English Performance Task Group Chats

** Evidence of Socratic Questioning is highlighted in yellow.

Debate on Topic: (ask about Tibetan medicine)

Nicolette: Science and Technology?

Varsh: Yes. We should go with that

Andrea: YAY

Yan Jean: I’m fine with Science and Technology... :) actually i’m fine with anything, as long as it is not difficult and we can understand it :)

Nicolette: We can maybe talk about designer babies and stuff

Shannon: War Crimes seem fun though. It’s out there.

Andrea: Youth culture pweese

Nicolette: How many people will be willing to talk about their war experiences?

Yan Jean: But what can we talk about if we do Youth Culture?

Nicolette: About how elated they were to see their friends being blown up?

Andrea: Gangnam style lah and also have Taylor Swift :DD

Yan Jean: No Andrea! Then in the end are we going to debate on our idols? No right == and not everyone knows what’s gangnam style

Andrea: Everyone except you.

Shannon:  Science and Technology’s boring, don’t you think? War crimes seem so fuun~

Yan Jean: As long as we choose a topic which we are interested in and it’s do-able, i’m fine :)

Nicolette: The fact remains that people might not appreciate our asking about an event they have tried so hard to forget

Shannon: Alright fine. People are sensitive.

Shannon: How about Alternative Medicine?

Nicolette: Is voodoo a form of alt med? People like to stick things into each other

Jing Xuan: But what is alternative medicine?

Yan Jean: Yay i’m fine with that too :) *thinks about my TVB shows*

Andrea: *Sticks pins into yan jean* yay voodoo

Nicolette: What exactly is alt med?

Jing Xuan: Medicine is meant to cure people nicolette -__-

Nicolette: It improves their pain tolerance levels

Yan Jean: Alt. med. is like TCM right?

Nicolette: Ask Shannon *pouts

Andrea: I’m gonna check twitter.Yan jean CLARISSA

Yan Jean: Stop it Andrea don’t distract me

Jing Xuan: Stop getting distracted :/

Shannon: How about like, this really cool alternative medicine in India about eating cow dung and yoghurt and all?!

Shannon: Any of a range of medical therapies that are not regarded as orthodox by the medical profession, such as herbalism, naturopathy, and crystal healing.

Jing Xuan: I think we should do TCM. Because we all know about it and have been treated by TCM before, right? And more people will know what’s TCM.

Nicolette: Yeah! I had recurring migraines and they were really bad, so my grandma brought me to this TCM practitioner and he cured me! Never had migraines after that! (smile) ^^

Nicolette: Shannon where will you find a doctor that recommends cow dung in singapore? ;/

Varsh: Hey I HAVE heard of it. It’s Ayurvedam. Like during the December holidays where I had this extreme case of dandruff I put yoghurt in my hair. It felt cooling. And I ate the remaining(hehe)

Yan Jean: Should we just stick to tcm since it’s more widely known?

Shannon: Anyway, back on track. Should we or should we not do Alternative Medicine, then focus on TCM? Let’s vote. I think we should.

Nicolette: Me too

Andrea: ME THREEEEEEE DARRRRLLIIIIIINNNNG

Jing Xuan: I think its okay...

Yan Jean: I’m fine :)

Varsh: Yup. Fine with it.

After alll those research stuff, then we settled on a more familiar and widely known form of alternative medicine: TCM

Research question (Comparison? Controversy?)

Shannon: What are we focusing on? What should our research question be?

Nicolette: Maybe something about why students can’t use alt med medical certs in place of MC?

Nicolette: Did Mrs Hon say anything about doing it as a statement or question?

Jing Xuan: What’s a research question?

Shannon: She said it can be like a statement. Something debatable. Like an argumentative essay question.

Nicolette: So it should be something like ‘Taylor Swift is better than Justin Beiber.’?

Shannon: Yup. You learn fast, Nicolette!

Yan Jean: But why students can’t use alt medicine medical certs in place of MC, there are a lot of limitations to the research.

