GET1002/GEX1004 Bridging East and West: Exploring Chinese Communication

I want to start off by saying that this module is pretty unique. Rather than learning about concepts or theories, we get different speakers from various backgrounds who share about their experiences bridging East and West.

Grading components are as follows:

1. Lecture Reflection Papers (x4) – (40%)

This is a short 1-page reflection paper, where you basically reflect whatever you have learnt from the guest speakers, readings or from your own personal experiences. To make sure that you attend every single lecture, the prof/TA will not announce the exact weeks where you are expected to write the reflection paper. We will only get the instructions and question near the end of the lecture. For my batch, we had to do x4 reflection papers, and the question is more or less related to the speakers’ topics.

Personally, I think this is a really easy component to score as long as you pay close attention to the lecture, actively take down notes, and have also do your readings before the class. One tip to score well is really to make sure that your reflection covers the content from the lectures, readings and your personal experiences. Just writing whatever you have learnt from the lecture is not enough, and this was re-iterated numerous times by the prof/TA.

My thoughts:

Tbh, writing the reflection papers always felt very rushed, bc we were only given 15-20 mins to write out a 1-page reflection essay before we had to submit on CANVAS. It wasn’t like we could actually write the reflection in advance, because its not just a ‘reflect what you have learnt from this lecturer’, but more like a ‘from what you have learnt, how do you apply this in your lives/Singapore?’ or like ‘from what you have learnt, how are the east and west different in ____?’

And also, if you plan to take this module, at least make sure that you have some level of chinese proficiency. There were some speakers that spoke entirely in chinese. I mean, ofc there are accompanying english words on the slides, but i feel like those who dk chinese will definitely miss out the specific content. But i have to say there are a lot of exchange students who took this module (and they do know some basic chinese!)

2. Group presentation in tutorials (20%)

For all tutorial sessions, there will be a group presentation on different topics. Tbh… I always feel very sian about this bc a lot of work has to be done before class in terms of field research and slides.

This was the tutorial topics for my batch:

• Tutorial 1: Chinese New Year Awkward Questions
• Tutorial 2: What’s in a Name?
• Tutorial 3: Linguistic Landscape of Hawker Centers
• Tutorial 4: Movie posters East and West
• Tutorial 5: Revision

My thoughts:

I feel like… firstly, the tutorial topics has nothing in common with the lectures. But ok to be fair, it still does show the bridging of east and west in various ways, so maybe the intention was for us to explore beyond the content covered in lecture and focus more on Singapore so that it’s more applicable for us.

Secondly… as i said above, I feel like its very sian to do presentations for every tutorial. The sheer amount of research and data collection required for each tutorial also takes up a lot of time, especially the hawker centre tutorial. Imagine if you are super suay and get allocated with a hawker centre with like 60 stores.. damn sian eh need write down all the food menu, signboards, store names… And you literally have to go down to that hawker centre to take pictures of the store and the menu because you need to paste those pictures in the excel sheet too... Afterwards you need to analyze the type of languages they use… and if the menu is in chinese then you also have to type the exact (traditional/simplified chinese) words in the excel too.. I mean, ya la technically you can split the work among your team, but then its still a lot of work to do 😦 felt like i was just spending my recess week visiting the hawker centre, typing in the excel, afterwards still need to meet my team to discuss the overall data and make slides shag eh

Thirdly, lmao idk if its just my tutorial group in general, but its quite discouraging to always hear more ‘areas of improvements’ than compliments for our presentations. Like its already so hard to collect and analyze data (tbh its legit very difficult to find group trends bc sometimes the data are just very different from each other)… And no matter how much we improve the slides in the following weeks, there are always more areas of improvements… even the small small things matter eh, like content page, slides number, even the type of visual charts you use 🤡

3. Individual tutorial contributions (15%)

My thoughts:

Honestly, the only time we got to class part was in the first tutorial, where we raise hand to provide feedback to the presenting group. Subsequently, in the other tutorial sessions, we weren’t even given the time to raise hand because there was simply no time and some ppl had to leave for their other classes and the TA didn’t want to let the tutorial drag beyond 1.5 hours. So i have absolutely no clue if this 15% is just based on that one tutorial class??? cuz there’s no qna for presentation too…

4. Final Quiz (25%)

This is basically 2 reflections paper, and combines topics from various speakers. I can’t remember the exact questions (and the mod alr disappeared from my canvas alr so opps), but i do notice that the topics tested were mainly lectures where we didn’t have to write the reflection papers. The format is also the same as reflection papers, just that there is no limit, though theres only so much you can write in just an hour. Similarly, to score well, we had to incorporate examples and reflections from the lectures + readings + own reflections.

My thoughts:

i think managing your time during the final quiz is very important. For my batch, there were two questions, but within each question, 3 topics were covered, and we had to give 3 examples for each of those 3 topics. The examples also have to come minimally from 1 lecture example and 1 reading example, and the last example can be your personal experience/lecture/reading. Luckily, we were able to do the test open book, so I think if you take down notes for every lectures + readings, you should do fine..

Overall thoughts:

Hmmmm.. i honestly have a love/hate relationship with this module. I do think that this module is pretty interesting and unique, like where else can we get the opportunity to hear from many distinguished guests from various backgrounds?? but at the same time, i don’t necessarily enjoy the large amount of preparation required for all the tutorial sessions.

And tbh… i did read some of the reviews left by ex/current students on the nusmod page, and yea la i do feel like for some lectures, they do lowkey feel like promotion sessions, cuz some speakers end up promoting their books and courses… But imo, I don’t necessarily think that its that bad leh, like those books and courses do tell you more about bridging east and west, so if you interested to find out more, you can buy la but if you are not interested then ok lor not like they forcing u to buy???

I feel like we should be more appreciative that we get to hear from so many different speakers, and how the intersection between east and west can be seen in various fields such architecture, medicine, social media etc, so i also don’t see anything wrong with the prof asking us to write appreciation letters to guest lecturers and encouraging us to show our gratitude. i mean, i rather attend such classes bc it feels more relatable and personal, as compared to like other classes where we just learn about definitions and how to apply formulas?? but disclaimer, this is just my personal opinion la! if you don’t find value in such classes, then u r probably better off clearing your GE pillar with other modules rather than wasting your time in a module that you dislike.

anyway i should probably stop before i continue rambling on and on…. but if you have any other questions, i’ll try my best to answer them as long as they are not requests for notes!! ok byebye! 😀

voez

16 April 2023