work schedules are unrealistic and aggressive. We want to help them by giving them some more free time (extra break, all breaks 5 minutes longer) and adjust the work pressure a bit. With this new strategy, we hope to boost their energy and give them their joy back, so that productivity and moral will increase hugely. Of course, there is a risk that the get further behind at the original schedule, but if we go on like this, work stoppages will probably be the result. Work stoppages will only result in a much greater delay than our solution.

Conclusion    
In brief, we can say that by implementing our new actions (Monthly meeting of one week in Shanghai & decrease work pressure of construction workers) we hope to make the project far more effective than is it nowadays. In this way want to prevent further delays, and maybe win some time back on the schedule. We hope that you will approve these actions so that, in the end, the Leatty Shanghai construction project will be a huge success for everybody!
We trust to have informed you sufficiently and we look forward with interest to receiving your response.

Arend Loran Seuters
Architect of Leatty Shanghai construction project(549 words)

And now I've posted these two things, there's not much left actually. Tomorrow is my presentation about this blog. In the description was stated that no PP was needed, so I just stick to that and won't make a powerpoint!

Well, thanks for reading this blog!

BYE!