Presenting an oral report

6. PRESENTING AN ORAL REPORT

Ten Simple Rules for Making Good Oral Presentations

This article condenses an excellent list of rules for making a good oral presentation.

1. Talk to the Audience

Know your audience - Speak to the right audience. Know their backgrounds and knowledge level of the material you are presenting and what they are hoping to get out of the presentation. Deliver what the audience wants to hear. Deliver relevant details. It should not be boring and the content should not be well-known. Deliver something innovative. Deliver your content slowly, steadily and without confusing others.

2. Be knowledgeable

Your knowledge of the subject is best expressed through a clear and concise presentation. There will be question and-answer session when the audience becomes active participants. At that point, your knowledge of the material will likely become clear. Hence be prepared.

3. Talk Only When You Have Something to Say

Remember the audience's time is precious and should not be wasted by presentation of uninteresting preliminary material.

4. Make the Take-Home Message Persistent

If audience remembers three key points which you wanted the audience to remember even after a week, then your oral presentation is right. If the audience remembers other points but not the key points, then deliverance has gone wrong in some way.

5. Be Logical

Think of the presentation as a story. There is a logical flow-a clear beginning, middle, and an end. You set the stage (beginning), you tell the story (middle), and you have a big finish (the end) where the take-home message is clearly understood.

6. Treat the Floor as a Stage

Presentations should be entertaining, but do not overdo it and know your limits. If you are humorous by nature, your presentation will be fun. If you are not humorous by nature, do not try and be humorous. If you are good at telling anecdotes, try. If you are not good at telling anecdotes, do not try and tell anecdotes, and so on. A good entertainer will captivate the audience.

7. Practice and Time Your Presentation

The more you practice, the better you perform. An important talk should not be given for the first time to an audience of peers. You should have delivered it to your research collaborators who will be kinder and gentler but still point out obvious discrepancies. Even more important, when you give the presentation, stick to what you practice.

8. Use Visuals Sparingly but Effectively

If you have more than one visual for each minute you are talking, you have too many and you will run over time. Obviously some visuals are quick, others take time to get the message across. Avoid reading the visual unless you wish to emphasize the point explicitly. Make the points few and clear.

9. Review Audio and/or Video of YourPresentations

There is nothing more effective than listening to, or listening to and viewing, a presentation you have made.

10. Provide Appropriate Acknowledgments

It is often appropriate to acknowledge people at the beginning or at the point of their contribution so that their contributions are very clear.

Example

Watch the following you tube video on

Research Paper Presentation, Sixth National IR Conference 2014

https://www.youtube.com/results?search

Exercise

Prepare a report on the employability skills of the students and present.