3 Discussion Questions, 3 Student Responses and 1 short English Assignment

ENG 315: Professional Communication

Week 7 Discussion: Now Presenting

Part 1: Now Presenting...

Think about a situation in which a presenter had a significant impact on you. Describe the situation and analyze why the presenter was able to make such a strong connection with the audience.

Complete the following sentence and the explain your answer: "The most important thing I would tell a future ENG 315 student about presenting is….”

Ordering Details

Class, before you created a PowerPoint presentation, it might have helped you to outline your ideas first. To me, an outline is like a vision board in a way, but an organized vision board. One way I can illustrate this is to compare it to Pinterest. Anyone who uses Pinterest knows how easy it is to get addicted to pinning pictures to a virtual vision board. I think it's a great starting point, if doing that for a project. I like that in Pinterest, one can group ideas into a category (a vision board). But in the vision board itself, ideas are all over the place, in no particular order. If we were to compare this to an essay, it would be like putting main ideas in order (putting paragraphs in the correct order), but within paragraphs, having the details all mixed up. A specific outline solves that (or helps avoid it altogether).

Class, one strategy for ensuring details are in order is to write those ideas on index cards (one supporting detail for each card). Then, when those ideas are on the cards, the cards can be rearranged into the best order that flows logically. From there, you can simply type the ideas in that order into your document or presentation slides. What strategies work for you in ensuring the proper order of ideas?

Part 2: Student Response

Donna Belt

RE: Is planning time worth it?

Good evening Professor,

I do think it is worth it. I must say that using my laptop for teleworking or using my other laptop to do schoolwork can be exhausting. I don't do a great job designating times to do anything. I do homework throughout the work. Right now, I don't have a social life. I'm addicted to school. Even when my grandson is with me, I still tell him that I have school work. He said, “aww, man, you always have schoolwork!”