Reflective Essay on Group Presentation Assignment

Reflection is an essential process, especially for students, of evaluating their
experiences and practices, problematic or positive ones, in order to improve their
knowledge and abilities to apply them in their future career. Boud, Keogh and Walker
(1985, p.19) suggested that “reflection is an important human activity in which people
recapture their experience, think about it, mull it over and evaluate it”. The aim of this
reflective essay is to evaluate my experience during the preparation for the group
presentation assignment for one of my foundation year modules. My essay will be
based on The Gibb s Reflective Cycle (1988), because I think that the role of our
feelings in reflective writing help us to analyze our experiences in more depth and more
detail. In this essay I will discuss the academic skills that I think are more related to my
future career in accounting such as: communication, time management and reading
skills.
Communication is an important skill for graduates to be able to work successfully in a
group. Working in a team provides opportunities to develop communication skills. At the
beginning I was a little nervous because I did not know the group members, being the
first year of my studies, and I did not know what to expect. However, my first impression
was positive and I was sure that we could find a common way of working together
combining efforts for a successful teamwork. In order to have a more effective
preparation for group presentation assignment we have divided the tasks among the
group members and decided to meet weekly to discuss our progress. One important
lesson was to find out that we are from different background and may have different
opinions, ideas and different ways to express ourselves. At the first meeting I was not
confident about my ability to engage with colleagues, to explain my opinion and come to
a mutually consensus about the assignment. But I felt pleased with the result of the
meeting because we have talked and listened to each other and agreed upon our future
plans in term to accomplish our assessment and have a great result. In the following
years of my studies and future career in accounting communication skills play an
essential role. Every successful organization is keen to hire professionals with good
communication skills at all levels. Successful communication skills are especially
important in the workplace and have the purpose to co-operate with colleagues for task
accomplishment and to communicate well with particular audiences such as customers,
suppliers (Gallagher, 2013).
Another essential ability that I developed throughout this module, which helped me to
manage my time efficiently is time management skill. Bassot ( 2016, p.10) supports the