ATAR Notes: Forum

VCE Stuff => VCE English Studies => VCE Subjects + Help => VCE English & EAL => Topic started by: mickey_b08 on January 30, 2008, 09:23:52 am

Title: Oral Presentation Advice
Post by: mickey_b08 on January 30, 2008, 09:23:52 am
Hey guys.
I've got my english oral due early first term and i was wondering if i could get a bit of help?

My topic: Penalties of drug use in sport is to harsh: with the main focus on Ben Cousins (who im sure you have ALL heard of)
This means i will be supporting Ben Cousins in that his 12 month ban was to harsh.
I have all the information i need about this from other sources, im just confused as to how to structure my oral.

My tutor has told me to go in dressed up as someone and talk about B. Cousins from their p.o.v, then to change character during the oral into B. Cousins and show that same argument but from his p.o.v.
Im not sure if this is the best way to do it, hence why im here posting this :)

If anyone has any ideas for a different structured speech then please let me know.

Thanks !
Title: Re: Please help with my English oral!
Post by: brendan on January 30, 2008, 12:21:34 pm
My tutor has told me to go in dressed up as someone and talk about B. Cousins from their p.o.v, then to change character during the oral into B. Cousins and show that same argument but from his p.o.v.
Im not sure if this is the best way to do it, hence why im here posting this :)

that is highly risky and bizarre, i doubt that you would be able to pull that off with any success.

Guidelines for Effective Presentations by the MIT Sloan school of management
http://ocw.mit.edu/NR/rdonlyres/Sloan-School-of-Management/15-279Spring-2005/60A64A78-E418-4DE4-86E0-B3B6A2E1B829/0/overheads8.pdf

Tips for giving effective oral presentations
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Writing-and-Humanistic-Studies/21W-747-1Fall-2006/StudyMaterials/index.htm

Resources for speakers
http://web.mit.edu/writing/Resources/Speakers/index.html

Communication for Managers - oral presentations
http://ocw.mit.edu/NR/rdonlyres/Sloan-School-of-Management/15-280Communication-for-ManagersFall2002/EE87A531-0B99-42C6-9902-3F85AEBE5791/0/Class1Overheads.pdf
http://ocw.mit.edu/NR/rdonlyres/Sloan-School-of-Management/15-280Communication-for-ManagersFall2002/5CFB7CDF-A04A-49AA-ADEA-ECCC867774CE/0/JYClass_203_2002edited.pdf

Advanced Managerial Communication  - "Keys to Effective Presentations" http://ocw.mit.edu/NR/rdonlyres/Sloan-School-of-Management/15-281Spring2004/CBD89CFF-2F53-4F3D-A32D-4243805F9B88/0/keys_pres.pdf

Sample criteria sheet: http://ocw.mit.edu/NR/rdonlyres/Sloan-School-of-Management/15-279Spring-2005/313AE7E3-0103-4CAC-A1E0-B7553F6B45A4/0/oralpresrubrics.pdf
Title: Re: Please help with my English oral!
Post by: enwiabe on January 30, 2008, 04:04:14 pm
Mickey, if I were you, I'd argue that the AFL's punitive policy in regards to drugs is too light on players. All of the media's criticism has been picking them apart for being too soft and looking the other way so that the competition goes on unblemished.
Title: Re: Please help with my English oral!
Post by: mickey_b08 on January 30, 2008, 08:25:56 pm
As much as i'd love to, this is the side of the argument i got delt and have to stick with it
Title: Re: Please help with my English oral!
Post by: Nick on January 30, 2008, 08:40:30 pm
You're claiming that the penalties are too harsh for players? I'm not sure whether you could create a series of sufficient supportive arguments if you took this point of view. Like enwiabe has said, I would strongly advise you to take the opposite view to the one of you have previously specified.

I think adopting the role of two different characters in the same oral is very risky. You would need to explain this structure to the audience prior to commencing the presentation, and this would look sloppy and disorganised. You also run the risk of some members of your audience getting confused.
Title: Re: Please help with my English oral!
Post by: mickey_b08 on January 31, 2008, 12:36:44 pm
As i said before this is the side of the argument i HAVE to do.

I will be using examples of ben cousins (12 month ban) and marion jones (sprinter who got sent to jail)

For ben cousins i have this source of info: http://www.bigfooty.com/forum/showthread.php?t=406852&page=2 (if you read through it all its great for what i need)

and i have printed a few articles about the issues with Jones.

Im still confused with how to structure the oral.
Scrap the idea of changing character.... Say i came in as Cousins (dont worry about what im wearing yet) how would i start? or is there a different way you think will benefit me?

ive used these two examples as one is performance enhancing and the other recreational drugs.
Title: Re: Please help with my English oral!
Post by: Nick on January 31, 2008, 12:45:49 pm
As i said before this is the side of the argument i HAVE to do.

I will be using examples of ben cousins (12 month ban) and marion jones (sprinter who got sent to jail)

For ben cousins i have this source of info: http://www.bigfooty.com/forum/showthread.php?t=406852&page=2 (if you read through it all its great for what i need)

and i have printed a few articles about the issues with Jones.

Im still confused with how to structure the oral.
Scrap the idea of changing character.... Say i came in as Cousins (dont worry about what im wearing yet) how would i start? or is there a different way you think will benefit me?

ive used these two examples as one is performance enhancing and the other recreational drugs.


Are you able to pair up with someone for the oral? I remember at our school we had the choice of doing the oral individually or in a paired situation.

