Monday, May 21, 2012

Presentations

 

BASIC TIPS

  • Dress smartly: don't let your appearance distract from what you are saying.
  • Smile. Don't hunch up and shuffle your feet. Have an upright posture. Try to appear confident and enthusiastic.
  • Say hello and smile when you greet the audience: your audience will probably look at you and smile back: an instinctive reaction.
  • Speak clearly, firmly and confidently as this makes you sound in control. Don't speak too quickly: you are likely to speed up and raise the pitch of your voice when nervous. Give the audience time to absorb each point. Don't talk in a monotone the whole time. Lift your head up and address your words to someone near the back of audience. If you think people at the back can't hear, ask them.
  • Use silence to emphasis points. Before you make a key point pause: this tells the audience that something important is coming. It's also the hallmark of a confident speaker as only these are happy with silences. Nervous speakers tend to gabble on trying to fill every little gap.
  • Keep within the allotted time for your talk.
  • Eye contact is crucial to holding the attention of your audience. Look at everyone in the audience from time to time, not just at your notes or at the PowerPoint slides. Try to involve everyone, not just those directly in front of you.
  • You could try to involve your audience by asking them a question.
  • Don't read out your talk, as this sounds boring and stilted, but refer to brief notes jotted down on small (postcard sized) pieces of card. Don't look at your notes too much as this suggests insecurity and will prevent you making eye contact with the audience.
  • It’s OK to use humor, in moderation, but better to use anecdotes than to rattle off a string of jokes.
  • Take along a wristwatch to help you keep track of time – the assessor may cut you off as soon as you have used the time allocated, whether or not you have finished.
  • It can be very helpful to practice at home in front of a mirror. You can also record your presentation and play it back to yourself: don't judge yourself harshly when you replay this - we always notice our bad points and not the good when hearing or seeing a recording or ourselves! Time how long your talk takes. Run through the talk a few times with a friend.
  • It's normal to be a little nervous. This is a good thing as it will make you more energized. Many people have a fear of speaking in public. Practicing will make sure that you are not too anxious. In your mind, visualize yourself giving a confident successful performance. Take a few deep slow breaths before your talk starts and make a conscious effort to speak slowly and clearly. Research by T Gilovich (Cornell University) found that people who feel embarrassed are convinced their mistakes are much more noticeable than they really are: we focus on our own behavior more than other people do and so overestimate it's impact. This is called the spotlight effect. If you make a mistake, don't apologies too much, just briefly acknowledge the mistake and continue on. For more details see "59 Seconds" by Prof. Richard Wiseman
  • Build variety into the talk and break it up into sections: apparently, the average person has a three minute attention span!

Presentation skills

Monday, May 7, 2012

Referencing


Referencing is the practice of acknowledging and describing other pieces of work that you have read or used whilst completing your own assignment/essay/report etc…
We are Stafford shire University students we have to follow the Harvard Referencing method.
When the lecture was going on I was thinking why we need to reference. After the lecture I got that we need to reference ,
  • To show how widely you have read around the subject in order to complete your own work.
  • To enable other people to trace the sources you have used easily.
  • To acknowledge other pieces of work you may have read, quoted from or paraphrased.
  • If you need to refer it in a later day it will be much easier to retrieve it back
  • If the reader wants to read the original source
What is Harvard reference.,
Harvard is a generic term for any style which contains author-date references in the text of the document, such as (Smith 1999). There will also be a list of references at the end of the document, arranged by authors' names and year of publication. There is no official manual of the Harvard style: it is just a generic term for the many styles which follow that format.
The UQ Library Harvard Style is based on the AGPS/AGIMO style manual. The latest edition of that manual is the 6th edition (2002).