Jing Xuan: We should have a wider range for research and why students can’t use alt medicine medical certs in place of MC can be like part of that question instead.

Nicolette: Or why not something for the overall like TCM is overall better than Western Medicine?

Shannon: We need to define ‘better’. Holistically better? Or in people’s eyes, it’s better?

Varsh: Can’t it be both?

Shannon: It’ll be harder.

Yan Jean: i think overall means everything cuz our survey questions was focusing on everything so mrs hon asked us what we wanted to focus on ultimately, cuz we had stuff like ‘safer’ or whether people can trust it. So it's like a combination?

Varsh: I think it’d be easier right? I think it’d be easier to research on it.

Shannon: If you guys honestly think we can do it, then let’s do it.

Response of people (worry that they will respond negatively)

Nicolette got rejected by Eu Yan Sang and those mean doctor people when she asked to interview them. So we were worried the public or whatever would react the same. Yep and they did. We got kicked out of Raffles Place by a security guard and he trailed us till nicolette’s mum told him to stop.

Our presentations (TCM,BOTH,WM)

So do u want to discuss about the pair presentation?

Nicolette: Jing Xuan, can you work with Andrea on the case for TCM? Is it okay for you?

Jing Xuan: Ya Its okay

Andrea: Of course honey @JX im ur worst NIGHTMARRREE HEEEEEHEEEE

Jing Xuan: Kind of regretting this now ^o^

Nicolette: Andrea dont scare JX or ill come and eat you-_-

Andrea: Not if i eat u first

Yan Jean: Stop getting distracted (again) Nicolette who am i working with?

Nicolette: Is it fine if u work with me?

Jing Xuan: So we each work on our own parts?

Nicolette: You work in pairs.

Yan Jean: Can we do western medicine?

Nicolette: Is everyone fine if yan jean and i do western medicine?

Jing Xuan: As in so we start first...?

Nicolette: Yup,So you and andrea will be doing case for TCM.

Shannon: Then Varsh, you and I will talk about combining the two and utilising the benefits of both okay?

Varsh: Yeah, let’s. I found this article the other day. About an experiment conducted in Beijing. Turns out the integration of WM and TCM group was more successful than the rest.

Shannon: Okay, so we’ll talk about that. And we’ll go last, so we don’t have to give and intro and talk about the integration in 2 and a half minutes. You guys okay with that?

Nicolette: Nope. Go ‘head

Jing Xuan: Nada.

Yan Jean: So how are we going to make our presentations interesting?

Jing Xuan: I think I have some herbs at home. I’ll try to find it and bring that.

Nicolette: omg thank you:)

Shannon: I will google integration or something of that sort.

Shannon: Hey Varsh! I found a picture of mating frogs! Let’s put that in our slides!

Varsh: But it’s irrelevant

Shannon: But fun overrides your irrelevance! Besides, it’d wake them up or something

Nicolette: One frog can be TCM, and the other WM.

Shannon: We are totally keeping that picture.

Varsh: Integration of TCM shown through mating frogs.

Jing Xuan: We should put in the background info of TCM and alternative medicine then after that we put in why TCM is better do we go research first?

Andrea: Okay but don’t we need to say why western is not as good since we are going against western for TCM.

Jing Xuan: Um.. Okay then... I think we do the research first? The presentation is in google drive, I shared it with you already just add in what we need there

Jing Xuan: We need to add in the statistics from the survey right? We can just take the ones that justify our stand.

Andrea: I convert to percentage then add it in?

Jing Xuan: Okay

Reflection- Andrea

I feel that this English PT helped me improve in a lot of ways. For example, socratic questioning helped me improve my communication skills, as I had to ask questions and also answer them. I also enjoyed working with my group members and I liked the cooperation.

