Free Power Point Templates

The rhetorical goal for any interview talk is very different than a conference talk.

The goal of a conference talk is to get people interested in your paper and your work.

The goal of an interview talk is to get a job, for which interest in your work is one part.  

There are two key audiences for an academic interview talk, and you have to reach both.

One is the people in your sub-area, who you must impress with the depth of your contribution.

The other is the rest of the department, who you must get to understand your problem, why it is important, and a hand-wave at what you did. Both audiences will evaluate how well you speak as an approximation of how well you can teach. An algorithm:

• Take a 20-minute conference talk.
• Expand the 5 minute introduction to 20 minutes to drive home the problem, why it’s important, and the gist of what you’ve done.
• Does the rest of the conference talk, minus the summary and future work?
• Add 10 minutes of deeper stuff from your thesis (to show your depth).
• It is okay losing people outside of your sub-area (as long as you get them back in the next bullet).
• Does the summary and future work from the conference talk in a manner accessible to all?
• Add 10 ten minutes to survey all the other stuff you have done (to show your breadth).
• Save 5 minutes for questions (to show that you are organized).

Other Talks

Other talks should be prepared using the same principles of considering audience and rhetorical purpose. A presentation on a project in a graduate class, for example, seeks to reach the professor first and fellow students second.

Its purpose is to get a good grade by impressing people that a quality project was done.

Thus, methods should be described in must more detail than for a conference talk.

Oral Communication is different from written communication  

Listeners have one chance to hear your talk and can’t “re-read” when they get confused. In many situations, they have or will hear several talks on the same day. Being clear is particularly important if the audience can’t ask questions during the talk.

There are two well-know ways to communicate your points effectively.

The first is to K.I.S.S. (keep it simple stupid). Focus on getting one to three key points across. Think about how much you remember from a talk last week. Second, repeat key insights:

tell them what you’re going to tell them (Forecast), tell them, and tell them what you told them (Summary).

1. Think about your audience

Most audiences should be addressed in layers: some are experts in your sub-area, some are experts in the general area, and others know little or nothing. Who is most important to you?

Can you still leave others with something? For example, pitch the body to experts, but make the forecast and summary accessible to all.

1. Think about your rhetorical goals

For conference talks, for example, I recommend two rhetorical goals: leave your audience with a clear picture of the gist of your contribution, and make them want to read your paper.

Your presentation should not replace your paper, but rather whet the audience appetite for it. Thus, it is commonly useful to allude to information in the paper that can’t be covered adequately in the presentation Practice in public .

One of the most common difficulties that you encounter in public speaking is a barrage of questions from a single or a few audience members.  

Sometimes the people interrupting the presentation sincerely want answers to their questions.  

Other times the questioner has a hostile motive. Usually, a hostile questioner does not want to attack you personally.   Instead, the questioner wants to attack the material that you are presenting.  

This is an important distinction; because the most effective way to attack the material that you are presenting is to draw you off topic into areas that you are not prepared to speak about.  

Specific techniques for dealing with off-topic questions are covered later in this document.  

For now, we will cover techniques for dealing with someone who continuously interrupts with on-topic questions.  

If the questions are off-topic, you may want to use the techniques covered in this section with the ones for off-topic questions.

One-breath Answers

The least confrontational way of dealing with a constant stream of questions is to answer each question as briefly as possible. Limit your answers to one breath in length.   And before stating your answer, ask yourself if this material will be covered later in your presentation.  

If it will be, state only that the material will be covered later.   Do not expand on your answer, because additional details will give the constant questioner additional opportunity.   After giving your answer, launch directly into the next topic.  Taking time to answer a constant stream of questions may not be your desired solution.   However, if the questioner is an authority figure, you might feel obligated to answer the questions. Keeping your answers short minimizes the negative effect of the interruptions

THE TEXT        Keep the wording clear and simple. Use active, visual language. Cut unnecessary words – a good rule of thumb is to cut paragraphs down to sentences, sentences into phrases, and phrases into key words.

         Limit the number of words and lines per slide. Try the Rule of Five - five words per line, five lines per slide. If too much text appears on one slide, use the AutoFit feature to split it between two slides.

Click within the placeholder to display the AutoFit Options button (its symbol is two horizontal lines with arrows above and below), then click on the button and choose Split Text between Two Slides from the submenu.

        Font size for titles should be at least 36 to 40, while the text body should not be smaller than 24.

       Use only two font styles per slide - one for the title and the other for the text. Choose two fonts that visually contrast with each other.

Garamond Medium Condensed and Impact are good for titles, while Garamond or Tempus Sans can be used for the text body.

Embed the fonts in your presentation, if you are not sure whether the fonts used in the presentation are present in the computer that will be used for the presentation. To embed the fonts: (1) On the File menu, click Save As. (2) On the toolbar, click Tools, click Save Options, select the Embed TrueType Fonts check box, and then select Embed characters in use only.

         Use colors sparingly; two to three at most.

You may use one color for all the titles and another for the text body. Be consistent from slide to slide. Choose a font color that contrasts well with the background.

        Capitalizing the first letter of each word is good for the title of slides and suggests a more formal situation than having just the first letter of the first word capitalized. In bullet point lines, capitalize the first word and no other words unless they normally appear capped.

Upper and lower case lettering is more readable than all capital letters. Moreover, current styles indicate that using all capital letters means you are shouting.

If you have text that is in the wrong case, select the text, and then click Shift+F3 until it changes to the case style that you like.

Clicking Shift+F3 toggles the text case between ALL CAPS, lower case, and Initial Capital styles.

      Use bold or italic typeface for emphasis. Avoid underlining, it clutters up the presentation.

        Don’t center bulleted lists or text. It is confusing to read. Left align unless you have a good reason not to.

       Run “spell check” on your show when finished.