Beryl Pittman, Academic Writing/2023

Activity:  Presentation (counts towards participation)

Due: Last day of class

Why a presentation matters: In the academic arena, it is customary to share findings at conferences after research is complete, and papers are prepared and reviewed for publication.  This is known as multi-modal communication – sharing information through more than one type of channel, thereby increasing its chances of being disseminated and understood by various audiences. (The abstract and editorial that you did this week are also examples of multi-modal communication.)

 

Topic:  Your ~ 10- minute team presentation should address the issue that you wrote about in your academic report.

 It should be persuasive and engaging.  Be sure that we know your thesis/position. Provide whatever background would be useful and then build an argument that reflects logos, pathos (if appropriate), and ethos (that would be your credibility, which is built upon the soundness of your evidence and sources, and confidence/clarity of your answers to our questions).  

If you want to include information from sources you read but did not use in your report, that’s fine.  Just be sure to cite the source in a signal phrase and on a slide at the end.

Every team member must present though not necessarily for equal amounts of time.

PowerPoint? Yes.

Question-and-answer:  Each team should ask a substantive question to every other team.

Sources:  Make sure that we know when you are borrowing an idea/thought/words from an outside source by using a signal phrase at the beginning of the sentence.  For example:  "According to John Oliver on Last Week Tonight, Bill Nye the Science Guy needs to use bells-and-whistles to keep his audience engaged while he's talking about science."

Audience:   Consider your classmates as your audience – interested and intelligent but not likely to be experts in the issue you're presenting. 

This will be fun: In the US, a survey found that most people fear public speaking more than they fear death. At least that's what they said. 

I don't want you to be one of those people! Please don't be nervous about your presentation!  We are all interested in what you're talking about, and you know a lot more about the issue than we do, and we all want you to do well, and the stakes are low, grade-wise.  Experience-wise though, it's a great opportunity! 

The single most important thing that you can do to build confidence about presenting: practice out loud a couple of times -- Build up that muscle memory!

And because you're making a team presentation, you need to practice out loud together.


 


 



Viimeksi muutettu: maanantaina 13. marraskuuta 2023, 07.38