You could structure the oral as a live interview following the decision being made. Your partner could be the TV journalist. Interviews are good because they allow good prompts to be made, allowing exposure to a wide variety of information within the interview.
Title: Re: Please help with my English oral!
Post by: SilverBullet on January 31, 2008, 01:45:27 pm
Information from bigfooty that could be your first wrong move! Jokes, reading the thread it seems to be the sort of information you need for the oral.

Maybe you could do it as a Today Tonight/A Current Affair thing. Dress up as a news reader and sit behind a table. Put a pic up of ben cousins behind you and go with the story. This was you can have notes on your table as well to help jog memory of what you need to say. 
Title: Re: Please help with my English oral!
Post by: mickey_b08 on January 31, 2008, 02:34:42 pm
I am doing the oral against another classmate and we have decided to go with the news interview.

We will have someone in the middle of us to introduce the news segment then pass it on to me and ill do my oral then they will pass it back to my classmate and he will do his.


Should i take the character of someone high up like an official of some sort or go with being ben cousins?

(Remember i am doing that the penalties for drugs in sport have become to harsh)
Title: Re: Please help with my English oral!
Post by: costargh on January 31, 2008, 03:10:26 pm
You could be a member of the Players Association. It would allow you to speak more eloquently about the issue rather than having to either dumb your oral down for a footy player or be an unrealistically smart footy player.
Title: Re: Please help with my English oral!
Post by: SilverBullet on January 31, 2008, 04:18:45 pm
You could be a member of the Players Association. It would allow you to speak more eloquently about the issue rather than having to either dumb your oral down for a footy player or be an unrealistically smart footy player.

A lot of the members are current players - Tarkyn Lockyer, Nick Maxwell, Adam Goodes, Luke Power... just to name a few. Not all footy players are dumb to the point that you would have to 'dumb down your oral'.
Title: Re: Please help with my English oral!
Post by: brendan on January 31, 2008, 04:51:22 pm
I am doing the oral against another classmate and we have decided to go with the news interview.

We will have someone in the middle of us to introduce the news segment then pass it on to me and ill do my oral then they will pass it back to my classmate and he will do his.

Why? What's the point? How does it add to you oral presentation? Or does it simply just distract from the main objective?

Say i came in as Cousins (dont worry about what im wearing yet) how would i start? or is there a different way you think will benefit me?

ive used these two examples as one is performance enhancing and the other recreational drugs.

Do you have to do that? Can't you just be yourself? This is not drama class, this is VCE English. I think you need to ask yourself: What are you trying to achieve with this oral presentation? Who is your audience? What do you want them to get out of this presentation?

If the objective is to persuade the audience to the view that penalties for drugs in sport have become to harsh, then I can't say that what you are doing is optimal.

Check out this sample criteria sheet to keep yourself on track: http://ocw.mit.edu/NR/rdonlyres/Sloan-School-of-Management/15-279Spring-2005/313AE7E3-0103-4CAC-A1E0-B7553F6B45A4/0/oralpresrubrics.pdf
Title: Re: Please help with my English oral!
Post by: Odette on January 31, 2008, 07:40:49 pm
Good point you make there Brendan, I agree, he should just be himself... but that's just my opinion.
Title: Re: Please help with my English oral!
Post by: bucket on January 31, 2008, 07:56:09 pm
Haha.
If he was to dress up and appear as Ben Cousins, wouldn't a speech on the penalties being 'too harsh' seem a bit bias coming from a drug-happy AFL excommunicate?
Title: Re: Please help with my English oral!
Post by: kido_1 on January 31, 2008, 10:09:25 pm
Try to use palm cards.
You might also want to question fallacies in opposing arguments against Ben Cousins.
Try to engage teacher/audience, shifting tone.
Keep eye contact.
Title: Re: Please help with my English oral!
Post by: Jeffree on February 01, 2008, 10:06:10 pm
The costume would just be a cap no? easy n flowy
Title: Re: Please help with my English oral!
Post by: Nick on February 01, 2008, 10:29:59 pm
I cannot emphasise enough the importance of using flash cards. They are imperative. Do not even try taking A4 notes into the oral. The flashcards should contain ONLY dot point prompts of the key points you would like to make.

At our school, people dropped from A's to C's simply because they decided to read their speech entirely from paper in front of them. You should only need to swiftly glance at your flashcards throughout the oral. Being able to make regular eye contact and not rely on simply reading your speech can be the difference between getting 29/30 and a 20/30.
Title: Re: Please help with my English oral!
Post by: brendan on February 02, 2008, 12:15:10 pm
1. To increase volume and depth of your voice, breathe in before you speak and let the words leave your mouth with the air so that you speak from your chest rather than your throat.

2. Don't hold anything in your hand, like water bottles or pens. There seems to be a tendency for people to fiddle excessively with stuff in their hands whilst they are giving oral presentations, it's distracting and it displays nervousness.

3. Don't speak too fast. Don't try to complete a speech made for twice the available time by racing against the clock. This is probably the most common mistake. Literally nothing will register and the audience will endure a frustrating ordeal. On the other hand don't speak so slow that the audience will lose all interest.

4. Stance is sometimes a problem. Some speakers stand still particularly behind a lectern. Others tend to wander all over the stage. A wandering speakers needs to consider whether his physical meanderings are distracting the audience's attention from what he is saying. The best thing to do is to be relaxed and stand up straight.

5. Keep eye contact with the audience. But be careful not to pick one person (usually it's the teacher) who is the sole recipient of your eye contact. This can be incredibly embarrassing to that person and annoying to everyone else. Your eye should wander over and encompass the whole audience so as  to give each individual the impression that the speech is directed at him or her.

6. Dress appropriately. Tuck your shirt in, do your tie properly, don't look as if you are about to go to the beach.