After 20 years lecturing on everything from academic writing to applied linguistics, Steven Gershon knows how to deliver a good presentation. In this two-part series, Steven shares an approach that he’s developed over those 20 years for teaching presentation skills.
Presentation risks, fears, and benefits
It’s sometimes said that there are only two sure things in life: death and taxes – though not usually in that order. To this pair of life certainties, let’s be bold and add a third: being called upon to give a speech or presentation. Speaking in front of an audience is something that all of us, voluntarily or not, occasionally must do. No matter the setting, the ability to compose and convey a message clearly to an audience can have a very positive impact on one’s life. Engaging easily distracted multi-taskers can open many doors to success – academic, professional, social and personal. In this sense, presentation skills are useful life skills.
Yet, ‘public speaking’ is also on most people’s top-ten fear list. This isn’t surprising as it can be a nerve-racking, stress-inducing experience. Even for native speakers, giving an effective presentation involves a complex combination of linguistic, organizational and performance skills that can differ in some important ways from ‘normal conversation’. However, for learners of English the task can seem not just difficult, but overwhelming. Perhaps Mark Twain had them in mind when he said, “There are two types of speakers: Those who get nervous and those who are liars.”
Growing a teaching plan
Given the benefits and fears involved, how can we, as language teachers, provide our students with the confidence-building tools they need?
For me, the above question took on some urgency several years ago when I was first asked to teach a presentation skills course at my university. I had never taught that course before, so it seemed to me that a useful starting point would be to think about the skills and features that are actually involved in making a presentation. Although public speaking situations do vary quite a bit depending on topic, venue, purpose and audience, I figured that most of these would generally fit:
- Awareness of the listeners’ needs and interests.
- Having sufficient knowledge of a pre-determined topic.
- Composing and structuring a text.
- Practicing/rehearsing to ‘fine tune’ the message.
- Speaking from notes or a script for a pre-designated time period.
- Extended uninterrupted speaking (minimal turn taking).
- Being goal directed and remaining on topic.
- Using performance techniques to bridge distance.
- Managing nerves and anxiety (stage fright).
It became fairly obvious to me that quite a few skills and features involved in presentations fall outside the norms of ‘conversation’. However, I had no specific ideas about how to go about teaching presentation skills, a busy timetable of classes and no suitable course book to rely on. So, I started the semester with little more than my trusty binder stuffed full of speaking activities I had been using in my ‘oral communication’ (i.e. ‘conversation’) classes. Of course, it didn’t take long before I started running out of suitable activities that would eventually get my students to the point where they could stand in front of the class and speak about a designated topic.
That’s when I decided to enlist the activities I’d been using in my writing classes. Surprisingly, this semi-random merger of my speaking and writing activities managed to get us through a few weeks worth of lessons with a modicum of success. This gave me the impetus to begin developing activities along the same lines. These would would see us through a few more student presentations during the rest of the semester.
The activities I began to design needed to include the development of speaking skills as well as planning and composing skills. What took shape was the borrowed framework of the ‘process approach’ I was using to structure my writing classes. With minor adjustments, it seemed that this framework was able to accommodate the brainstorming—planning—organizing—composing-editing skills relevant to writing. In addition, it incorporated the speaking and performance skills students also needed to work on for presentations.
In part 2, Steven will provide details of the ‘process approach’ and how you can grow a lesson plan from this.