PRESENTING A SEMINAR
PAPER
How to present a seminar
paper. (Wallace, 1980, pp. 209-210)
It can be very boring to
listen to something read aloud. Therefore what you must do is follow the
following points:
1.
Decide
on a time limit for your talk. Tell your audience what it is. Stick to your time limit. This is
very important.
2.
Write
out your spoken presentation in the way that you intend to say it. This means that you
must do some of the work of writing the paper again, in a sense. Written
language is different from spoken language (See Features of academic spoken English). Your seminar presentation will probably take
less time than the written paper it is based on and you cannot summarise on
your feet.
·
Concentrate
only on the main points. Ignore
details. Hammer home the essence of your argument. If necessary find ways of
making your basic points so that your audience will be clear about what they
are.
·
Try
to make your presentation lively and interesting. This does not mean telling jokes and
anecdotes. But if you can think of interesting or amusing examples to
illustrate your argument, use them.
·
Write
out everything you have to say, including examples etc. Rehearse what you are going to say until
you are happy with it.
·
When you know exactly
what you are going to say, reduce it to outline notes .
Rehearse your talk again, this time form the outline notes. Make sure you can
find your way easily from the outline notes to the full notes, in case you
forget something.
3.
In the seminar, speak
from the outline notes. But bring both sets of notes and your original
paper to the meeting.
4.
Look
at your audience when you are speaking. Use this technique: First read the appropriate part of your notes
silently. Then look up at your audience and say what you have to say. Never
speak while you are still reading. While you look at your audience, try to
judge what they are thinking. Are they following you? You will never make
contact with your audience if your eyes are fixed on the paper in front of you.
5.
Make
a strong ending. One way of doing this
is to repeat your main points briefly and invite questions or points of view.
Remember that listening
is very different from reading. Something that is going to be listened to has
therefore to be prepared in a very different way from something that is
intended to be read. See:Language.
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