The Common Curriculum has enabled me to acquire different skills and also have taught me to view things in a deeper and more holistic point of view. It has also taught me to to piece different informations and put them together. Through the assignments that I have done for the Common Curriculum, I am able to improve my essay writing skills through pointers and tips given by the lecturers.
The core modules has taught me essay writing skills and argument techniques such as when we were taught to make use of argument maps in CCO101 Thinking and Reasoning to aid us in outlining our essay’s argument during our assignments and exam. These skills has taught me to always come up with an outline for my essays with the key points in mind before proceeding to pen it down in order to have a smoother flow during the essay writing process. CCO103 Critical Reading also taught me to relate these argument techniques and to apply them to evidences found in the text such as having to find and make use of textual evidence to support our claims and arguments during our assignment and exams.
The core modules has also taught me research and report writing skills. For example, in CCO105 Social Research, we were tasked to do the assignment where we had to perform an actual research for our ECA. We had to go through the entire research process, from coming up with the research questions, to identifying the different variables, respondent groups, coming up with survey questions, gathering the data and finally presenting our data in a research report. This enable me to acquire the basic research and report writing skills.
I have also learnt about the way the world has developed, what caused these developments and changes and how did these developments shaped society to be in its current state in modules such as CCO107 World History and CCO203 Sustainability, Technology and Security. In World History, we were taught the major significant events that has impacted the world, and how it has led things to be the way it is now. In CCO203, we were taught about the major technology developments in the past two decades and how it has shaped, affected and benefited society.
Lastly, CCO201 Culture and Diversity has taught me the importance of knowing the different terms and its definition so as to use the right terms when writing professionally. I also learnt from this modules about the different terms under “culture” and how diverse the world is.
The different modules in the Common Curriculum has enable me to acquire different skills that has allowed for improved writing for me and also to look deeper into things instead of just looking at the surface.
I feel that I am able to apply this perspectives into my service learning as instead of only looking at the surface, I can look deeper into my service learning project. For example, when tutoring the children at the centre, instead of helping the child finish a piece of homework, I will instead try to equip them with the necessary knowledge so that they will be able to do the same types of questions in future.
