Speaking: Presentation Visuals Exercise 1

Speaking in Academic Contexts

Presenting a seminar paper

Using Visual Aids

Exercise 1 Turning text into slides

The following extract has been taken from a text which is intended to be read as an essay. Look at the slide which follows it and note down the differences between them.

Cunningsworth (1995, p. 38) stresses the importance of examining the type of activities in a coursebook in order to ensure that they serve a purpose. Wordlists and definitions do not have a place in coursebooks, neither do words out of context. The given activities should help raise students’ awareness of the relationships between words. He divides these into 4 areas which he suggests good vocabulary activities should make use of:

  1. semantic relations – word groups according to meaning, synonyms, hyponyms, opposites;
  2. situational relationships – word sets associated with particular situations, eg sport, transport, politics;
  3. collocations – words commonly found in association, eg food and drink, for better or worse, also noun+ preposition links and phrasal verbs (verb + particle links);
  4. relationships of form (often referred to as ‘word building’), eg long, length, lengthen

For a suggested answer see: Answers .

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Speaking in Academic Contexts

Presenting a seminar paper

Using Visual Aids: Exercise 1

Answer

Turning text into slides

The differences are:

  • the slide has a title
  • the introductory text does not appear on the slide at all. The speaker will include it in the presentation but does not need to write it on the slide
  • the points on the slide are not complete sentences; they are key words to prompt the speaker
  • the examples in the text have not been added to the slide

Remember that the speaker will always expand on the points shown on the slide in the oral presentation. You do not want a slide full of information that you will read word for word.

References