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ETWR 1302 / Oral Presentation

Oral Presentation Prompt For this assignment, you will create an oral presentation based on the information from the Annotated Bibliography. Your goal is to teach or inform your audience about something. For example, let’s say that you developed an Annotated Bibliography all about preventing identity theft; your report will inform you audience about preventing identity theft by using those five sources that you should now know very well. Before you can even begin to draft your script, you will need to consider audience. Who are they? What is their level of interest in your topic? What level of expertise do they have with your topic? Are they familiar with specialized terms? Each person in our class will give one individual presentation. Length: 7-10 minutes (10 minutes the maximum length). Format: There must be a professionally-structured visual component with a minimum of seven (7) slides or panels. There must be a spoken component, too. Record a voiceover in your chosen presentation program (PowerPoint is preferred) so that audio is heard as we move through the report. There is a video on how to do this in PowerPoint in this Project 4 module. Design: All text should be in a clear and legible font. Pay special attention to the design of your presentation, especially color combinations and placement of visuals. Bibliographic citations should be provided at the bottom of slides if there is borrowed information to indicate the source material. Due: Presentations will be uploaded by the deadline of 11:59 pm, Friday, December 4th. Contents and Requirements for the Oral Presentation The focus for your oral presentation is clear, understandable presentation; it should be a well-organized, well-planned and well-timed discussion. Present the essentials of what you have to say in a calm, organized, well-planned manner. Use the following as a requirements list, as a way of focusing your preparations:

• Start by explaining the situation of your oral report. Make sure that there is a clean break between this brief explanation and the beginning of your actual oral report.

• Make sure your oral report (with brief introduction) lasts no longer than 10 minutes.

ETWR 1302 / Oral Presentation

• Pay special attention to the introduction to your talk. Indicate the purpose of your oral report, give an overview of its contents, and find some way to interest the audience.

• Make sure you discuss the key elements with visuals. Don’t just put them on a slide and ignore them. Point out things about them; explain them to the audience.

• Make sure that your speaking style is natural. Ensure that you are loud enough so that you can be heard, and that you don’t speak too rapidly (nerves can cause that). Consider slowing your tempo a bit—a common tendency is to get nervous and talk too quickly. Also, be aware of how much you say things like “uh,” “you know,” and “okay.”

• Plan to explain any technical aspect of your topic very clearly and understandably. Don’t race through complex, technical material—slow down and explain it carefully so that the audience can understand it.

• Plan your report in advance and practice so that it is organized. Make sure that listeners know what you are talking about and why, which part of the talk you are in, and what’s coming next. Overviews and verbal headings greatly contribute to this sense of organization.

• End with a real conclusion. People sometimes forget to plan how to end and oral report and end just by trailing off into a mumble. Remember that in conclusions, you can summarize (go back of the high points you have discussed), conclude (state some logical conclusion based on what you have presented), provide some last thought (end with some final interesting point but general enough not to require elaboration), or some combination of these three.

• As mentioned above, be sure your oral report is carefully timed to 7-10 minutes. Some ideas on how to do this are presented in the next section.

Preparing for the Oral Report Pick the method of preparing the script and practicing it that best suits your comfort level with public speaking about your topic. Remember, it is preferable that you create a PowerPoint slide show with voiceover. Do some preparation or rehearsal—some people assume that they can just ad lib for 7-10 minutes and be relaxed and informal. It often doesn’t work that way—drawing a mental blank is the more common experience. Here are the obvious possibilities for preparation and delivery:

• Write a script, practice it, and keep it around for quick-reference during your talk. • Set up an outline of your talk, practice with it and use it as a reference. • Set up cue cards, practice with theme and use them during your talk. • Write a script and read from it.