Some Tips On Effective Lecturing

Like most scientists, I have had to strain to understand some speakers at conferences. When a speaker fails to hold me, my mind drifts to thoughts about how he should be speaking. Here are some of those thoughts—from a frustrated listener rather than a professor of rhetoric. Mobilizing Your Ideas Careful preparation is so obvious a necessity that it should not need mentioning, yet it does. Although spontaneous speech is less stilted than over-rehearsed speech, poor preparation may result in incoherence. On cards a quarter the area of this page, write ideas for your talk. Rearrange, rewrite often. Your new discovery or invention is what we want to hear about. Concentrate on that and mention methods only briefly. When all seems ready, go through the notes with a broad red crayon and brutally slash out non-essentials. Number the cards. On card one, list the items to take with you: clock, pens, a card to mask your transparencies, exhibits and so forth. Write with large letters and only on the upper part of each card; then you can read without a lectern lamp. The lamp distracts listeners and casts an unflattering light on your face. Rehearse to a tape recorder in the presence of a friend, who should time you. If you've not heard yourself before, you may be shocked when you hear the play back, as most of us are the first time. Do you clip off the ends of words, as English-speaking people often do? Discover your pet non-word: "anderm" is common. Vow never to be an anderman. Note whether you speak in a manner de scribed by a professor from Michigan as exPLOsive; this is disTURbing. Audiovisual Aids Overhead projectors have advantages over slide projectors, so the latter should be used only for pictures that cannot be shown otherwise. For one thing, an overhead projector does not require a darkened room. Before projecting a prepared transparency, mask it with a card. Move the card in stages to expose what you want us to see; don't let us read ahead. Use large lettering, but not capitals, and exploit the value of color. In a very large hall, an overhead projector may be impractical, so you may need a slide projector. Be cause you cannot use a mask with slides, display only a little information on each one. This should allow you to use characters large enough so that the room needs no darkening for them to be clearly visible at the back. As soon as have finished using a projector, switch it off, even if you will need it again. A bright empty screen distracts. Remind yourself to do this, in color, on your notes. Tables must be simple. It may be desirable to use a measure of variation (±). If ± appears, show its meaning. A pooled SEM, CV or other statistic needs to be shown only once. Published tables are seldom suitable for talks and may even provoke annoyance. Complex tables cause mental indigestion, so make graphs if you can. A graph's width can indicate the standard deviation. Write names on the curves to indicate what they represent. Speak Slowly, Slowly Look at the audience and speak to those at the back; then you won't address your stomach and compress your lungs. Hold your notes in your hands, so you won't look down at the desk or inelegantly put your hands in your pockets. Good lip movement assists crisp utterance and helps those with hearing defects. (A lecturer once fascinated me by speaking without moving his lips. I don't remember what he said.) When we stand, knees shaking, before an audience, adrenaline accelerates our speech more than we realize. Try not to exceed a rate of 100 words per minute. Few people realize that slower speech would improve their delivery. Remember that you are competing at a distance with local noise, that many listeners have hearing defects, and that elderly folk have slow rates of cognition. Deliberate speech partly offsets such hindrances to communication. Someone in the audience, even at a local meeting, may not have English as his first language. Always speak for that person. Use SI units. Foreigners find it hard to follow a talk in English; don't confound them with pounds or feet. Use modern terms. Archaic names make us wonder whether a speaker has kept up to date with the literature. Americans speaking to Europeans (and vice versa) should anticipate different uses of some words including corn, candy, cotton, paraffin, fix (fasten) and bred (mated). Avoid trade names. Dewar flasks, sticky tape, plastics and so forth have different trade names in different countries. Each of us may think his or her way of speaking is "correct" and that the world should concur. The world does not concur, there is no correct way of saying words: pronunciation depends on usage. Words are spoken differently in the Americas, Europe and elsewhere, so care must be taken over pronunciation—especially of technical words—when listeners may include people from outside your region. One example that caused me confusion was a Californian professor's pronunciation of carotene as keratin. The British pronunciation of bath as barth seems odd to Americans. Likewise, the American softening of "t" that produces twenny, cladder, and meddel puzzles foreigners. One way to help listeners is to speak according to CBS (or BBC) English. I would find that difficult, so I understand that others might too. At least it should be tried for scientific terms. Sentence Structure Rules of grammer are not composed by committees but are based on usage. A speaker who ignores the rules may be misunderstood. One rule is that when a word is related to another word said earlier, there shall be no doubt about which former word was meant. In long sentences, we may lose the connection. During a talk, we cannot look back as we can in a paper. So keep sentences fairly short but not so short as to be jerky. A sentence containing two main verbs is about right. Speakers tend to say "it" for a word so distant that we cannot recall it (the word). Be wise: repeat the word. A common error of attribution is the dangling participle. Here are examples. "Looking through a telescope, the moon was seen." Q: "Did you know a new lab is being built down the road?" A: "Yes, I saw it going by in an automobile." Phrases such as "using a computer, data were checked" are so common that they may become accepted usage. If you believe they have not, then you will be wise to state the operator of a verb: the astronomer looked; we used. If you think t=$, waste no time in uttering needless words. Omit "very," "quite" and "really"; their meanings are now almost gone. Omit "important"; let listeners decide. In "right now" the right is useless. Spurn such phrases as: it must be pointed out right here; in this context; the point is; that sort of thing. Leave out the noise; say the good stuff slowly. Avoid tautology (i.e., saying twice, as in empty void, dead corpse) and hackneyed phrases (clichés) "like the plague." If I hear "this moment in time," then "I shall scream." Use short words. The otiose manufacturization of sesquipeda lianisms brings no merit. Say "after" not subsequently to; "often" not constantly or invariably; "enzymic" not enzymatic; "method" not methodology. If you mean location, do not say localization, whose meaning is different. If you mean transport, do not say transportation. "The use" betters "the utilization." "I", the shortest word in English, need not be shunned. Circumlocutory avoidance is pedantically cumbrous. An occasional "F' tells us that you, not somebody else, did the experiments. He who utters foreign words for which English words exist may be suspected of snobbery. Your theme may depend on a word whose first mention is drowned by local noise. Sometimes I hope in vain for a repetition of a word. On the wallboard, write such keywords clearly. Most listeners enjoy a witty remark. Anecdotes must be relevant, and of a high standard; crude jokes bring anticlout to the speaker. Occasional humor keeps us listening, and ripples of laughter quickly banish your nervousness. You may think what I have writ ten is addressed only to beginners. Not so; even some professors could improve their presentation. Speakers want us to share their enthusiasm. For that, they must speak well, and pronounce words clearly. Potential distractions, such as magnioquent words, complex sentences and irritating mannerisms, as well as crowded tables and inaudible delivery, let a listener's mind wander. Remember: If just one phrase be missed, your message may be lost. I have listened to marvelous speakers; but, alas, also to several who were not good. When you speak for export, please speak slowly and, if you are American, As near to CBS English as you can; if you are European, imitate BBC English. However high you may be on the status ladder, if we bemused foreigners on a lower rung cannot follow you, we shall not esteem you. On the other hand, if you enlighten us, your stature will increase . Booth is a member of Trinity College, Cambridge CB2 1TQ, UK He is the author of Communicating in Science: Writing and Speaking (Cam ridge University Press, 1985)

Some Tips On Effective Lecturing

Mobilizing Your Ideas

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of