Thursday, December 20, 2007

My first presentation in French

I learnt a lot! It was just a 10 minutes presentation, but the whole process was just amazing.

I would really like to thank my professor who invited me to join this conference and assured me that this is more important than an exam (I was exempted from an exam for this).

At the beginning, I was not very confident for this presentation, and got even scarier when the main speaker, a Spanish woman told me that Asian governments emphasis more on money and economy than really create a knowledge society. So Singapore, the country I will present, shouldn't be qualified as a digital city. My title of the presentation was "Singapore, the digital city" and she was telling me that I was wrong. Wow.

During the conference, she repeated that she doesn't consider Singapore as a digital city since it is not a knowledge society. At this point Only Europe could be considered as knowledge society. According to her, a knowledge society is a society where people from the bottom take the initiative to access and create knowledge than being pushed by the government. However after my presentation, an audience commented that while the idea of initiative from people is ideal and nice, people should be taught of using different tools to access and create knowledge. He mentioned some example that I gave during my presentation. Wow this guy just saved me! At least someone benefited from my presentation.

After all it was not so scary to give a presentation in French. What I found scary was how to intelligently answer a spontaneous question. I think I didn't reply well to a question asked by the host.

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous12:46 AM

    Merry Christmas

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous8:55 PM

    Hi Bee Ean,
    Am sure you did better than you thought! I think it will be a long way for me to be able to present in french. Am trying to find the fastest way to learn french, especially business french, however, no luck yet. The uni here only accept students who are studying a diplome and IBEP only accepts people who can't speak french at all. So at the end, I am taking 2 formations now. One with a school but it's only 5.5hours a week and the other one by distance learning with AFPA (which is abt 10hrs a week). So I will be starting another formation (my third) in january and that's another 8 hours. I find the classes are very basic here and they don't push the students at all..so am feeling that I am progressing too slow. If I follow this way, I think I will never be able to talk or write fluently.

    Despite my limitations, I've managed to write my cv and cover letter on my own. My husband told me that it's better to write on your own as if someone else were to write for you, the interviewer will think that you lied. This is especially if they ask you to hand-write as they have specialists to detect handwritings. How very traditional rite!

    Oh yes, based on your knowledge, is it better to put a photo on the cv? Basically, you are not obliged to but according to my MIL, it is better to put. What do you think?

    Another, to your question about not having kids yet. Well it's discriminating for the employers to disqualify you if you are pregnant or "will be in the future". My advice, I wouldn't want to work with a company like that anyway. It shows how much they value their employees.

    MERRY CHRISTMAS!

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  3. Li Peng,

    Yes those government courses are not pushing enough in my opinion. On the other hand those courses in the University here have very demanding professors.

    In my opinion, it is better to put your photo. One of my professor who works as consultant and participate in hiring process told us to put.

    In terms of company who doesn't want to hire pregnant woman, well I have heard a lot of companies are doing the same thing. One of my friends who got pregnant during her internship didn't get to continue. It was all doing well and both her and the boss were agreed on the salary after the internship, but once she got pregnant the boss changed his mind in continuing her services with the company.

    My professor whom I mentioned above told me to better go for interview before I'm pregnant. He said that if I'm pregnant during the internship, most likely the company won't hire me.

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