Week 14 was devoted to the presentation of your speeches. I have little to report on this other than most of you did a great job. I did see an effort to integrate rhetorical elements in your speeches and an improvement on your delivery. There was also a lot of creativity in the contexts and situations chosen and the topics dealt with. On the other hand, many of you still have to deal with your shyness and fear of public speaking. Too much reading and looking at the page instead of the audience and little gesture was present in many of the presentations.
Next week we will work on documentaries.
Showing posts with label oral presentations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label oral presentations. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
Week 12
Are there some common characteristics to great speakers and presenters? What is it that makes them so compelling? Is there a common pattern to great speeches and communications? According to Nancy Duarte, CEO of Duarte Design in Silicon Valley the answer is “Yes”.
Nancy Duarte says that the best spoken genre, the one that resonates in audiences and lingers in time, is story. She claims that great communications (either speeches or presentations) follow patterns that are similar to the patterns of great stories. After making her point, she comes with a “shape” of great speeches and she walks us through this shape using two great models of American speakers and some of their most famous public addresses. Here’s her presentation at TED:
Remember, effective speeches mimic the pattern of great stories, but you, the speaker, are not the hero, but the mentor and you have to try to convince the audience they are the heroes. At the level of structure you have to come back and forward between the status quo and the ideal and better future. This applies for commercial presentation (competitors vs. your product) as well as political speeches (the author candidate vs. “me”).
Then we proceeded with the next genre in our syllabus: movies. Movies can be defined in different ways. We can say that a movie is a sequence of pictures in motion that narrates a story or that a movie is an audiovisual text that present a piece of fiction (these definitions were given by you in class). Movies can be classified by genres (action, horror, comedy, etc.) or by the age of the intended audience (PG, PG-13, R) or even by the kind of producers (commercial movies vs. independent movies). As other narrative, movies have a main character with a desire or problem, there is a climax or a crucial event that turns the character’s world upside-down and then a resolution, after which the character is transformed. We also looked at some of the ways in which meanings and emotions are conveyed in movies through music, lighting, cinematography and other visual elements.
Friday. we started watching the movie assigned for this semester: Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange . Although this movie is quite old, I think you will notice the validity of many of the points it makes and how current its topic and technical style is. I leave you with its trailer:
Nancy Duarte says that the best spoken genre, the one that resonates in audiences and lingers in time, is story. She claims that great communications (either speeches or presentations) follow patterns that are similar to the patterns of great stories. After making her point, she comes with a “shape” of great speeches and she walks us through this shape using two great models of American speakers and some of their most famous public addresses. Here’s her presentation at TED:
Remember, effective speeches mimic the pattern of great stories, but you, the speaker, are not the hero, but the mentor and you have to try to convince the audience they are the heroes. At the level of structure you have to come back and forward between the status quo and the ideal and better future. This applies for commercial presentation (competitors vs. your product) as well as political speeches (the author candidate vs. “me”).
Then we proceeded with the next genre in our syllabus: movies. Movies can be defined in different ways. We can say that a movie is a sequence of pictures in motion that narrates a story or that a movie is an audiovisual text that present a piece of fiction (these definitions were given by you in class). Movies can be classified by genres (action, horror, comedy, etc.) or by the age of the intended audience (PG, PG-13, R) or even by the kind of producers (commercial movies vs. independent movies). As other narrative, movies have a main character with a desire or problem, there is a climax or a crucial event that turns the character’s world upside-down and then a resolution, after which the character is transformed. We also looked at some of the ways in which meanings and emotions are conveyed in movies through music, lighting, cinematography and other visual elements.
Friday. we started watching the movie assigned for this semester: Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange . Although this movie is quite old, I think you will notice the validity of many of the points it makes and how current its topic and technical style is. I leave you with its trailer:
Monday, April 6, 2015
Week 8 & 9
Week 8 we
basically had the presentations from the first and second round of “The music
of one generation”. I was very pleased to see the diversity of songs selected
and the effort put by each presenter to do a great job.
Week 9 was
a holiday, Easter, so we did not have class. This is a good time for some of
you to catch up with the extensive listening activities. It is also a good time
to remind you that along the semester you have to reflect on three of thesuggested topics, record and upload your reflection as a podcast and send it to
me. Very few people have started this and from those who have already submitted
a reflection, most have just done the first. We are in the middle of the
semester. Don’t wait till the last weeks.
