Any tips on presentations at uni?

Im in my third and final year of university and i have seen that a lot of the modules i have chosen require a presentation at some point. In year 1 i did do a presentation at some point but it went terribly, it will literally a 1-2 minute long presentation when it was supposed to be around 10, this was because i panicked and spoke fast like some rapper.

The reason i am worried about presentations is that i have a stutter. During nerves it gets terribly bad and i sometimes cannot say anything as my throat gets blocked up.

I know some of you probably do not stutter but i was wondering if you had any tips on calming your nerves etc during a presentation?

Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Reply 1

Tactical Nuclear Penguin

Original post by Chicken Hulk

I'm the same; what worked for me was:

1) making sure my hands weren't in my pockets and having a good posture, and looking up

2) making eye contact with different people in the room whilst you're speaking - if you make yourself do that it makes you feel more confident in what you're saying as people smile/nod and has the added benefit of making sure you don't look at your feet and mumble!

Good luck :smile:

Reply 2

Sannn

I know the feeling mate, it's horrible :/ I've got one myself. I know it's gonna sound really cliched, but just take a breath and go slowly. Most people you're giving the presentation to are probably thinking "Thank god it's not me up there" - a public survey revealed that people fear public speaking more than death :P

If you let your nerves get to you, it's gonna affect your stutter. Block it out, and concentrate on getting the words out. Hope you'll be alright :smile:

Reply 3

cowardly dog

Write your script and practice it until you can do it without thinking about it.

I also wrote the following after giving a good presentation:

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Speaking louder and a little bit faster limits chances of sounding nervous.

Practice speech in venue - larger venues can echo.

Start speech immediately to avoid negative thought.

Powerpoint slides provide a cue and a distraction.
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Reply 4

username266003

Say you're sick and don't go. I did that a couple of times. Can't screw up a presentation if you're not there.

Reply 5

Kovu07

My advice would be to practice in front of a mirror, and then perhaps with some of your friends, practice makes perfect. :smile:

I know presentations can be daunting but often you can present with a powerpoint and notes as well as your voice so your mark doesn't rely solely on what you say. Also if you mention your stutter to the person marking before hand they should take it into account. So try not to worry too much, and remember everyone gets nervous.

Also try to plan how long each part of the presentation should be, for example split it into 2 - 3 minute sections. This helps with your timing on the day, and you can practice this a lot before the real presentation. Finally chances are that most of the group will be focusing on their up and coming presentations more than what you're saying so just try to relax, and then breathe a huge sigh of relief when it's over. :biggrin:

I hope this helps :smile:

Reply 6

concubine

I just make sure I know the topic well and then come up with a load of key points/themes and make sure I can talk about them for X amount of time. I hate reading from things whilst doing presentations.

Most people have a tendency to speak too quickly, like you mentioned, so maybe try practising a few times going over your **** more slowly.

Don't try and make jokes or anything unless you're genuinely funny, if you're really nervous it's a terrible idea.

Don't just regurgitate whatever is on your PPT.

Stand up straight, look forward, make eye contact, don't mumble, don't move around too much, if you're not overly 'emotive' with your hands and you happen to have a podium or something then you can lean on that, standing there with your arms by your side the entire time looks weird.

And more than anything just try not to be nervous, because really there is absolutely nothing to be nervous about.

Reply 7

pinkmonkey3

Original post by RabbitCFH

Say you're sick and don't go. I did that a couple of times. Can't screw up a presentation if you're not there.

True story

Reply 8

username266003

Original post by pinkmonkey3

True story

I'm impressed (though not really surprised) you got the reference. :biggrin:

Reply 9

Bluth.

Most if not all universities offer skills workshops, including public speaking classes. See if there is one you can go along to :smile:

Reply 10

besomebody

Make a good powerpoint. It should be simple but follow the gist of what you're saying - that way people are listening to you but mostly looking at the powerpoint. This helps me because I don't feel completely in the spotlight. Also, if you mess up what you're saying the audience don't get lost - just knowing this alleviates some of the pressure.

Use a list of points to mention, rather than writing the entire thing down. People who just read out from a piece of paper are almost always boring.

Practice over and over with your list.

Look up and atpeople like you're talking to them throughout your presentation. It seems like it should be the opposite, but it really helps when you can see people are listening.

Reply 11

SnoochToTheBooch

Original post by Chicken Hulk

realise that nobody gives a **** about what you're saying. they're paying attention for the first 60 seconds tops. you aren't being scrutinized any more than you scrutinize them when they present.

Reply 12

evantej

Original post by Chicken Hulk

[…] I know some of you probably do not stutter but i was wondering if you had any tips on calming your nerves etc during a presentation? […]

The only way to calm your nerves and stop your stutter becoming a problem is to know your material well; that is, the topic you are presenting on and what you want to say about it. Nevertheless, your lecturer should make allowances for your stutter.

Here are a few tips for your presentation:

Guide your students. You are the lecturer and you are responsible for the learning while you are in front of the class. The best way to guide learning is to be clear about what you are going to discuss. It is the old saying: tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, and tell them what you have told them.

Keep it simple. People always present far too much material, which makes the presentation hard to follow. Literature students are especially guilty of this. It actually takes some confidence to talk about one narrow aspect of a topic (e.g. weather in Dickens's Great Expectations). But it makes things easier for everyone, yourself included.

Be interactive. No one likes to listening to someone talk non-stop. But this does not mean simply having prepared questions at the end of your presentation. You run the risk of no one speaking, especially if your questions are related to your presentation. Being interactive is one of the ways to achieve top marks, because it is a means of assessment and it shows you are tailoring your material for your audience. I did a presentation on my masters programme and before I started simply asked who was familiar with the material I was going to present on (we were presenting our dissertation topics), and no one had read one of the short stories and only a few had read the novel. Imagine if I simply dove straight into the presentation? No one would have understood a thing. If you have shorter presentations then extensive interaction becomes more cumbersome and forced, but if you were giving a long presentation then it helps break up the time. This might be especially useful for you as it would give you a rest from speaking.

I gave a long presentation in my third year and had a prepared task where I gave two students a scenario from Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and asked them to imagine what the character was feeling at this point and to guess what kind of language Stevenson used to represent these feelings. Once they gave an answer I would show the relevant passage from the work on a powerpoint so others could see and judge for themselves whether the student's response was accurate. It worked wonderfully well and I got very high marks!

A sample presentation structure might be something like:

- I am going to discuss Dickens's use of weather in Great Expectations
- Explanation of why you are doing this (i.e. weather is central to how Dickens develops tension in the novel)
- Example one + explanation
- Example two + explanation
- Example three
- Ask students how they think tension develops in example three; if you have been clear in your previous examples they should be able to answer this no problem
- Conclude presentation by restating the premise (weather is central to developing tension in the novel) and give short overview from each example as evidence

It is not rocket science!

(edited 11 years ago)