Most Influential Event

The most influential event that happened to me recently must have been my Overseas Community Involvement Programme (OCIP which I participated in last December. Back in my secondary school and junior college, we were also offered OCIP; however I always thought it was a waste of time. Now that I am a more mature than before especially after serving the nation, I decided it is time for me to try something new and give something back to our community.

After two and a half weeks in a village in Yunnan China, I have attained so much more then I set out to achieve.. It was really an eye opener for me when I saw the elderly of the villagers working in the construction with us, what is surprising is that they could do more heavy lifting than some of our ‘gym rats’ from Singapore. Even with all the hard work and lack of material wealth, the villagers never complained and some of them even felt that they were the lucky ones. Although the trip was short, however I believe that the lesson to cherish what we have every day would last a long way.

Reflections on Presentations

This semester, I took up the module 'the introduction to public speaking'. Taking up that module really gave me confidence I needed during the presentation. However, that does not mean that I have not learnt anything during the exercise. On the contrary, was able to learn a lot from my peers and take away some skills from them. Take for example, the confidence and organizational skills of Zhenda.

During the presentation, I was told that I was able grab the audience’s attention throughout the presentation. However, was also told that my pace was too fast. Pace of presentation had always been a problem for me even during my public speaking class. This exercise would defiantly serve as a reminder when I am practicing for my future presentations.

Critical feedback on Peer and Tutor Review

Throughout the semester in ES1102, we had many essay writing assignments. The tutor and peer feedback came hand in hand. We are supposed to read and analyse our peers essay in order to give constructive feedback on their grammar, organization and the main points of their essays. However it’s not only about giving feedback, each of us also received a fair share of feedback.

In the beginning I thought the system was a waste of time and useless. On the contrary, the feedback system was not as time consuming as we expected as we are provided with the guidelines and outlines. This was incredibly helpful as it eliminated most of the brainstorming and it prevented us from missing out any topics by letting us know what we are supposed to look out for. I believe this would be incredibly useful when I write my final paper at the end of the semester, as I am better equipped to spot my own mistakes when I review my paper before submission due to the amount of practice we had throughout the class.

While giving and receiving feedback from my peers, I was able to gather the opinions from different people not only from the Mr Blackstone. And by doing so, it provided me with different perspectives to the same essay such as how we could better formulate our thesis statement or how we could have phrased the same point better. In a way it gave us more opportunity to learn compared to writing and reflecting on just our paper.

The process might not be as enjoyable as some other modules that I have taken but Mr Blackstone really made learning English more bearable that I imagined.  He made us understand why is writing academically important to us, especially when are we expected to write a lot during our university career. And when we give feedback on our peers view on their English learning journey, it gave us a feeling of comradely in the class which really made this class enjoyable. Which I felt was one of the perks of having the peer and tutor feedback system.

Even though ES1102 is an ungraded module, I am glad I took it seriously as the skills that were obtained from the peer and tutor review is applicable to my other elective modules such as sociology and public speaking which I am taking this semester.

Han Zhengguang’s Problem Solution essay

With the rapid advancement of technology in our modern era, internet and social media had become a very integral part of our life. Internet and social media provided us with faster information exchange making it easier to spread news and information around the world. Accompanying the habit of people sharing news on their social media websites, it has made social media one of main sources of world news for the internet savvy. However with the ease of news sharing and lack of regulation, there is a stark increase of news spreading throughout social media regardless of the truthfulness of it. False news would then give rise to false information which is detrimental to the society and in some cases causing social and economic loss to the country.

The spread of false information of the Ebola virus in the United States of is a great illustration of the negative effects of social media. In most cases, the rumours of the Ebola virus are widely exaggerated such as its death rate being an astounding 90 percent (McLysaght, 2014). All these rumours have caused an irrational fear of the virus, leading to social and economic losses which are caused mainly by the fear of the virus and not the virus itself (Marcelo, 2014). To address this problem, the White House and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have attempted to educate the public of the true nature of Ebola by releasing public statements on mass media such as the news and the newspapers (Edelman 2014). However, the CDC and White House efforts to calm the fears by announcing public statements on the news are not as effective. These efforts do not target the ill-informed people who usually do not watch the news in the first place.

 Due to the ineffectiveness of the current solution, a better solution would be for the government to conduct a viral campaign on social media platforms to target these social media savvy people. Another solution would be to have seminars in schools and public places such as shopping malls.

The first solution, which is to conduct viral campaigns on social media sites, is to target and educate these social media savvy people who are spreading the false rumours in the first place. One way is to create a very interesting video featuring some of the popular artistes from the music industry talking about the true nature of the Ebola virus. A very good example of a viral campaign can be seen from Singapore’s ‘Sar-Vivor Rap’. It is a song performed by the iconic Singapore drama character Pua Chu Kang played by Gurmit Singh in 2003. The ‘Sar-Vivor Rap’ managed to squeeze all the important information about Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) virus which was a cause of worry in Singapore at that time into a 4 minute rap. Being humorous and catchy, the song became an internet sensation and a common topic of discussion in Singapore in a short span of time. Through this example we could see the effects of a social media viral campaign, and which at that time was more effective than any public announcement the Singapore government could give. This confirms the practicality of such a campaign.

Another solution would be to have seminars in schools and public places such as shopping malls around the country by health officials. The students and the shoppers would less likely leave half way through the seminar. This enables the officials to bring across their point, informing the students and shoppers about the true nature of the virus. Another benefit of this arrangement is that the students and shoppers could ask questions on the virus, thus debunking the many speculations and rumours surrounding the virus once and for all. When the students and the members of the community centres return home, they educate their families regarding the information they gathered earlier. By doing so the seminar would be able to reach out to a wider audience other than just the students or the shoppers, making it an economical solution to the problem.

In conclusion, the problem faced by the White House and the CDC looks tough because the rumours are spreading like wild fire on the social media platforms fuelling the fear caused by the virus. However, by taking on some unorthodox methods such as conducting a viral social media campaign to spread the correct information and having seminars in schools and community centres, the CDC and the White House could disperse the vast amount of speculations and rumours that surround the virus. This would reduce the social and economic losses caused by the Ebola virus due to fear, by showing the public that the Ebola virus is not as fearful as described in the rumours.

Reference

Mulvey, J. (2015). Why Fear Spreads Faster Than Facts on Social Media. Retrieved April 4, 2015, from http://blog.hootsuite.com/citizen-engagement-crisis-management-on-social-media/

Edelman, A. (2014). White House, health officials try to calm a terrified public over Ebola outbreak fears. Retrieved April 4, 2015, from http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/white-house-health-officials-calm-terrified-public-ebola-outbreak-fears-article-1.1963948

World Health Organisation. (n.d.). Health sheet on the Ebola virus. Retrieved April 4, 2015, from http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs103/en/

McLysaght. (2014) Ebola: Misinformation can spread like virus. Retrieved April 4, 2015, from http://www.irishexaminer.com/viewpoints/analysis/ebola-misinformation-can-spread-like-virus-285367.html