Ban, Panha Erica 15/04/24

Communication skills
1. How would you rate your communication skills?

I would rate my communication skills as a proficient grade. Communication skills go beyond the talking
aspect, it is also about listening, eye contact, body language and asking questions. For most of the time, I
am an active listener, I make lots of effort to stay focused when having a conversation with someone and
tend to ask questions to not only keep the conversation going, but also make the person speaking feel
listened. During the “dating speed” activities, I had often asked questions to the people I was placed with.
I am a good active listener as I was able to change the conversations topics a few times. For instance, I
had first talked about sport to someone and at the end, I have talked about university. Other than that, I
often use my hands to express myself and illustrate when I talk to help it visualized. During the “escape
the boom” activity, I often struggled to describe what was going on the screen. Hand gestures are easier
for me to express myself as I often struggle to find the right word. By the end, with the people at my
table, we were able to easily finish the simulation. Although I might be good in these areas of
communication skills, I struggle with eye contact and verbal communication. My weakness in eye contact
is due to shyness and lack of confidence. I have found myself struggling with that during the “speed
dating” activity as I often look at the background instend of making eye contact. As for verbal
communication, I mostly struggle with that due to the language barrier. During the “back-to-back
drawing” I had issues with explaining to the person drawing, what the image looks like. I have tried to
help by comparing some parts of the image to real life objects but in some cases, it did not always work.

2. How can you improve your communication skills?

I can improve it by being more open to the people around me, matching their energy and having more
confidence in myself. Being more open to people around me would lead me to make more use of my
communication skills and improve them. Having more confidence would help me approach more people
and use my communication skills that can later be improved. Language barriers had also stopped me from
having great communication skills and I would need to improve my English level to then, improve my
verbal communication skills.

3. Do you feel confident to market yourself in an interview?

I do not feel confident to market myself in an interview. Although I have prepared myself in advance, I
easily have memories lost and often have a blank of memories during interviews. This leads me into
looking unprepared by the interviewers. I have also noticed that I often answer questions with unclear
answers. Interviews give me lots of anxiety and I often take a while to answer the questions which do not
appeal to interviewers. For instance, I had a recent scholarship interview, took down notes and answered
some questions mostly asked during interviews, in advance. I have even taken down some questions I will
be asking my interviewers. Even after those preparations, I believe I did not do well during my interview
due to my memories lost and my anxiety. I saw myself unable to organize my ideas and answers
questions with clear answers. My lack of confidence and my shyness is often shown during interviews
which is why I do not feel confident to market myself in interviews.