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June 14, 2006
Escaping the Page: Doing the Oral Presentation
By Amanda Johnson
I would consider the preparation for the honors thesis presentations a true breakthrough in the writing process. Having completed a draft and feeling less than satisfied with the way my ideas had found their way into Microsoft Word, my next step was to prepare my thesis presentation slides, which required me to return to the text and distill the most important ideas into something that I could communicate in 10 minutes. It also reminded me of the importance of catering to your audience, something that I always knew that I should be doing but a priority that became occluded by the urgency of actually needing to finish the draft. The presentation was a chance to pay particular attention to how you are going to convey and persuade an audience to at least respect the value of your research if they do not agree with your argument. Constructing the presentation made the writing visual, it made it oral, and it made the typed words seem more malleable than they were before, allowing me to go back and put down my thoughts how they should be.
Posted by hilton at June 14, 2006 04:03 PM