There was actually some problems in the beginning, as we could not decide on a topic, then when we had decided on one, we had to filter out reliable information from unreliable information. Then, there was field work, where it was actually quite eye-opening for us, as we got to experience what talking to random strangers on the street might feel like. We even got chased away once by a security guard!

I learnt that we had to work hard as a group to produce satisfactory results, and also that quantity did not mean quality. I also liked that we had to split into pairs for the last part of the PT because it was interesting working within the group with another person, then working together again. We, as a group, also found out more about skills outside of academics, like communication skills and also setting quizzes. We learnt that we had to provide clear questions, not vague ones, or else we would get inaccurate answers.

In conclusion, I felt that this was by far the most interesting and meaningful PT yet as it dealt with issues that we would never had thought about until now. I would recommend that this PT be continued as it would be quite meaningful, and one thing I feel that should be improved is that we should have a wider range of topics to choose from. My group members were quite fun to work with, and although there were a few hiccups on the way, I can conclude that this PT is a success(:

Reflection- Varshini

In all the Performance Tasks I have done, I have to say this is one of my favourites,

At first, we did have some problems deciding which topic did we want to create a research question on. There were divided opinions amongst us, as some of us wanted to do War Crimes and some of us wanted to other topics such as Technology. Alternative medicine came later into our focus, when we learnt the definition of Alternative medicine (I was one of those who did not understand the topic at first). Then, we discussed about the topic and we immediately delved into TCM. This train of thought led us to our research question. When we started research on this topic, safe to say, not all of us were convinced that this was the right choice. We did have some debates on which other topic we should choose, but we did not feel comfortable doing any other topic. Soon enough, we started on our survey questions and went on ground to get people to do our surveys. I was the only one unable to go to the TCM practitioner interview. So, I was not there when the rest of my group members did get kicked out of the MRT station. The last problem we faced was the time limit for our presentations. It was hard to edit our presentations to make sure we did not go past the time limit. All the information we had put in our respective presentations were relevant and important to our stand. We had to speak fast and loud to make sure our audience understood us. Even though we did try our best to summarise most of the points on the slides, Mine and Shannon's presentation still did go past 3 minutes.

From this Performance Task, I think one of the most important things I learnt was to be confident. By nature, I am a shy girl. I am not very confident in going to strangers and asking them to do surveys. I would prefer being asked to do research. So when I was put in a situation where I had to go around and ask people to do surveys, I was, at first, scared. It did take some time for me to get my courage and ask people to the surveys. Then, it felt easier to do it the second time, third time. So, the next time when I am in these kind of situations, I would definitely feel much more confident in going on ground and asking people to surveys.

I rate this is as one of my most favourite Performance Tasks as I actually learnt something beneficial for my future. I found it great that this Performance Task was specifically designed to make sure we, students, learn skills which would be helpful when we go for our higher studies, and eventually, when we join the workforce. It makes us much more capable of handling rejection, which we are going to face many times as we grow older. I also had fun researching information about TCM and Western medicine as these are things which are important in our lives. Without medicine, a lot of us would not be living on Earth right now. From small flus such as cold to life-threatening diseases such as Cancer, medicine is the only thing that can cure it. To learn the benefits and the shortcomings of different types of medicine was enriching.

I do hope that the Juniors can have as much fun as I have had doing this Performance Task!

Reflections _ Shannon

The performance task was an enriching experience for all of us.

Our topic was on TCM and WM, and when I told some of my other schoolmates that, they would raise an eyebrow at me and bluntly say,

"Boring."

I beg to differ.

It was a very fun and rewarding experience, as we weren't confined to our chairs for the whole of the performance task and we could actually go out and interact with people. Not just sit in a chair and type some things that were on the Internet out.

We did face some obstacles, unfortunately. I remember some of us arguing (or rather, discussing in a slightly heated manner but not raising fists) about the topic. We actually settled for War Crimes at first, but then some disagreed, points were brought up and the topic was dropped. After that, we couldn't really decide on something since all of us had differing opinions. Some of us wanted to to do Environment, others Teen Culture. Finally though, after many rounds of discussion, we settled on Alternative Medicine.

