(teach) teaching how to present at conferences

[karenstanleyma-3]

How many people teach graduate students who may want/have to present in English at professional conferences? What kinds of techniques do you include in your teaching?  Personally, I emphasize NOT reading a paper, but I find that the confidence to do this is hard to come by in a language that is not your own.  (And I can't tell you how bad some renowned English-speaking linguists are at presenting in English.) Any teaching tips?

Do you include training in how to write conference proposals?  Very often, even native speakers lack this type of expertise (in fact, sometimes I myself have to write up a proposal two years in a row before it gets accepted).

Or: do you think that few of your graduate students are likely to need to do this?

Karen
http://karen.stanley.people.cpcc.edu
Charlotte, North Carolina, USA

[Margaret Orleans-2]

Karen,


> How many people teach graduate
> students who may want/have to present in English at
> professional conferences?

I taught a course like that about fifteen years ago at a technical university in Japan.  The students mostly wanted help with the grammar in their papers and with pronunciation, but I insisted that they practice making lots of audience eye contact while reading (they couldn't begin to deliver the papers without reading them, as you noted) and practice answering questions.

Unfortunately the other students in the class were not very good listeners or able to come up with questions, so the class devolved into individual tutoring sessions.  

These students had had papers accepted and would be delivering them in a few months' time, so they were motivated, as far as their individual papers went.  Once the conference was over, they didn't see any further need for the course and wanted to spend the remaining class periods in free discussion, so I don't consider it to have been a success, and would also be grateful for tips from other list members.

--Peg

[Graham Paterson]

Karen wrote
How many people teach graduate students who may want/have to present in English at professional conferences? What kinds of techniques do you include in your teaching? Personally, I emphasize NOT reading a paper, but I find that the confidence to do this is hard to come by in a language that is not your own. (And I can't tell you how bad some renowned English-speaking linguists are at presenting in English.) Any teaching tips?

 
Hi Karen,
In terms of giving a presentation, it seems obvious to me that students need to be taught the fundamentals of Public Speaking and given the practical opportunity of applying them in the classroom.
Compiling the presentation obviously depends on the nature of the conference and the perceived value of the topic. Even so, the planning needed in drafting a presentation would still benefit from knowing and understanding the principles of Public Speaking, particularly in recognising the importance of the beginning and ending of the talk.
The need to involve the audience, to get and keep their attention, judiciously reword and repeat important points and provide a summary in closing; should be incorporated in the draft.
Practice is necessary if the speaker wants to avoid reading directly from notes but there is nothing wrong with having a specially prepared set of notes on a lectern, highlighting the key points, double spacing - large print - spaces for pauses - and using the notes as a guide, but talking directly to the audience.
 
As you say, talking to an audience in a foreign language can be a daunting task but it can be overcome with good planning and practice. These things can be taught.
Regards
Graham 

[Merton Bland]

I've taught this sort of thing.� Usually, the student comes in with a few pages he's copied from some source and puts it on the screen power point style and reads it aloud.� The 'talk' fallls apart if there are any questions.� Any suggestions?

Mert - Dr.M.L.Bland, Arlington, VA, USA

[karenstanleyma-3]

Merton Bland wrote:
...Usually, the student comes in with a few pages he's copied from some source and puts it on the screen power point style and reads it aloud.  The 'talk' fallls apart if there are any questions.  Any suggestions?
>>>

Here's a possibility:

Begin by having the student choose an issue s/he has a strong *personal* connection to.  Have the student write a short paper (often a narrative, but not necessarily) that explains exactly how the strong connection to the issue came about.  (This is an adaptation of an idea that Ilona Leki used as the starting point for a more extended composition class.)

Then have the student go out and find three sources that deal with the topic.  Assuming these are short newspaper or journal-style articles, have the student HIGHLIGHT the parts of each source which are directly relevant to the topic.  The highlighting can be done either digitally or in hard copy, of course.  Either way, the student has to give you the sources with the highlighted sections to check.

THEN have the student write an outline for the talk that brings together at least those three sources.

Karen

http://karen.stanley.people.cpcc.edu
Central Piedmont Community College
Charlotte, North Carolina, USA

[Sandy Harris]

<karen.stanley@...> wrote:

> How many people teach graduate students who may want/have to present
> in English at professional conferences? What kinds of techniques do you
> include in your teaching?

