3. Purpose
• To convey your contribution to research and
knowledge.
• To a relatively expert audience with at least
some shared interests.
• In the time allotted.
• Emphasizing your own work and ideas, not
only the “literature” or “what we did.”
4. Form
• Typically 20 minutes
• Speaking from Powerpoint slides or other
presentation software, or
• Reading from a script (with or without slides
as backup)
• Need to balance giving a rehearsed
presentation with engaging your audience
7. General advice
• Talk to a mentor about what to include, how
to structure, what your punchline is. If
possible rehearse before a fake audience that
includes your mentor and some peers.
• Rehearse again
• Think carefully about HOW MUCH you can say
in the time allotted. Less is more.
• Foreground your own contribution.
8. Write down a one paragraph
description of your research project
13. Pacing
• Too much material
• Belabouring things everyone in the audience
already knows
• Skipping over important material to get to the
best part
• Running out of time before saying the best
part
• Too many slides; too much on each slide
14. Style
• Talking too fast
• Talking too quietly
• Apologizing or making excuses or being
excessively self-deprecating
• Dealing with nerves
16. Positive advice
• Take a deep breath
• Take a moment to think
• Answer step-wise
• Separate and stress your most important
point(s)
17. Negative advice
• Say you don’t know and you’ll have to think about it
more
• Say you haven’t read a text or author the questioner is
referring to
• Ask for clarification or elaboration if you don’t
understand the question
• Clear up a misunderstanding if you think the
questioner has missed some part of your paper
• Explain that you’re using a paradigm or approach that
might be unfamiliar to the questioner
• Offer to give a fuller response later in a private
conversation
22. Lots and lots of irrelevant text that you can’t read anyway
because the background is horrible
STUFF! HAPPENING! A picture! Unrelated!
• A point I’m telling you
• Another way of saying the
point I’m telling you
• A paragraph randomly lifted
from my paper and put on the
screen so you are trying to
read as I say it.
• A reference to an article I’m
not currently talking about
• This font colour actually makes
me feel ill
23. Cognitive purpose
Stressing key points
An image, graph, or chart that supports
your case
Showing a structure for the
presentation