ORAL PRESENTATIONS

Content

The Introduction or Statement of Purpose in an oral presentation is even more important than it is in written work. Remember that not everyone listening to you is as well informed about the topic as you, your supervisor, and committee members. Listeners don't even have the luxury which readers have, of being able to re-read what they did not fully understand the first time. In an oral presentation it is therefore essential to let your listeners in on the hypothesis, the scientific significance of your work, and its relationship to the findings of others. If you don't do a good job at this stage of the presentation, what you say later on won't have much meaning to a substantial part of your audience. Translation: boring.

The Body. This is where you give your methods, results, and discuss the relationship between your findings and those of others. Unless your methods are controversial, new, or the main subject of the investigation, the listeners are probably going to be more interested in the results and how they advance scientific understanding than they are to what brand of lab apparatus you used so you should emphasize the experimental design, results, and their relevance.

The Summary. This is your last chance to rescue those who you lost during the earlier part of the talk. This is where you can review your major findings, emphasizing what you found out for sure, what you remain uncertain about, and where more study is needed. You should also indicate here whether you confirmed, revised, or refuted your hypothesis.

Delivery

Visual Aids. Whatever form of visual aids you choose, make sure they will be readable or visible by people sitting in the back half of the room. The best way of knowing whether people will be able to see what you are projecting is to go to a representative room, project your material and see what it looks like when you sit in the back row. Never put something up on the screen and then say "You probably can't see this but .... blah, blah".

Blackboards and overheads. Don't feel you shouldn't use old-fashioned aids like chalk and a blackboard. As long as you have your chalk and a brush (or sleeve) you are guaranteed to be able to present you material; this is not always the case with Powerpoint etc.

Powerpoint/WPPresentations. The pretty colours and special effects of this sort of software are seductive but can not turn bad data and planning into a good presentation. If you use this software do not get carried away with special effects such as twinkling shifts from one slide to the next and cool colours that look great on a monitor but become difficult to read when projected. Do not use sound effects under any circumstances. Bear in mind also that while this software looks great when it works, your going to suffer major stress if the hardware crashes or a software problem develops as you click on your first slide.

To Read or Not to Read. If you write out the text in full you won't forget anything you want to say which of course is good. However, it will also make it possible and tempting to read it verbatim. This may also seem good because it will help you avoid eye contact and probably get it over with even faster than you expected. However, these are in reality bad outcomes of reading which you really want to avoid. Avoiding eye contact creates a psychological distance between you and your audience and speaking too rapidly usually doesn't give the audience enough time to absorb what you are trying to explain to them and tends to make audience members frustrated and cranky.

Repetition. Avoid the repetitive use of the same word or phrase ("Basically I needed to discover... So I basically just sampled ... My sampling method basically amounted to killing...").

Slides & Lighting. Lights on or lights off? Large numbers of slides, overheads, or Powerpoint displays which list what you are saying as you then read it from the screen can make your presence almost redundant. Since you nevertheless do have to be there you should not use so many projections that the majority of the presentation takes place in the dark narrated by an invisible person. Hiding in the dark has an undeniable appeal at times but the down-side is that it prevents you from creating much of a bond between yourself and the audience.

Gestures. Guard against going into a distracting fidget mode. This usually involves repetitive action such as jingling loose change in your pocket or pushing imaginary or real hair off your forehead. If you think your hands may take on a life of their own and misbehave in this way, keep them in your (empty) pockets or hold onto the lectern.

Nervous Tension. For most of us this is an inevitable result of giving an oral presentation. It contributes to lots of things you don't want to happen, such as the "gesture" problems listed above, forgetting what you wanted to say, forgetting the answers to easy questions, and so on. The best way to minimize tension is to practice your presentation in front of as many of your peers, your family, your Supervisor, and whoever else you can coral into listening to you. Take comfort in the knowledge that any nervousness you feel is probably being experienced by all your class-mates, not just yourself.

If you think facing a big audience will be an intimidating experience, just remember who the people in the audience are: many of your class-mates who are experiencing the same emotions, your professors, who are there to help and support you, and other students, many of whom admire what you are doing and hope to do the same thing themselves in the future.

Questions. Don't worry too much about questions. There are just two key things to remember: 1] Never bluff. If you don't know the answer, say so. 2] You and your Supervisor (who won't want to put you on the spot with a nasty question) probably know more about your topic than most people in the audience. The odds are therefore good that the questions you get will not be all that tough to handle. Often students prepare so well for questions and receive so few or such easy ones that they actually feel a bit let down when the audience does not ask many or any questions.

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