Analysis of Interview with Undergraduate Draft 1

Write up for interview

We interviewed On Chun Wee Derek, a third year law student from the National University of Singapore to find out his view on communication skills and if NUS Law faculty is able to bring across to students the important communication skills needed while practicing law. The basis of this interview was to further clarify certain aspects of observation gathered from responses to our survey. Secondly, we believe that by holding an interview with a current student, we can find out the current modules and teaching styles employed by law professors. Moreover, we would like to find out if the message of certain communication skills that the professors want to teach, effectively brought across to students.

One of the questions which we posed to him was, ‘Are internships are the only way to learn communication skills?’ He told us that internships were the only way to practice communication skills such as listening, intercultural and interpersonal skills. This was because in law school the students do not have the opportunity to interact with client. Although, professors would remind them time and again that to be a good lawyer, they need to have good communication skills. However, he pointed out that even during internships, interns do not get to interact directly with clients. They mostly take minutes of meetings their mentors have with clients and from there observe and learn how these qualified lawyers practice active listening and relating their clients situation in a law framework.

However, he clarified that to deal with the lack of practice of communication with clients in fresh graduates. Firms do have a contract training period of one year with new employees. This contract training period would then consist of six months of studying for the bar exam, which law students have to pass to practice law, and for the remaining six months these new employees would be under the mentorship and guidance of an experienced lawyer. During this mentorship period, new lawyers are guided on how to handle cases by their mentors. And their meetings with clients are always held in the presence of the mentor.

We wanted to find out what teaching methods were employed by professors in various courses to teach communication skills. He said that for legal research, the school subscribes to various law databases to allow students to carry out investigations to build up cases. On the other hand, there are not a lot of role playing done in courses, and may be limited to mediation and child and advocacy where students role play. This may give a wrong response to the situation as the students themselves do know how to answer in a legalistic manner.

Lastly, we wanted to find out if students were willing to undertake a module specializing in communication skills. He brought up an important point that students would benefit from such a module. However, he is worried on how the course would be graded as a communication course is subjective and very hard to assess. Hence, he felt that to make it a pass/fail course may draw students to be interested in the course.

Methodology- Survey Draft 1

Survey

Survey for NUS Law undergraduates and graduates

The purpose of the undergraduate survey was to understand more about the current curriculum of the NUS law school and try to identify the various communication skills thatcurrent law students felt were inadequately covered. As for the NUS law graduates survey, we aim to identify the communication skills which are vital and highly valued in the law industry.

We sent out the link for the survey of NUS law undergraduate to our friends while link for the graduate survey was sent to clubs such as the NUS law alumni and the Law Association. However, we only managed to obtain 93 respondents for the undergraduate survey and 3 respondents for the graduate survey. Hence, this data that we have collected regarding the communication needs of the law industry may not be representative of the whole pool of law undergraduate and graduate students. More extensive research is required to fully understand the communication needs of the entire law industry.

Our first survey targeted NUS Law undergraduates, as we wanted to find out the opinion of current NUS Law undergraduates with respect to communication skills being taught in NUS. We chose to target all levels of current NUS Law undergraduate.The survey was created online through the surveymonkey.com survey platform. This platform was chosen as most of our survey participants would have internet access and they would be able to answer the survey at a more convenient time and place. Furthermore, surveymonkey.com allows for easy tabulation of the survey results and generates pie charts. Our group approached the target audience through email, explaining what the purpose of the survey was and directing them to the survey via a link. Due to time constraints, the survey was aim to target around 15 to 20 respondents. Our group liaised contacts through some friends in the Law faculty and through the Law faculty student exchange programme.

The second survey was created to cater to NUS Law undergraduates who have graduated. This was to find out their perspective of communication needs in the law industry. This was to allow us to compare what law students thought of communication skills to lawyers in the workplace. And this would allow us to find out what communication skills the NUS Law faculty needs to focus on. Likewise, this survey was created online through the surveymonkey.com survey platform. This would facilitate easy collation of results as well as being able to reach out to larger audience of NUS Law alumni online. We posted the survey link on law alumni facebook groups, and explained the purpose of our survey. Another approach to disseminate the survey was to ask the Law alumni relations officer for help regarding forwarding the request for survey email to respective alumni members.

The questions for both surveys were structured in three different answering formats. Firstly, some were closed formats, with only yes and no answers. Secondly, some questions allowed multiple answers such as question (see appendix). Others were more open styled, having respondents rate the value of certain communication skills. Most of the questions had a ‘Not Applicable’ option to allow respondents to have a way to not have to answer a question. As well as an ‘other’ option to allow them in input other skills not covered. We started out with broad based questions such as ‘Have you had any internship experience?’ and ‘What is/was the job scope?’ This allows to respondents to warm up to the survey. After which we narrowed our focus to communication skills, and what is the value of various communication skills to them and how the NUS Law faculty facilitates the learning of these skills. Careful consideration was taken when phrasing the questions. This was to avoid leading and loaded questions which could potentially influence respondents’ answers.

This is so jokes

This is just another anecdote to further iterate my points in the post below.

During the weekend, I met up with a close friend who recently returned from her exchange program from Toronto. As we talked, the topic of intercultural communication crept up and I was asking her if there were any problems faced when she communicated with the Canadians. She informed me that initially the Canadian students could not understand her Singaporean accent when she spoke, so she learnt to speak slower when talking to her Canadian friends and tried to articulate he words more. She told me that she felt that in Singapore, we tend to roll out words without actually articulating them correctly and precisely.

A term which Canadians use commonly was 'funny'. They would say it in passing when talking to others, like 'you're so funny' even though the speaker had not talked about anything funny. At the beginning, my friend was quite upset whenever someone said that to her because she thought that it meant weird. In Singapore, we usually say 'you're so funny' when the speaker has actually made a joke or when we imply that the speaker is weird and random. However, further interaction with her friends she came to realize that the phrase wasn't meant for her to take it personally, as it was just an interjection to show that they are listening.

Another term which was commonly used was 'jokes'. Apparently my friend had organized a dinner party and had invited some of her Canadian friends over. The dinner was great and company awesome, and they all had a very good time. The next day, one of her guests came up to her in school and declared that the dinner was such a jokes dinner. My friend was insulted thinking that her guest meant that the dinner was a joke, and that it was horrible. She then tried to ask her friend what went wrong at the dinner party and all, this led to her friend clarifying with her that 'jokes' meant fun and enjoyable. So in fact, it was an entertaining dinner.

I guess there is no hard and fast rule to what different words mean in different societies. And if everyone applies the 3 tips featured in the last post, we probably could lessen the chances of being insulted and insulting others.

Something on the lighter side :)