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Oral presentations

1. How to prepare and deliver a scientific talk. [Guidance from the Course Book for Plant Science Honours. Written by Dr Philip Smith - someone who really knows how to communicate]

2. Public speaking - learn from your lecturers! [Guidance prepared by Dr Jim Deacon. Learn by evaluating your lecturers - both good and bad!]

3. Some web sites for guidance on public speaking:

Canadian Association of Student Activity Advisors (includes a Speech Recipe)
Public speaking resources (a guide to some good resources on the web)

If you want to use Powerpoint slides to illustrate your talk (and to see how the lecturers produce those slides) then CLICK HERE - a page from the website of the Edinburgh University Media and Learning Technology Service (MALTS).

Poster presentations

This PAR site provides guidance on preparing a poster using Microsoft Powerpoint: CLICK HERE.

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How to prepare and deliver a scientific talk (from Plant Science Honours Coursebook)

These notes cover many points relevant to any kind of talk, but are presented in the context of the special case of the short, scientific talk, to a reasonably intelligent and interested audience, who mostly have a helpful background of knowledge. Even so, a successful scientific speaker will share the characteristics of great orators - (s)he will be well-prepared, practised, clear, concise, enthusiastic, interesting and persuasive.

A. PREPARATION

1. Recognise that you are to speak for say, 15 minutes, and then answer questions on what you have said. Accept that considerable preparative work will be needed.
   
2. See the lecture theatre, think about the purpose of the talk and the size and nature of the audience. What does the audience want?
   
3. Give yourself plenty of preparation time. In their notes for presenting radio talks, the B.B.C. suggest an hour of preparation per minute of speaking time.
   
4. Decide what balance you will aim for between (1) oration and (2) spoken comment on visual aids - this will depend on what you need to communicate. Will you use a handout?
   
5. Write down the aims of your talk. What do you want to tell them? Why must they know about this, or that item? Concentrate on the essentials. What are the cardinal points in the story you are to tell? Make sure they are included. Omit other material - it may be interesting, even delightful to you personally - but if it is not necessary, it must go.
   
6. Get your basic material (references, lab. reports, results, illustrations, examples) around you. Have a quiet 'brainstorm' session, thinking about what would be vital; what would be illuminating; what would be the 'message' or 'punch-line' or 'take-home'. Concentrate on the meat, the middle substance of the talk. The end will then follow automatically, and the beginning too. You will begin with a general orientation, followed by a specific introduction to the substance, then conclusions, and finally a 'looking-forward' section, perhaps with some counter-propositions.
   
   Have a rest after your initial organising brainstorm. Sleep on it, and next day you will be clear about what you are going to do.
   
7. Choose a pithy title. Make sure the talk fits it exactly. Write a quick, flowing, rough draft of the sections in turn. Flesh out the middle, meaty part first. Include examples (simple, clear, good and few). Make rough diagrams or tables for overheads or slides. Begin with simple cases, leading into more complex or special ones. Rough out your conclusions and your final interpretation/questions, then your introductory material. Keep a clear thread going through the talk, link the sections so that the audience know where they are. Your conclusions should draw together any parallel lines of thought that you have been discussing.
   
   Sleep on it again.
   
8. Write out, in simple language, a first draft of what you will say - include the basics, the obvious things (obvious to you) to orientate the audience, but do not labour these points. Bring up your overheads to final quality. If using slides, it can take weeks to be sure of their merit, and availability.
   
   You may write your notes on paper sheets or cards (your choice) and make them short, largely key words and reminders of sequence, or you may be a verbatim speaker and write down every word in full. An intermediate type of note is best for most people.
   
9. Remember audience heterogeneity. Some know a lot, some a little. Make sure you know your topic as well as anyone present. With a special scientific topic it is not difficult! But always begin with the basics.
   
10. Practise giving the talk and adjust it to fit the time available. Rewrite any tongue twisters. Usually you will need to edit it down and simplify it at this stage. (See B. Practice).
    
11. Ask yourself whether you have been interesting and persuasive. Have you sown suitable seeds in the available soil (that particular audience)?
    
12. Special Points about Scientific Talks:

1. Describe as needed, but mainly pose and solve questions to be answered by scientific investigation, analysis and synthesis.
   
2. Make your procedures/methods/philosophies appear a logical way to answer the questions/solve the problems.
   
3. If you can start with a hypothesis, do so. In some cases, this is not possible, but 'problems to solve' are always to be posed.
   
