Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Reflection on Oral Presentation

After what I did for the peer teaching assignment, there was quite a bit of stress on me to create a mind-blowing presentation. Honestly, I doubted I improved much since then. Nonetheless, I am amazed by the amount of improvement in some of my fellow classmates.

In particular, I would like to compliment Zikai for his remarkable improvement since the peer teaching. I can still remember the very first time when our group (Zikai, TianTian and I) made the presentation on “Writing an Effective Resume”. There was a period of time when he used the word “actually” seven times in three sentences. This time round he has markedly improved on the variation of his tone and he did not use a single “actually” throughout the presentation. In fact, it was me who fell into the trap of using the word “alright” repeatedly. Kudos to Zikai!

From the perspective of a devil’s advocate, I would argue that our presentation is rather informal which might be inappropriate for the setting. I am ambivalent about this. On one hand, I am not sure if the faculty members from the Dean’s office would buy our idea of the “Embedded Lessons”, as it might seem way too controversial. On the other hand, I feel that being informal can be an effective way to convey a message, especially if your presentation or proposal requires a paradigm shift in the audience. (What’s your take on this?)

Secondly, we failed to convey the structure of the modules effectively, which led to the avalanche of questions - it started off with one question on Cultural Exchange and ALL the following questions were laser-focused on that issue - which almost buried us alive.

Personally, I feel that I might be speaking too quickly at times and that I tend to look at the slides quite often. On top of that, I move quite a bit during presentations and I foresee that it could be a problem as the audience might get distracted. My guess is that I should train myself to stand still during a presentation and to pace myself to not speak too quickly.

In the subsequent sections of this blogpost, I shall express my views with regards to some of the questions addressed in class:

1. To have a script or not?
I guess this differs from person to person but I shall share what has worked for me. After preparing the slides, I present to an imaginary audience at home. It will be bumpy in the first twenty tries, but I repeat until I feel that it’s “presentable”. Along the way, I write down specific sentences which I tend to forget. Next, I practice for another hour, periodically looking at what I wrote. After that, for the points which I tend to forget, I “cheat” by editing the words on the slides such that they will remind me of what to say. The entire process takes less than four hours and I do it the night before the presentation.

Take-home message:
“Write what you say, rather than say what you write.”


2. How to eliminate fear/nervousness/anxiety during presentations?
I am not sure if my group members noticed, but I tremble uncontrollably just before a presentation. Stage fright haunts me ever since I was in primary school and it has never left me. Every salsa performance (be it group or solo), every presentation and every time I make a comment in class my heart beats faster, my palms sweat slightly and my brain becomes flooded with questions about what will others think of me. In the past, I try to fight these feelings, but now I got used to it and I see it as a surge of adrenaline rather than fear. Somehow or rather, the actual presentation always seems to be better than the rehearsals (from Napalie’s post, she mentioned this as well). To quote Jing Ping, “it’s all in the mind”, so think on the bright side and one will feel more positive during the presentation and hence make a better presentation; it's a self-fulfiling prophecy.

Here are some interesting quotes which I found from The Attack of the Butterflies - Confessions of a Public Speaker by Scott Berkun:


Mark Twain, who made most of his income from speaking, not writing, said, "There are two types of speakers: those that are nervous and those that are liars."

Elvis Presley said, "I've never gotten over what they call stage fright. I go through it every show."

Thomas Jefferson was so afraid of public speaking he had someone else read the State of the Union address (George Washington didn't like speaking either).

Bono, of U2, claims to get nervous the morning of every one of the thousands of shows he's performed.

Winston Churchill, JFK, Margaret Thatcher, Barbara Walters, Johnny Carson, Barbara Streisand, and Ian Holm have all reported fears of public communication.

Aristotle, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Winston Churchill, John Updike, Jack Welch, and James Earl Jones all had stutters and were nervous speakers at one time in their lives.

6 comments:

  1. This is a very detailed post, Ji Wei. It's so comprehensive that a person could have missed your presentation and still have a good idea of what happened by reading this.

    You're correct in noting that since your peer teaching was so powerful, this 'show' was bound to be a bit of a let down. Your apparent confidence was still there, but there did seem to be a little confusion in the way the content came out from the three of you.

    I also was a bit ambivalent about the embedded lesson, tending toward the "skip it" side. The humor, certainly before a dean, would have been betterb left in front of the mirror.

    I appreciate your rumination on to memorize a script or not to do so. Clearly, one has to be familar with the territory, but I'd still suggest that you not be hemmed in by a memorized speech. Your 4 hours would seem to be enough in the effort department.

    I appreciate your list of info at the end, too.
    More comments to follow from me----

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  2. Hello Ji Wei,

    I like the self-confidence that you exude during the presentation. You have good sound projection and clear enunciation, not to mention a great “stage” presence that commands the audience’s attention. Your pace of speaking is not really a problem, however I do agree with you that at the beginning of the presentation, you were looking at the slides a bit too often. Nevertheless, at the later part of the presentation you managed to overcome this.

