Week 3 : Group Presentation Experience

This past Tuesday was the first time we did group presentations in class. My group was responsible for presenting information about the Brothers' Grimm. I think that we did an adequate job, but I definitely could have done better. I remember that I had to take a long pause because I blanked out and forgot what I was going to say next. This shows that I should have practiced what I was going to say a few more times so that my portion of the presentation would be smoother. As I was watching other groups present, one group particularly caught my attention. They did not have too many words on their slides and instead had a lot of pictures. They even tied in audience interaction. At this moment, I realized what areas of my group's presentation was lacking and figured out how I could improve in the future. In the future, I hope to be more confident and more engaging in my presentations.

This group activity has definitely helped further develop my responsibility. Because I was assigned the leader of the group, I had to make sure that everyone did what they needed to do. I could not just wait and do nothing until the last minute because nothing would be done. As the leader, I knew that I had to lead by example by getting my part done. In addition, I would have to keep in contact with the other group members to keep them accountable for their part. I learned that communication is key to group assignments. It is important to let group members know if something came up and that you could no longer finish your part at the time you originally wanted to. With clear communication, misunderstandings will usually not arise and the group will be more efficient.

On another note, we also got into new groups for our next group presentation. Our group was responsible for reading folktales that classified in the category of "The Strong Boy." There were six stories that fit in this category and it is interesting to see that there are similarities in all these stories, even though the stories come from different parts of the world. This makes me curious about other tales that have their "equivalents" in other cultures. At first, it was a little overwhelming to try to compare six stories and see their similarities and differences, but putting down information in charts really help a lot. To conclude, I hope that I can take what I learned from this past week and apply it to next week's presentation.