4. Be clear about the thread that binds together your Aims, Questions, Philosophy of approach, Methods - so that your results can be seen as relevant and meaningful. Your talk should be as logical and clear as your written-up Report.
   
5. Let there be a `Materials and Methods' part of your talk, but keep it small unless a Method is the chief matter being evaluated.
   
6. Make your conclusions crisp and relate them to the initial questions posed and/or the hypothesis. Be emphatic about the findings. Trumpet forth that the hypothesis is supported, or is clearly to be discounted. Stress the answers you have found to the questions you asked earlier.
   
7. Preserve a rigorous scientific ethos in what you say as well as in what was done in the work you are reporting. Think, work and write scientifically - be more analytical than descriptive. Description is a necessary stage on the road to analysis and then the synthesis that brings understanding.
   
8. Make sure any units of measurement are clearly stated at the outset. It may be helpful to repeat them now and then.

B. PRACTICE

1. Practise giving the talk (as in A.10) but also practise speaking and listening in general to acquaint yourself with what is the 'best practice' and with your own strengths and weaknesses. Read aloud and listen to yourself. A tape-recorder is useful. Are you too loud or too soft? Do you gabble occasionally? Do you vary your pace and tone? Are word-endings lost? Listen to others speaking (on radio for instance) and be critical. Do not worry about accent - it can be a charming bonus for a public speaker, lending interest, as long as the words are still clear. (See C. Delivery).
   
2. The Colour of Saying

1. Your voice is like a paint-brush when you speak. Changes of tempo, tone, volume, inflection lend colour and texture to what you say. Hence interest is created and sustained. No one likes a boring monotone. Like a paint-brush your voice must be controlled to achieve good results. Understand the connection between voice, voice-control, volume and breathing.
   
2. Breathing. Practise breathing in and out completely. Try reciting the same short sentence when full of breath, when half-full, when emptied:
   
   'I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky'.

   Choose a 100 word prose passage. How much can you recite, loudly, on a lungful? Practise to extend your range.

   Breath is the power behind your voice, most obviously in singing. Keep plenty of breath and, when speaking, give yourself breathing time. Song-writers build in breathing time when they compose. You need to do the same.

3. Tempo, tone and emphasis. Go back to 'the lonely sea and the sky'. Listen to yourself saying it loudly; softly; loudly then becoming soft; softly then becoming loud at the end; fast; slowly; fast becoming slower; slow becoming faster; on a high note becoming lower; on a low note becoming higher. Recite it putting the emphasis on different words - communication is aided by intelligent emphasis. Note all the differences in sound and effect made by these changes of volume, inflection, tone, emphasis and tempo. You are varying the colour of your saying.
   
4. Voice Projection. Open your mouth to let your voice out. Sound is best imagined as coming from the stomach. You must project it to the back of the lecture room. Speak OUT!
   
   Practise some voice projections. Try roaring some vowels. Vowels carry your noise. Also notice the carrying power of 'ngs' and 'ms' and 'ns'. These sounds resonate. Cultivate, and plan to exploit resonance.
   
5. Precision. Clear, interesting speech needs precision as well as volume and colour. We need to show finesse with both vowels and consonants. Here are some practice lines to recite aloud and a passage in which to inject as much vocal colour, of all sorts, as you can.

She sells seashells, by the sea shore.

The shells she sells are seashells, I'm sure.

Red leather, yellow leather, red leather, yellow leather, red leather, yellow leather.

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, where are the pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

In Hertford, Hereford and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly happen.

The old triangle went jingle-jangle, along the banks of the Royal Canal.

I am pretty Princess Pep-pew-pew-pop-woski,
And am extremely nervous.
I am gallant Marshal Mimi-mew-mew-koski,
And greatly at your service.

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

It was wrong in the song, for along the Mekong
The gong went Ding Dong, not Dong Ding or Dong Dong.

I saw this morning morning's minion,
Daughter of the dapple-drawn dawn falcon.

A prose-speaking exercise.

To begin at the beginning:

It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobble streets silent and the hunched, courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea. The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine tonight in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock, the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows' weeds. And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now.

[Opening passage of Under Milk Wood: A Play for Voices, by Dylan Thomas]

C. DELIVERY

1. The audience is a blank sheet of paper to write on. Begin with the big issues, the questions, the hypothesis. Tell them what you are going to tell them. Then tell it to them. Then, briefly at the end, remind them what they have been told - with your logical conclusion and 'Looking Ahead' remark.
   