    I also feel that it’s quite alright when you “move a bit during the presentation”. It makes the presentation more interesting when you do that (not too much of course) rather than standing still which is rather unnatural. Besides, we are always more attentive in classes when the lecturers are more animated.
    There is one thing I would like to highlight though. Since we are from the Dean’s Office, I felt that it would be better if you had not called Shin Ye by name. However, I would also like to commend you for your quick recovery when Shin Ye did not give the response that you expected.

    In all, I felt that you did a great job for your presentation but to be honest, I was expecting some sort of fancy IT stuff again!

    Hope this helps!
    Cheers

    Russell

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  3. Hi Russell,

    Thanks for the compliments, really appreciate it. My salsa instructors will be glad to hear that I have developed some "stage presence".

    Thanks for pointing out that I shouldn't be addressing people by first name.

    I admit that I was very tempted and pressured to come up with some IT stuff for the presentation. But I decided against it as I felt that IT should just be icing on the cake and the oral presentation should not be an exhibition of IT know-how but rather an opportunity for one to practise one's presentation skills (developing confidence, overcoming stage fright, public speaking).

    Thus, unlike what I did during peer teaching, I challenged myself to create a SOLID presentation with minimal IT. [For the entire presentation, we did not use any form of slide transition or animation (everything just appears), no video and we did not use slide templates. For my parts, I have insisted on not having colour (only grayscale).]

    Reason being if I can present without the use of fancy IT, then the use of IT will push the quality of my future presentations to a MUCH higher level.

    From my experience, it's easy to grab the audience's attention with the use of IT (video, animation and pictures); it's much harder to do so when the one and only thing you have that can capture the audience's attention is your VOICE. It's a great experience to make presentations with minimal IT, perhaps you should try that some day. =)

    As for me, the next challenge I have set for myself is to make presentations without using Powerpoint.

    Cheers,
    Ji Wei

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  4. Hi Ji Wei,

    you know salsa? I just started my first lesson last week. Hopefully I will be able to exude that kind of confidence you have after several practises. I could not even tell that you were nervous at all. You did a great job in masking your nervousness.

    I felt that you had good projection and humor. Even though some of the jokes may be inappropriate in front of the Dean, I felt that they actually helped to liven up your presentation. You also used an appropriate tone and had good linkage to the content of your slides.

    However, at the beginning of your presentation, you told us to imagine certain scenarios. I felt that you were too fast and I did not have the time to think about them. Perhaps, slight pauses in between would give the audience more time to digest what you were trying to convey. I felt that I was trying to catch up with your presentation at that moment. I would like to, however, commend on that innovative idea of engaging the audience by asking them to imagine scenarios at the start of your presentation.

    Indeed, I was rather lost during your team's presentation. Some essential information was not covered in your presentation. Thus, giving rise to the large number of questions. I felt that even though it was an unsolicited presentation, your team could have discussed the viability beforehand. Not forgetting that the audeince are representatives from the Dean's office, I felt that the answer, "This is just a proposed idea by my team and there are many details that we have not looked into" given by Xiu Ling, was definitely not good enough and might be perceived as an excuse of inadequate preparation instead. I also noticed that during the Q&A, you were not given much opportunity to speak.

    In all, your part of the presentation was well done. Even though it was not as 'mind-blowing' as during your peer teaching, your presentation was still of a certain standard.

    See you on the 3rd!

    Regards,
    Kesleen

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  5. Hi Kesleen,

    Yes, I know salsa. I started learning 3 years ago. It has changed my life, to say the least.

    I realized that I rushed through the questions only after Brad mentioned that to me. However, I can't remember why I did so.

    I am glad that you like the idea of the questions at the beginning of the presentation. I enjoy trying all kinds of ideas/tricks in presentations, some WILL work, but MANY won't. Nonetheless, for every one that worked, it means that there is one additional tool to nail future presentations.

    Regards,
    Ji Wei

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  6. Hi Ji Wei,

    You are always full of humor in presentation. And that is why everyone had very high expectation on your presentation. In the past presentation, your opening impressed everyone of us once again. However, I soon became confused because I didn't see the link between the opening and the contents of the presentation.

    Nevertheless, you maintained very good non-verbal communication and eyes contact with your audiences as usual. You gave interesting examples and your presentation was very engaging.

    However, If I'm not wrong, your slides layout is quite different with Xiu Ling's. Maybe you should make your slide layout more coherent so that audience will not get distracted after the transition. Besides, one of the pie chart shown was not that clear, maybe you can take note of this next time? =)

    Despite the minor problems, your presentation was indeed the most engaging one. Good job, Ji Wei!

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