Reflective Journal 5

Lim Yan Peng, Gary (3S216)                                            30^th April 2012

Reflective Journal 5                                                          

I feel that the Socio-Economic Studies is generally very enriching and beneficial in allowing me to study in depth about the cultures of Western and Eastern cultures. However, there are several flaws in this curriculum that have hindered my learning journey as well.

Ever since the first day I embarked onto this module, my knowledge of Western and Chinese cultures have indeed increased by a huge margin. Even though I had been completely clueless about SES before beginning on this module, the lectures, the class presentations and the class discussions are truly effective in guiding me step by step in understanding the details of every module. I feel that the class discussions, reflective journals, together with the lectures conducted by Ms Yeo allowed me to view each case study from different perspectives. It exposed me to fresh insights and encouraged me to think more critically about the origins of various cultures as well as their effects on various aspects of the societies.

Honestly, I agreed that there is an information overload as the vast amount of case studies covered in the first two terms are too much for us to digest easily. Not only must we go in depth to study the origins of Confucianism and Western ideologies, we are also expected to observe how these cultures affect the lives of Chinese or Westerners and how their actions, or their political and corporate systems reflect the way these people think. Furthermore, I feel that we have spent insufficient amount of time in class to think critically about some of the more significant case studies. By spending more time on a smaller number of significant and interesting lessons, students will then be able to enjoy the lessons at a more relaxed pace. At the same time, students can also gain more useful insights by analysing each case study more critically and thus, leaving a deeper and memorable impression for them.

Somehow, I find that it impossible to link what I have learnt in class to the real life world. Why are we studying the origins and the roots of the American’s ideology of liberty and Confucianism? If the aim of this module is to educate us on cultural intelligence and how we should act when we are in a Chinese or Western society, I believe all we should know is simply their basic philosophies and cultures and their applications in real life situations. Hence, I feel that some topics are irrelevant and hence should be removed so that we can spend more time studying in depth on topics such as corporate cultures and political systems of the various societies as I believe these are the aspects that matter to us more if we were to travel to such societies in future.

Apart from the information overload, I feel that too much is expected from us students who already have very busy schedules in school. We are often expected to read through many lengthy articles provided online and prepare lesson notes for the subsequent lessons when much of the contents in the articles could be irrelevant. In fact, many of my classmates actually do their self-research instead of spending precious moments poring through the “essential readings”. It was then that I thought perhaps I should learn from my friends as they claimed other online sources and sites provide equally useful information which is much more easily extracted. Furthermore, it entirely defeats the purpose if students were always complaining about the vast amount of research to be done for each module when it was only briefly discussed about. Why do we still study if the whole learning process seems like a chore for students? I feel that by feeding us large amount of information within a short time, it is difficult for me to absorbed and apply the knowledge I learnt as I develop little interest for the topics covered.

Sometimes, I feel that the expectations of the students’ assignments are too high. I admit that I have difficulties conveying my ideas in an organised manner using proper and fluent language. However, it was truly difficult for some students, like me, to present on a certain topic fluently and clearly to the class alone. The presenter has to spend a lot of time rehearsing and preparing for their presentation and there are some students who have limited preparation time due to their busy schedule. As such, some students were unable to grasp the main points of the class discussion which were unclear and confusing. The presenter himself will also score badly for his class presentation due to poor presentation skills or lack of content. I propose that students should work in pairs on a single discussion topic so as to reduce the amount of workload and also ensure that class presentations are made clearer for the class to understand.

Overall, I enjoyed some of the topics covered in this module and I certainly support the idea of having reflective journals and class discussions as they allow us to view things from different perspectives and also learn from our peers. However, I do hope that the flaws highlighted above can be considered and the module can be slightly modified to provide students with a challenging, but enjoyable and fulfilling learning environment.

(806 words)