2. Remember audience heterogeneity when you speak, as you did when you prepared. Some will not be very interested (interest them), some are deaf (make them hear), some are nodding off (wake them up). Be enthusiastic and most of them will be also.
   
3. Speak in a professionally detached manner: do not be colloquial, informal or chatty. Avoid muttered asides. Never swear.
   
4. Speak reasonably loudly, and vary 'the colour of your saying' (B.2). Vary the length of your sentences. Make some into questions. Make some exclamatory: 'So here perhaps was an answer!' Try a pregnant pause now and then - it can focus attention, give thought-time. Remember to breathe occasionally.
   
5. Announce the successive, connected parts of your talk (1,2,3 etc.) as you come to them, e.g. `Now to the Results'. Audience members like to know where they are, and they always have one eye on the clock. Make sure you do the same.
   
6. Speak to the audience, not your notes, not to the blackboard or your overhead/slide. Contemplate the audience, not your navel - this is not an occasion for introspection. Face them and project yourself, along with your voice. Look at the audience as much as you can - you don't need to focus on the ugly brutes, but they will not know that. If you do not address the audience, you will appear to mumble.
   
7. Remember that you seek to control the minds of your audience. Make them hear/feel/think what you want them to hear/feel/think, i.e. act, but without seeming to, i.e. act well.
   
8. Do not be apologetic in any way for your material or your manner. Be masterful. Sock it to them. Don't appeal for any mercy, don't ask to be stopped if you ramble. Don't ramble!
   
9. Keep your notes and overheads in good order, don't get them mixed up. Audiences are more forgiving of stupidity than they are of inefficiency.
   
10. After an earnest, solid passage, a little humour helps. Make sure it is only a little and not self-deprecatory. Too much light relief is a distraction - you may lose control of their minds. But it is true that a small spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.
    
11. Mannerisms: avoid them or you distract the audience from your words. Scratch your nose after your talk. Roll your pencil about in private. Wave your spectacles in the air only if you are drying them. Hike at week-ends. Smile sparingly, if at all. Too often a smile freezes into a dreadful, toothy rictus.
    
12. Do not be `nervous'. There is no cause. Stand in a relaxed manner and tell your tale. You know far more than the audience about the interest and logic of what you are to say. Dominate the room.
    
13. Make your conclusion, and pick and patch up any holes in your argument before a questioner does. Pose new questions, revised hypotheses; point to the next necessary work.
    
14. When you have finished, stop. Not all speakers are good at this. "Stand up, speak up, then shut up" is not bad advice.

D. SUPPORTING MATERIALS

1. Make overheads and slides simple, and make certain they are necessary. They can sometimes be no more than a distraction - make sure they work for their living. Point to any very critical material on the overhead/slide - don't just flap your arms about vaguely. Do not put big chunks of text on overheads or slides. Your audience came to watch and listen to YOU, not to read. Give them time to absorb information from an overhead - they cannot read, look, and listen effectively, all at the same time, if you force the pace.
   
2. Though visual aids can be a distraction, they can also offer variety, simplification, an efficient presentation of examples. Get the balance right.
   
3. Make sure you know how to work the projection equipment. Familiarise yourself with it beforehand. Ensure you know where to get help. Never be dependent on one technology alone. Preserve a 'chalk and talk' capacity.
   
4. Blackboards and flip-charts can be helpful. Use them for clear, large simple diagrams and key words, phrases or equations.
   
5. Handouts. if you use one be sure it is simple and good. Aim for a use by children, not adults - you will not be far wrong because you know so much of what you are to say, the audience little or nothing. Give out the handout at the end of the talk to avoid distraction. A handout at the beginning should not be necessary if you have planned the talk properly.

E. AFTER THE TALK

1. Acknowledge any applause discreetly.
   
2. Agree to do your best to respond to questions.
   
3. Answer questions honestly and accurately to the best of your knowledge and understanding. Do so with a boldness you may not always feel. Rephrase the question slightly if it helps you answer, asking afterwards if the point has been covered. Stay at the front to answer and look your questioner full in the face. Most of them will quail. If you cannot answer the question, it is beguiling as well as honest to say so, perhaps appealing to anyone else present to offer a response. Be patient and polite with questioners who have clearly missed the point, and gently explain away their problem. Assume it is your fault if they are confused or in error - it may well be!
   
