2007.12.21. 9:05Chronicle Careers: 12/21/2007: The Truth Is, You Gave a Lousy Talk
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FIRST PERSON
Academics share
their personal
experiences
http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2007/12/2007122101c/careers.html
Friday, December 21, 2007
The Truth Is, You Gave a Lousy Talk
By TORY DEFOE
Of course I couldn't possibly be talking about
you.
After all, your friends and colleagues
always congratulate you on your presentations. Even your competitors, when they approach
you after your talks at national meetings, open their comments with, "Great talk!"
But seriously, don't you routinely commend people whose conference talks were marginal?
How many of your colleagues actually give a great talk? Yet you willingly pat them on the back and walk away
smiling, even if the seminar put you to sleep or left you questionless because of its inaccessibility.
I know. You were just being polite. So what does it mean when they offer you the same empty praise?
Maybe it's time to think about your presentation more objectively. To that end, I offer the following handy rubric.
It doesn't focus on the things everyone already knows about public speaking (talk clearly, make eye contact). It
focuses on the visual aids common to many a conference talk that are, nonetheless, often used badly. Use the
rubric to grade your last seminar, awarding yourself between one and five points in each of the four categories.
Be honest.
Communication. Academics often resort to slides to communicate information to listeners. That's fine, but the
slides should enhance rather than detract from your presentation. They detract when their content is confusing.
Take, for example, those presenters who are so familiar with their own field that they use acronyms,
abbreviations, and other jargon to speed communication among their close colleagues and co-workers. The
problem comes when presenters fail to realize that their jargon is specific to their field, or worse, to their private
circle.
Many presenters justify the use of jargon by defining it during the talk. But remember, the audience cannot flip
back four slides to review the meaning.
Scoring: If you absolutely avoid the use of slang, acronyms, and field -specific references in your presentations,
you get five points. Give yourself four if you only use terms that are universally accepted by your entire field, and
three if you define jargon on your slides and then repeat it throughout your presentation. But you get only two
points if you fail to define your jargon, and one if the undefined terms are central to the topic of your talk.
Clarity. Having a substantive message is important. Delivering it clearly is, too. The clarity of a talk relates
directly to the effort that a presenter is willing to invest in the presentation, and that effort is a measure of the
presenter's respect for the audience.
For example, let's assume that the presenter is reviewing work that has already been published, and includes
important data in a table. The presenter might scan the table into a slide directly from the published text. But no
one beyond the second row of the audience will be able to read the scanned reproduction of the 12 -point Times
Roman font. If the presenter respects the audience, he or she will make the effort to reformat the table in a
larger type size (18 to 24 points) with a clearer font (Arial or Helvetica).
Other principles of clarity also revolve around the idea of the speaker viewing the presentation from the
perspective of the audience. Small type and fancy fonts look great on your monitor, but are difficult to read when
they are projected on a wall.