Cue the hardcore and messy research on Google Docs.

We had some minor arguments but the first obstacle came when we went out to interview the unlicensed TCM Practitioner. When we were waiting for him to finish treating a patient so we could interview him, we found out he could speak only limited mandarin, so communication was not as smooth as we hoped it could have been. However, it did work out because we all tried to provide alternative phrasings and we used hand gestures and kept on smiling politely no matter what.

The biggest and most memorable problem occurred when we went to Raffles Place MRT to interview the general public. We were happily interviewing some random strangers when along came a security guard.

"HEY YOU CAN'T CONDUCT INTERVIEWS HERE! YOU NEED A PERMIT TO DO SO!"

Even though we were standing outside the mall, near the MRT. Maybe we were standing too close to the mall and they owned that little bit of land as well. In the end though, we were told multiple times to go to China Town because "no one owned that plot of land". It was very kind of him to give us advice, had he not said it a at least a million times, then proceeded to follow us when we said we were going to stop interviewing people and were planning to go eat lunch now.

All of us were a bit surprised at the unexpected outcome as we headed to lunch, Nicolette continuously checking STOMP to see if a headline along the lines of 'Cedar Girls' Students Conduct Interview Outside Raffles' Place Mall Without Permit! Disgrace to Singapore!' would suddenly appear.

We then resorted to asking relatives and friends about the survey, so all was well.

The last major obstacle we all faced was trying to be engaging yet keeping in the time limit for the presentations. For some of us, time limit was top priority, others creativity. Yan Jean and Nicolette were trying hard to reduce their word limit, and Jing Xuan had brought herbs to emphasise her points. Varshini and I had resorted to hand gestures and an irrelevant picture of mating frogs I had found while researching on TCM.

Everything went fine and we celebrated after presenting.

I learnt a whole lot during this Performance Task, about expecting the unexpected, about improvisation when something goes wrong, and about presentation skills. I am very happy to have been a part of this PT, a part of this group, and I thank my group members for their hard work.

I sincerely hope my juniors can experience this learning process and gain just as much as I have, if not, more.

-Shannon Pei of 2A

Reflection (Nicolette)

Reflections

Well,this English Performance Task was actually quite fun though there were lots of setbacks and obstacles.

We faced many obstacles throughout the course of this performance task,the first being the research component of the performance task.We had to sieve out what information was reliable and what was not,at the same time finding enough information to do our presentations and to complete the planning worksheet.Secondly,we also had the problem of planning out suitable survey questions using Socratic Questioning.We had to go through many drafts and prepared at least 6 sets of questions over and over again,editing all the while.However,we eventually ,managed to come up with a satisfactory set of questions that were not too difficult,non-understandable and without grammatical errors.We also tailored our questions such that they were not rude or insulting to the recipients.Thirdly,we had trouble finding people who were willing to do our survey.We were rejected repeatedly and some of our rejectors included Eu Yan Sang as well as a few anonymous Western doctors.When we went out to do our survey some people ignored us or simply brushed us off. We even got chased out of Raffles City as we were a supposed 'public nuisance'.Fortunately,though we were rejected many times we still managed to get 50+ surveys and we had enough to do our presentations.The presentation that I did with Yan Jean overshot the two and a half minute limit by almost twice our allocated timing.Our script was 2000 words long and our presentation was too wordy but we worked hard and eventually reduced our script to 500 words and deleted several slides as well as many bits and pieces of information.

I have learnt many things from this English Performance Task.I learnt that quality work is not produced because one is talented but because of the overall hard work and cooperation of a group.A good and successful performance task depends a lot on a good work relationship with the group members.I also learnt that rejection is inevitable.There is no such thing as a smooth-sailing project.Because of rejection,I think that I have become less 'soft' and stronger.I also learnt that you cannot produce something overnight and that doing a project takes a lot of time and effort .You need to be dedicated to a project in order for it to be a success.

