Portfolio and Reflective Summary of Essential Skills

This portfolio and reflective summary explores the importance of various skills in academic and professional life. The summary delves into the significance of reflection, creativity, writing, and reading skills, highlighting their impact on communication and overall personal development. It also covers essential frameworks such as Driscoll's model of reflection, SWOT and PEST analysis, Kolb's learning styles and business vocabulary, and experiential learning. The document emphasizes how these skills contribute to enhanced learning, improved memory, concentration, and creativity, ultimately leading to success in both personal and professional spheres. References to key texts and journals support the analysis, providing a comprehensive overview of skill development and its impact.

Portfolio and reflective
summary
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Main Body.......................................................................................................................................3
Reflection...............................................................................................................................3
Creativity................................................................................................................................4
Writing skills..........................................................................................................................4
Reading skills.........................................................................................................................5
Driscoll's model of reflection.................................................................................................5
Business vocabulary...............................................................................................................6
SWOT Analysis......................................................................................................................6
Feedback.................................................................................................................................7
Experiential learning..............................................................................................................7
Communication skills.............................................................................................................8
PEST Analysis........................................................................................................................8
Kolb's Learning style..............................................................................................................9
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................9
References......................................................................................................................................10
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Introduction
There are various skills which are important to have an effective and successful academic
and professional life (McAdams, 2015). These include communication skills, learning skills,
writing skills, etc. Below mentioned is reflective summary on the reading skills, its advantages,
impact on creativity and how it enhances communication skills in general.
Main Body
Reflection
Reflection refers to analysing one's own experiences to learn from them and improve
one's personality. It will help me in gaining personal and professional experience to build
confidence and enhance my self-development process.
Creativity
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Creativity refers to the act which enables to imagine and create new and innovative ideas
and then turn them into reality. It usually gets down to find hidden patterns, perceive the world in
new light, discover undiscovered to generate innovative solutions and seemingly unrelated
phenomena which have some out-of-the box solution.
Writing skills
Writing skills include abilities to express all the knowledge and ideas that are in the mind
in the form of written words. Good writing skills will help me further in professional space as
well as it is one of the most sought after skill by employers as formal interactions more often
include written documents, emails and posts.
Reading skills
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Reading can be defined as an active process in which we decode the meaning of the
words, written with a purpose to provide a value to the reader (Malone, 2019). Reading includes
few underlying skills such as decoding of the words, fluency, vocabulary, sentence construction
and cohesion, reasoning and knowledge building, improvement in memory and attention, etc. It
will not only help me develop better and improved understanding of things that will significantly
improve my personality and learning at both education and work but will also, improve my
creativity level by expanding my ability to think in different directions and my communication
skills by increasing my vocabulary base, my confidence to use words and my retention of
interactions with others.
Driscoll's model of reflection
It is one of the framework developed for helping in reflection process. It is a structured
model to guide reflection process and with its help, I will be able to improve analysis and
assessment of my self-reflection.
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Business vocabulary
This includes all the useful phrases and terms that are generally used within formal
sphere. Knowledge of these phrases and terms will help me develop a brush with necessary
terminologies that would help me in future as well as make my present assessments better.
SWOT Analysis
It is a framework which includes analysing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and
threats. Personal SWOT analysis will help me identify my own strengths and weaknesses so that
I can fully exploit the opportunities that will come my way and safeguard myself from possible
threats.
Feedback
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Feedback involves reverting to the sender the acknowledgement of completion of
communication process as well as giving out compliments and corrective comments on the
relevant communication. It will help me understand tutor's feedbacks better and improve my
academic performance.
Experiential learning
It is a process in which one learns through one's own experience. It can be said to be
antecedent of self-reflection. This will help me increase my knowledge base by enhancing my
assessment of my own experiences.
Communication skills
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Communication skills are necessary for having a bright individual performance,
behaviour and experience in both personal and professional life. It will help me develop a
holistic personality during my academic period, benefit of which would be reaped in future
professional life (van der Vleuten, van den Eertwegh and Giroldi, 2019).
PEST Analysis
PEST analysis refers to Political, Economic, Socio-cultural and technological
environment that impact our performance directly and indirectly. Identification of these factors
will help me develop mitigation strategies for challenges presented by them and developing plan
for opportunities that they present.
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Kolb's Learning style
These include learning styles involving acquiring such concepts that can be applied in
different situations flexibly. Under it, impetus for development of new ideas and concepts lies on
the new experiences (Brownell, 2015).
Conclusion
From the above-mentioned summary, it was clearly evident that reading skills are much
more than just being able to read a passage or article fluently. It can help us in increasing our
knowledge base and is also very beneficial in improving our memory, concentration and
creativity level both in oral and written form of communication, which is necessary to have a
successful personal and professional life.
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References
Books and Journal
Brownell, J., 2015. Listening: Attitudes, Principles, and Skills (Subscription). Routledge.
Malone, J., 2019. Teaching and Developing Reading Skills.
McAdams, D.P., 2015. The art and science of personality development. Guilford Publications.
van der Vleuten, C., van den Eertwegh, V. and Giroldi, E., 2019. Assessment of communication
skills. Patient Education and Counseling. 102(11), pp.2110-2113.
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