4. Do your best to answer the question posed: do not slip into an answer to a related, easier or more interesting question without first dealing with what you were actually asked.
   
5. Do not answer while packing up your notes/overheads or while running for your seat or the exit. The audience will not hear what you are saying.

GO TO MY PAR?

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Public speaking: learn from your lecturers! [Advice from Jim Deacon]

This is probably the best way to learn the rights and wrongs of oral presentation. After you have been to a few (or many) lectures, go to the next one and analyse its good and its bad points.

You already know that some lectures (or lecturers) are good, and some perhaps not so good. But have you ever thought why? Once you have gone through this simple exercise you will know how you should give a talk. But remember one thing when you do this exercise: don't be biased by the subject itself - even a talk on "The Economics of Pigeon-fancying in the Middle East" can be analysed in terms of how well it was presented (before you fell asleep).

Checklist:(the Notes column links to how you should give a talk)

For YOUR talk

1. You will have been asked to speak for a set time (perhaps10 minutes) and this might include 2 minutes for answering questions. When you have drafted your talk you should practise speaking it (perhaps in front of a mirror, or use a tape recorder) and make sure that you pace it right. During your real talk you will lose time in putting up overheads and guiding the audience through them, so practise by going through these things at the same time. The cardinal rule is: speak slowly enough that your audience can follow you; and speak clearly enough that your audience will understand.
2. Try to vary your tone and manner of delivery - again, practise this. Show interest and enthusiasm for your subject. Always speak to your audience as if you were speaking to an individual. Don't say things like "All of you will know..." That's impersonal and you will lose your rapport with each individual member of your audience.
3. Stand up to talk, adopt a comfortable stance, keep your hands out of your pockets, and use your body! Point to things on the overheads (don't just nod towards them), step towards the overhead when you need to, then move back to your former position.
4. Make regular eye contact with your audience (but don't stare). Include everybody - don't just look to the same people every time. Don't just read your notes word for word. Instead, write the main points down on crib cards and hold these in one hand as you speak.
5. It is often a good idea to ask a rhetorical question rather than to make a statement. For example, "Why should this organism only be found in desert environments? .... The answer perhaps is..."
6. Your talk should have a clear title, an introduction that sets the scene and a statement of what you intend to cover.
7. Your talk should have a clear structure. Write the structure on an overhead - show the title, main sections and sub-sections. Then show this overhead periodically during your talk, to guide the audience (and yourself!). Only display an overhead when you need it, then switch off the overhead projector. When going through the items on an overhead, some speakers use a piece of paper and move it down to show successive points. My advice is don't do this - you spend a lot of time "juggling" with the piece of paper and you get into a flap.
8. Make sure that all unfamiliar technical terms and organisms' names are written clearly on overheads for the audience to see. Use diagrams that have been xeroxed onto overheads - diagrams can save a lot of words, but make sure that you guide people through the diagram - don't just wave your hand and say "as you can see here". Tables of data can add "depth" to a talk. But be selective - use only the relevant data that make your point; discard the rest. Ideally, you should word-process your overheads (with pasted diagrams etc.) then xerox them onto acetates.
9. You know how valuable handouts are! Many speakers now produce a handout (and for some talks you will be required to do so). The handout should be word-processed, with tables, diagrams, etc. and be well-designed. It should give: title, your name (many students forget this), short summary blocks of text giving the main points, a reference source.
10. Everything on an overhead must be readable. Before you give any talk you should find out where you will be giving it and you should familiarise yourself with the facilities. Where are the light switches? How do you dim the lights? Can the audience still take notes? How does the overhead projector work? Can you read your overheads from the back of the room? You should NEVER need to apologise for the readability of an overhead. If it cannot be read then don't use it.
11. Practise your timekeeping until it is perfect (see point 1).
12. End with a clear take-home message. Don't end by saying "Well, that's it". Instead, end by saying "Thank you". Then the audience knows when to applaud.
13. Try to anticipate questions. You know the content of your talk, so you can often guess the type of question that will arise. Listen to the questions asked after the talks that went before yours - often a guide to the type of question you will be asked. Don't panic when asked a question - listen to it carefully and make sure that you understand it. If you don't understand it, ask the questioner to repeat it or ask what he/she means. If you don't know the answer, then say "I'm sorry, I don't know".

GO TO MY PAR?