VV064 Week 11 Adapted from Williams, Erica J. Presentations in English. Honkong: MacMillan, 2008 PRACTISING PRESENTATIONS 1) Presentation titles: Look at the titles below and choose those which are suitable for a presentation. What is wrong with the other titles and in what context would they appear? Note that you are not evaluating the presentation topic but only whether the title is suitable or not. 1. Gender Issues in Reproductive Health and Promoting Male Responsibility 2. From Cold War to Cold Peace: Explaining U.S.-French Competition in Francophone Africa 3. Shells 4. Pretty Feet Hit the Street 5. The Impact of Herbivores on Plants in Different Resource Conditions: A Meta-Analysis 6. An Investigation of Moral Relativism and Moral Objectivity 7. Statistics for ESC in AO, PO and IO 8. A Study of Prisoners and Guards in a Simulated Prison 9. This is research on the Female Tragic Hero in English Renaissance Drama. 10. Health and Schooling Investments in Africa 11. Inner City Problems and Policies: A Conservative View 12. Fat Rats: Are Their Hormones Different? 13. The Effect of Institutional Culture on Change Strategies in Higher Education: Universal Principles or Culturally Responsive Concepts? 14. The NCT and AAA in GB 15. The Earth Presentation titles – what to avoid a) Cute or sensational titles b) Abbreviations and jargons c) Being too vague or general d) Redundant words and phrases VV064 Week 11 Adapted from Williams, Erica J. Presentations in English. Honkong: MacMillan, 2008 2) Go back to the following titles from exercise 1 and try to rewrite them so that they are acceptable. Pretty Feet Hit the Street An Investigation of Moral Relativism and Moral Objectivity Statistics for ESC in AO, PO and IO A Study of Prisoners and Guards in a Simulated Prison This is research on the Female Tragic Hero in English Renaissance Drama. The NCT and AAA in GB The Earth 3) Look at the titles below. Which of these enable you to predict their contents? 1. Noise Stress and Human Behavior 2. Dirty Little Secret 3. Industrial Policies of Industrial Countries 4. Out of the Oceans and on to Faster Bicycles 5. The Persistent Stereotype: Children’s Images of Scientists 6. Deep Jungle 7. Perspectives of Aging: Student Ethnography Project 8. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly 9. History of Fiction Movies 10. Mathematical Imagery 4) Not all the advice listed below should be taken at face value. Tick the items which you consider appropriate for a presentation. 1a. Make sure you speak loud enough for the audience to hear you. Nothing is worse than having to strain to hear a speaker present. 1b. When you are unsure about something it is a good strategy to lower your voice to that extent that the audience cannot hear you. They will think it is their problem and not yours. 2a. Do not use your natural speech patterns with their variations in pitch. Public speaking must be formal and the more monotone the better. VV064 Week 11 Adapted from Williams, Erica J. Presentations in English. Honkong: MacMillan, 2008 2b. Avoid speaking in a monotone. The easiest way to put an audience to sleep is by speaking in the same tone of voice for a long period of time. 3a. Change your delivery pace. By speaking at different speech rates for short periods, you can add energy and animation to your speech pattern. 3b. Never change your delivery pace as changing speech rates may irritate the audience. It is best to speak either very fast or very slowly from the beginning to the end. 4a. Accelerate your speech when talking about important points. The faster you speak, the more of them you can include. 4b. Slow down for important points. Slowing your speech rate while delivering your key points conveys emphasis and importance. 5a. Use the pause. Silence is an excellent exclamation point. By slightly extending a pause, you can add emphasis to a key point in your presentation. The best presenters plan their pauses to achieve maximum impact! 5b. Never use even the shortest pauses. Silence is a dreadful experience for the audience; they suffer as they think you have forgotten your speech. 6a. Make the presentation very dry for it is a formal way of speaking. However, each presenter must tell one joke per presentation to demonstrate their sense of humor. 6b. Try to make your presentation lively and interesting, which does not necessarily mean telling jokes and anecdotes. You may use interesting or amusing examples or developing ideas to illustrate your arguments. 7a. Speak from outline notes – do not read from them (with the exception of quotes) but keep checking that you are following your plan. 7b. Never use your notes. Put them on the desk so that everybody can see you have prepared them - holding or checking them is considered embarrassing. 8a. Look at your audience while you are speaking. While doing so, try to judge what they are thinking and adjust your delivery accordingly. 8b. Never make eye contact with your audience, it is advisable to look at the ceiling, floor or a window. This makes the audience feel you are concentrating on the content. 9a. Try to only use your normal vocabulary, words which come naturally to you; don’t experiment with new words - you’ll probably mispronounce them. 9b. Use only such words which sound scientific, technical, academic or “non-English.” The words you do not know are the best as it is highly probable the audience will not know them either and will be impressed by your range of vocabulary. 10a. The introduction of a presentation is the least important part of academic presentations. 10b. An effective opening arouses curiosity among the audience and will make the topic relevant. VV064 Week 11 Adapted from Williams, Erica J. Presentations in English. Honkong: MacMillan, 2008 5) Nominalizations: Look at the following excerpt from a presentation. What is wrong with it? Rewrite it so that it is more suitable for spoken language. As you can see, this picture shows the framework of our software and illustrates that the storage of the information can be arbitrarily distributed, that the registration of the resources is guaranteed by a library, and that the discovery of the information is simplified by another library. 6) The Two-Minute Presentation - Select a subject you are familiar with - Decide on your main point - Come up with about three important points supporting your point - Structure your presentation - Focus on the introduction and conclusion – write down specific phrases/sentences you are going to say - Rehearse/practice the presentation. Add anything you think is missing.