Rough guide to L2 talks Jeremy Allington-Smith 24 Oct 2004 (rev 18 Oct 2005) This talk covers: Overall structure – the message and the medium Basic advice Use of graphical material A long (20 min+) talk requires a slide describing the contents but for a short talk like this you can put this on the title slide Don’t forget: title, name and date

The message and the medium Your scholarly investigation* will be presented in two ways: Essay – using the printed word with some graphics to help in the form of figures (pictures, graphs, charts) Talk – an oral presentation of the same material making imaginative use of graphics (15 mins strict time limit + 2 mins questions) What question are you trying to solve and why What you actually did What you learned Whatever the means of presentation, it is important to follow a logical sequence: * see “Rough guide to L2 essays” At a conference, you may give a poster presentation instead of a talk. This is where you stand by your poster (words and pictures arranged within the space of an A0 sheet) during scheduled sessions to answer questions from passers-by. You will get experience of this in L3 Use graphics to make your point

Some advice Number of slides: ~1 slide/minute Use animation sparingly – it’s fun at first but get boring. Use colour and fonts imaginatively but don’t cause headaches! Don’t put too much on each slide – do not simply reproduce chunks of your essay Each bullet point is a cue for you to say a few sentences, and a focus for the audience. But don’t just read the slide. Avoid reading from a script, but cue cards are okay. No need to number figures, provide captions or give full reference list Rehearse the talk, to fix the main points in your head and get the timing right. This presentation has 6 slides = 6-12 minutes!

Pictures Nice pictures help but must be: Relevant An interesting Andean fox that I saw at the telescope  Reconstruction of the velocity field of a distant galaxy amplified by the gravity of a foreground cluster Legible, not too confusing 

Practical issues On-screen presentation is preferred Powerpoint is a possibility, but other software can be used (e.g. LaTeX, Acrobat) Details Bring presentation on a memory-stick or CD and use PC provided … or …. Bring a laptop and plug into projection system... but check first that you can connect successfully. Does your Mac need an adaptor? Fine detail may be lost if the projector has insufficient resolution. If you include movies etc, make sure the files are copied over to the PC, sit in the right folder and link correctly to the powerpoint file. Transparencies with an overhead projector are also acceptable

Conclusions I have described how to structure your presentation including : –Advice on length and format –Use of pictures –The necessity of ending with some (brief) conclusion and, especially for longer-talks, recommendations for further work And now over to you…..