I've used Henry Spencer's paper here:
http://doc.cat-v.org/henry_spencer/thoughts_for_paper_presenters

It is a bit dated, and focused on technical presentations in computing.
Henry's a major Unix guru.

> Personally, I emphasize NOT reading a paper, but I find that the
> confidence to do this is hard to come by in a language that is not
> your own.

First time I presented a conference paper, I was distinctly nervous.
Cryptography is a really technical field, I'm an amateur, and some
of the world's top people in the field were there. Over lunch, one
of them -- Eli Biham -- told me he figured the presentation was
basically an advertisement for the paper. If you can say something
interesting enough that people want to read the paper, then your
presentation was a success.

--
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

[Sandy Harris]

Mert wrote:

> I've taught this sort of thing.  Usually, the student comes in with
> a few pages he's copied from some source and puts it on the
> screen power point style and reads it aloud. ...

You could prevent that by restricting the amount off text on slides.

Some years back, my ex worked in a Canadian gov't management
training shop where your did your slides in Word, sent them off to
the printing people to get them produced in standard format. They
gave you back transparencies with the corporate logo.

They refused to print her first batch, sent the file back and told her
in no uncertain terms to fix them. According to them anything over
four lines on a slide or six words is a line is unprofessional.

I certainly agree in principle, but I'm not sure their numbers are
right. I fairly often go as high as six lines and ten words a line.

If there's also a written presentation, you can have limits based
on that. One line on the slide per or two paragraph of text, not
more than 10 slides per section, or some such.

--
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

[Stephanie Noke]

In the corporate world staff need to make presentations all the time, to their manager, to the Board or to a client.  I find that (not only!)non-native speakers have great difficulty with this as they tend to just read the slides - very irritating and a waste of everyone's time.  I believe it is vital that the presenter understands the objective of the presentation and the needs of the audience.  Most people just spew out information without thinking about the way it is presented. It is useful to ask students to have one basic set of information for presentation.  Then give them different audiences each with a different objective and present it accordingly.  For example, if you have a set of sales graphs and market info you would minimise some facts and maximise others dependng on whether you are trying to persuade your boss or show competitor information.  This gives purpose to the presentation and helps students understand why there needs to be a difference in the way something is presented whether at a conference or in the workplace.
Stephanie

>
> Merton Bland wrote:
> ...Usually, the student comes in with a few pages he's copied from
> some source and puts it on the screen power point style and reads
> it aloud.  The 'talk' fallls apart if there are any questions.  Any
> suggestions?
> >>>

[Fatemeh Towhidi]

Hello all,

I'm working on a project and we are required to do a webquest on ESL/EFL students. Does anyone here know any good pages that has samples or good webquests on these classes?

I shall really appreciate it. I tried some pages but they were not reliable sources.

Thanks again,

Fatima
ESL/EFL Instructor, VA USA
Graduate student on ITS


> To: TEFLChina@...
> From: mert_bland@...
> Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:56:58 -0800
> Subject: Re: (teach) teaching how to present at conferences
>
> I've taught this sort of thing.� Usually, the student comes in with a few pages he's copied from some source and puts it on the screen power point style and reads it aloud.� The 'talk' fallls apart if there are any questions.� Any suggestions?
>
> Mert - Dr.M.L.Bland, Arlington, VA, USA

[Alan Simpson-2]

Slightly off the topic, but one of my students is doing her post graduate degree at Nottingham University here in Ningbo. All the teachers are foreign teachers.

She complained that many of the teachers simply show slides & read the written captions.

Her comment - why do we pay so much to have foreign teachers who simply read!

Alan Simpson


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[karenstanleyma-3]

--- Fatemeh Towhidi wrote:
> I'm working on a project and we are required to do a webquest on ESL/EFL students. Does anyone here know any good pages that has samples or good webquests on these classes?
>

Have you tried Google?  When I Googled [[ ESL webquest ]] I got a huge number of hits.  

Of course, other people on the list may have some that they know work particularly well, although the success of a particular webquest could depend on what type of student you are teaching.

Karen
http://karen.stanley.people.cpcc.edu