Sunday, 25 November 2007
Tips for giving a talk
Soon we will be scheduling your mini talks. These are some tips to get you thinking. Use some of these ideas on Monday when you present your research on 'women in politics.'
Engage with your Audience
Introduce yourself
Smile and sound interested
Develop eye contact
Tell audience the structure of your talk
Use the right language for your audience
Maintain right pace
Use your voice and pauses to move between points
Use notes to move you from one point to next
Dealing with Nerves
Be well prepared – that will make you feel more confident about your material
Use prompt cards if you can.
Breathe deeply before you start, this slows your heart rate down and you should feel less nervous
Look at your audience – despite what you may think, this does calm you.
Smile and look relaxed, it should create a more relaxed atmosphere for you (and your audience).
Beginnings and endings
It is worth dwelling for a moment on the importance of the beginning and ending of your talk. Some public speakers say that you should structure your talk by:
1. ‘saying what you are going to say’,
2. then ‘saying it’,
3. then ‘saying what you said’.
Inviting and responding to questions
Prepare beforehand for the moment when you have finished and you want to invite questions. How will you actually conclude your talk, and how will you then ask the audience if they have any questions? A common ‘awkward’ moment in talks is when the speaker has finished, and people do not know whether they can then ask something. How will you avoid this?
Likewise, if you receive no questions from your audience, what will you do? You could ask one or two yourself. For example, were you clear about…? and so on. Or, if you are brave, you could ask the audience specific questions with a view to determining how much they have taken in – in other words, assess the effectiveness of your presentation. Think ahead about how you will handle this.
Tuesday, 20 November 2007
Tuesday, 13 November 2007
Friday, 9 November 2007
Monday 12th November - Please note
We will also be setting up small group blogs. We already have one group up and running J.A.P.A.C. Congratulations to them and we look forward to seeing their creative writing and biopics there very soon!
If you already have a group in mind and know how to create a blog, get strarted.
1. Give each person in the group a RESPONSIBILITY position .e.g. Technical person for making the blog and moderating comments, assistant tech person, group manager to motivate people to contribute, group communicator to ensure messages are replied to thus keeping the spirit of communication vibrating, photo collector to illustrate and do creative things.
2.Go to.... to create your blog in 3 easy steps.
3. Decide if you want it open to anyone or if you want to moderate it - keep visitors by invitation only.
If you do not have a group nor a blog DON'T WORRY We will do this on Monday.
Also remember to start planning exhibition visits. One very near is on cartoons at the Caixa Geral de Depositos.
Tuesday, 6 November 2007
Creative Writing Workshop
com o escritor norte-americano Bruce Holland Rogers
Quinta-Feira, 8 de Novembro de 2007
sala t11 16-18h - entrada livre –
Secção de Estudos Ingleses e Norte-americanos (DLCLM)
Check his short stories on www.shortshortshort.com
PLEASE try and go, and on all our behalves, take notes to post in our blog.
Bruce Holland Rogers has been writing fiction full-time since 1991. His stories range from literary and experimental to SF, fantasy, and mystery. Rogers is married to psychologist Holly Arrow and has long been interested in what psychology might teach writers. That interest was the foundation of Word Work: Surviving and Thriving as a Writer. He is the author of four or six story collections, depending on whether or not you count e-books. His stories have won a Pushcart Prize, two Nebula Awards, the World Fantasy Award, and half a dozen assorted nominations. Rogers’s fiction appears regularly in a wide range of magazines and anthologies. He recently began teaching fiction writing for the Whidbey Writers MFA program in Washington state. He also teaches writing seminars in Greece, Italy, and other locations in Europe.