In conclusion,I think that i have learnt a lot form this performance task and gained much experience on many things such as rejection and working with others.I also think that this performance task has greatly improved my research skills.

On a side note
I would like to thank all of my group members for being such wonderful work partners and supportive friends.Without them, I don't think our project would have been as successful.I think that they are the best performance task group that I have ever worked with and once again,to all of my group members,thank you for being so amazing:)

Nicolette (31)
2A

Reflections - Jing Xuan

At the beginning, after we have chosen alternative medicine, we decided to research more on the various types of alternative medicine since there were many forms of alternative medicine. After further discussion, we have decided to do on one that we are more familiar with, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) which most of us had used before. Each of us went to find out more and we did a more thorough research. We decided decided to start on the interview questions after getting most of the research done. After that, we chose a date where most of us are free for the interview and surveys to be done. On one of the Saturdays, at around 9am, we met at Nicolette's house where her grandparents then send us the the unlicensed TCM practitioner's house. We waited till 10am+ before we got the interview done. Right after that, we went outside an MRT station for the survey to get a general idea from the public regarding TCM. We arrived there at around 11.45 am.  Me and Shannon went outside while Nicolette and Yan Jean remained in. Me an Shannon asked a few people in the beginning, but most of them rejected doing the survey. As I have already expected these rejection from the public, I was not surprised or disappointed when I was rejected by them. Finally a couple was willing to help us with the survey, however when the heard the topic was on TCM, they said that they did know what it was and apologized telling us that they will not be able to help us with it. I was disappointed as it was difficult to find people who actually agrees to help with it. Finally we got the first survey from a 50+ years old woman. After that a 21 years old student also helped us with the survey. However, after that, we were told that we were not allowed to do surveys at that area. In the end, we only had 10 surveys. For the remaining surveys, they were done by our relatives and friends. After that, the results from the survey were collated as we met up on both Saturdays and Sundays to complete the blog as well as the presentations.

There are actually some problems we faced in this process. Firstly, we wanted to decide on a date that everyone can turn up. However, not everyone could turn up at the same time. Thus, we chose to going for the interviews and surveys without all the members present, but, they can still contribute by asking the friends and relatives to do these surveys. Secondly, to complete the whole English PT we had to meet up multiple times on weekends early in the morning. 

I have actually learnt a lot from the English Performance Task. Firstly, I have learnt to be more confident when speaking to strangers. We had to go out to do surveys and ground research. If we continue being reserved and shy not going forward to ask the people to help us with the survey, nothing will be done. Secondly, through the presentation, I learnt to be more confident to speak in front of a big group of people. Lastly, I have also learnt a lot more on TCM which I had almost no knowledge at first.  I learnt more on the perspectives used in TCM and I have also gotten more understanding on the impression of the general public on TCM. 

In  conclusion, I feel that even though we had faced several problems such as time constraint through the whole English PT, it was still a fun and a brand new experience. I have also learnt a lot more on the skills needed in life, such as communicating with strangers. The English PT has allowed me to learn a lot. 

Oh yah i just found more new links to assist us in our presentations :)

References

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11085343

http://www.kevinmd.com

http://humanisticperspectives.wordpress.com/2012/01/29/hot-and-cold-in-chinese-medicinea-meaningless-concept/

http://www.hsa.gov.sg

http://www.healthprofessionals.gov.sg/content/hprof/tcmpb/en/leftnav/continuing_tcm_education.html
http://clinic.acumedic.com/can-we-help/how-does-chinese-medicine-work
http://www.quepublishing.com/articles/article.aspx?p=174361&seqNum=2 

Issues to consider:

Qualifications, Training and Continuing Education of Western Doctor vs TCM Practitioner

Regulation of Western Medicine vs TCM/ Chinese Proprietary Medicine (CPM) 

Extent of research done on both types of medicine

Hope this helps:)

Nicolette