Great presentation example: style and content

October 12th, 2005
by Cleve

Via the D’Arcy Norman Dot Net, here’s a great example of the Lessig Style presentation by Dick Hardt on Identity 2.0. A couple of thoughts:

+ Identity is a big thing for the web and this short presentation delivers a even-easy-for-me overview of the issues involved. It’s about all I want to know, and no more, so it’s useful in that the size of the “chunk” is about right.

+ As D’Arcy points out in his post, many of the issues with identity have parallels with using the web for learning (silos, walled gardens, etc).

+ As an extended listening exercise it’s too hard I believe for students under upper-intermediate, although of course you can work around that with your task design. I do wonder if the multimodal aspect of the Lessig presentation style would make it easier for Ss to understand (watch it and you’ll see what I mean).

(As I was creating the links in this post I saw that Presentation Zen (which I posted on last week) had linked to the same presentation, making my post kind of superfluous for many of our readers. But, in case you needed one more prompt to view Dick’s show, here it is.)

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Nice presentation skills blog & site

September 28th, 2005
by Cleve

This one’s new for me, so thought I’d share: here’s a useful new blog called Presentation Zen, by Garr Reynolds of Apple. The blog’s new, so there aren’t that many posts, but what’s up so far is excellent. He’s got an analysis of presentation styles by renown presenters such as Guy Kawasaki and Seth Godin, and even some authentic audio clips…I haven’t listened yet, but I’ll bet they’ll be great for our BE students.

And better yet, on Garr Reynold’s personal site, an exellent resource section on presentation building. It’s really strong on slide styles and design (just what you’d expect from an Apple guy). That won’t help our students who suffer from the curse of multinational company presentations, the PowerPoint deck, sent pre-formatted from HQ. But even decks often have some wiggle room and students can slip a slide or two of their own into the deck - here’s how to make ‘em count.

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Cool listening comprehension content

September 25th, 2005
by Cleve

Here’s a 3 minute L/C segment that’s extraordinarily cool for a couple of reasons:
+ It’s by Dave Weinberger, who’s a co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, web 2.0 thought leader, and an all around brilliant dude
+ It’s about tagging, which should be interesting for most Business English students (and teachers)
+ Dave’s post has links to the audio, plus a transcript
+ Most importantly, it’s a example of excellent communication - clear, simple, to the point, and with examples. Your students will understand the essence of why tagging is important, and know how to try it (which you could do in class). As a communicator, I know I have a tendency to overcomplicate things and try to say too much…this mini-presentation is an example of how not to do that.

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Presentation English: “ums” and “ahs”

July 22nd, 2005
by Cleve

Here’s a useful article from Steve Pavlina on eliminating verbal pauses: the “err”s and “ahhh”s that can derail your students’ presentations.

These no-content fillers are tough to eliminate for native speakers, especially given the pressure many people experience when speaking in public. And as every Business English teacher knows, it’s even tougher for our students, who often need to be mentally scanning (consulting the monitor) for vocabulary or a structure. Here are two ideas that we’ve used to help our students:

Idea #1: Build awareness
Pavlina emphasizes that the first step towards reducing this tendency is speaker awareness of these pauses. He notes that in his Toastmaster group one person in the audience is designated the “ah counter” who gives every speaker the number of fillers used. He says that the aahhs in his presentations have dropped from 10-20 down to 0-2 since the measurement started.

So, 2 points here for BE teachers:
1) The management truism “what gets measured gets improved”: when practicing a presentation with a student, count the aahhs.
2) Learner awareness is key. As a part of learner training, performance awareness is critical to progress and learner autonomy.

Idea #2: Get help from the audience
I know about these fillers first-hand from delivering presentations in Spanish. My Spanish is just under an ALTE C1 (at least on good days) and I’m more fluent than accurate, but I still get hung up with certain structures or searching for the right phrase when making presentations.

When this happens, I have a technique I use (and have recommended successfully to many students): I ask the audience for help. When I notice that I’m pausing to think of a word or structure, I ask the audience immediately for the translation (so far there’s always been someone in the audience who can provide it). The audience is delighted to help and the communicative rapport is strengthened. We move from a speech to a two-way conversation; the audience is participating and energy goes up.

Caveats: This can’t be over-used. It doesn’t replace true “conversation” in a presentation. Watch carefully to assure positive audience reaction. It’s only appropriate for less formal presentations with audiences up to 50 or so. It won’t work with every presentation “style”.

If you try these techniques, let us know how it goes.

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