Friday, March 13, 2015
Week 6
On Monday, we finished the topic of advertising by watching a campaign that supported the rights of the LGBT community. What was curious is that the campaign was launched by Burger King, a company whose ads had traditionally been linked to chauvinism and manliness. We discuss the impact and implications of such a campaign. Then Katie showed us some traditional stereotypes that ads usually exploited: how gender roles are identified and transmitted since childhood in toys ads; how white skin and light hair is construed as ideal beauty and contrasted to dark skin and how husbands are displayed as useless and wives still portrayed in the traditional role of the house maker.
Wednesday and Friday we only had time for your first presentations. I am glad to see that most of you incorporated the things we discussed in class. I am sure each time we all see the improvements.
Next Monday, we will not have class because of the Colloquium the School of Language Studies will be celebrating. Wednesday, we will listen to the last presenters. Two classes were not enough for all to present. I think we will need to plan three classes (or two and a half) for presentation 2.
If you started working on the extensive listening, you should have already completed 4 forms. Click here to see the record on who has started and what has been done. This record contains the information up to Friday March 13th.
Have a nice weekend and see you on Wednesday.
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Week 3
This week we moved from listening to speaking. We reviewed some points to bear in mind to prepare and deliver and effective oral presentation. First, we read and discussed some general advice on the whole process (planning, practicing, delivering and evaluating). Follow this link to view some of the materials we used in class regarding the whole process.
We also focus on some aspects on the delivery stage. Most tips on effective presentations emphasize: showing a relaxed attitude, establishing a strong link with your audience, controlling gestures, and adjusting your speech to effectively communicate (voice, prosody, pace, etc.) As for the last aspect, I'd like to share with you Julian Treasure's TED talk on how to speak so that people want to listen.
A last important aspects in delivering presentations is the visual aids to use. Again there are plenty of materials giving you tips and pieces of advice on ow to produce effective visual ais. Although ost concentrate on powerpoint, many of the ideas they convey can be equally effective when using other slideware (such as prezi). Here is Death by Powerpoint, one of the most cited resources on creating great visual aids to support oral presentations.
We also focus on some aspects on the delivery stage. Most tips on effective presentations emphasize: showing a relaxed attitude, establishing a strong link with your audience, controlling gestures, and adjusting your speech to effectively communicate (voice, prosody, pace, etc.) As for the last aspect, I'd like to share with you Julian Treasure's TED talk on how to speak so that people want to listen.
A last important aspects in delivering presentations is the visual aids to use. Again there are plenty of materials giving you tips and pieces of advice on ow to produce effective visual ais. Although ost concentrate on powerpoint, many of the ideas they convey can be equally effective when using other slideware (such as prezi). Here is Death by Powerpoint, one of the most cited resources on creating great visual aids to support oral presentations.
Death by PowerPoint from Alexei Kapterev
We closed the week by discussing interviews in the media. Although the classification of interviews is usually based on how structured (planned) the questions are, we came to the conclusion that many other elements may lead to variations. For example, the topic, the interviewee, the show, the potential audience are all elements that influence the levels of formality, orality and naturalness in different interviews on the media. Here's one of the interviews we watched in class:
In a final activity we did about this topic, you were distributed in pairs and small groups and assigned a text on a topic. Your task was to write an interview based on the information on the text (or you could say you had to rewrite that information in the form of an interview). We ran out of time, but on Monday we will be seeing this interviews conducted in class.
Following our calendar, we will close the topic of interviews and news on Monday and we will start with songs on Wednesday (or maybe Monday depending on time).
See you next week.
We closed the week by discussing interviews in the media. Although the classification of interviews is usually based on how structured (planned) the questions are, we came to the conclusion that many other elements may lead to variations. For example, the topic, the interviewee, the show, the potential audience are all elements that influence the levels of formality, orality and naturalness in different interviews on the media. Here's one of the interviews we watched in class:
In a final activity we did about this topic, you were distributed in pairs and small groups and assigned a text on a topic. Your task was to write an interview based on the information on the text (or you could say you had to rewrite that information in the form of an interview). We ran out of time, but on Monday we will be seeing this interviews conducted in class.
Following our calendar, we will close the topic of interviews and news on Monday and we will start with songs on Wednesday (or maybe Monday depending on time).
See you next week.
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