Researching and Delivering an Oral Presentation

Research is not reading until you stop

Most presentations that go wrong went wrong weeks before anybody stood up. The talk was fine; there was simply nothing usable behind it. Research feels like work while it is happening, which is what makes it easy to do badly: you can read for three weeks, fill eleven pages, and still have nothing you can say out loud. Real research is narrower than that and it has a shape. You choose one question before you start, small enough to be answered in the time you will have to speak. You work out what you would need to find out in order to answer it. You go looking, and you take notes in a form that will still work when you have forgotten where everything came from. You stop when the question is answered rather than when you run out of material. And then you throw most of it away, because four minutes holds very little. Two failures cost more marks than any other. A fact whose source was never written down cannot be used at all. And a note in the words of somebody else cannot be spoken as your own. This module is the half of a presentation that happens before the talk. How to stand up and deliver one is a separate skill, covered in its own module.

Five words for the research half

Short definitions, worth knowing before you start rather than after.

What each one cost later

Which question fits four minutes?

You have four minutes to speak and a broad theme to start from: how the place you live has changed. Which of these is a question you could actually answer in that time?

• Why did the old market close, and what replaced it?
• How has the area changed?
• Is the area better now than it used to be?
• What is the history of the area?

A note you can use, and one you cannot

The difference shows up weeks later, when you have forgotten the context and can only work with what is on the page. Both of these took about the same time to write.

Research in this order

Five stages of the research half. Put them into the order that stops you wasting three weeks.

• Turn the broad theme into one question you could answer out loud
• Write down what you would have to find out in order to answer it
• Go looking, taking notes in your own words with the source attached
• Stop when the question is answered, not when you run out of material
• Cut whatever does not serve the question, then work out how to say the rest

What a usable note carries

Which THREE things should a note carry if it is going to survive until the talk?

• The point put into your own words
• Where it came from, written down at the same time as the fact
• Some mark separating what the source said from what you thought
• Everything the source said on the topic, in case some of it turns out useful
• The exact page layout of the website it came from

When the notes start speaking instead of you

Copied wording is not a problem because somebody will catch you. It is a problem because a listener hears the join. A talk runs in one voice, at one level of formality, and a sentence lifted from a report arrives in a different register entirely: longer, flatter, full of words nobody says out loud. The audience does not think that sentence was copied. They think they stopped understanding, which is worse. There is one habit that prevents it and it costs nothing. When you find something worth using, look away from the page and say it aloud to yourself in ordinary words, and write down what you just said. What comes out will be shorter, it will be in your voice, and it will already be sayable. Then write the source beside it. Acknowledging where something came from is one spoken sentence, not a bibliography: the council report from that year says the roof was beyond repair. That is the whole thing. It takes four seconds, it tells the audience how much weight to give the point, and it lets you use somebody else findings without borrowing their voice.

Complete the research words

One narrow question, small enough to be answered in the time you have, is _____. Putting what a source said into your own words while keeping the meaning is to _____. Saying out loud where a piece of information came from is _____. Deciding what to leave out, which happens to most of what research produces, is _____.

From a theme to four minutes

Here is the whole process run once, on the theme of how a local area has changed. The theme is far too wide, so the first move is a question: why did the old market close, and what replaced it. That question is answerable, and it tells you when to stop. Next, what would you need in order to answer it? Four things: when it closed, what the stated reasons were, what was built instead, and what the people who used it made of the change. That list is now a search plan, and anything that does not serve one of those four items can be ignored however interesting it is. Then the looking. A council report gives dates and stated reasons; a local newspaper archive gives what was said at the time; two conversations give what people remember. Every note goes down in ordinary words with its source beside it. The stopping point arrives when all four items have something against them, not when the archive runs out. Finally the cutting, and this is where most of the work disappears. Three weeks of notes produce perhaps six sentences that survive, because four minutes holds very little. What gets cut is everything that does not answer the question, including the best story found along the way. That is not a waste. It is what research is.

Find the borrowed sentence

Five sentences from a four-minute talk. Tap the ONE that has been lifted from a document rather than said by the speaker.

• The market moved to the new site in the spring, and the old hall stood empty for two years.
• I asked my grandmother about it, and she remembered the last day it opened.
• The redevelopment constituted a strategic realignment of retail provision within the wider borough.
• The council report gives three reasons, and the one it puts first is the cost of repairs.
• What surprised me was that the traders themselves were divided about moving.

Handle two accounts out loud

Two of your sources disagree. Choose the option in each gap that keeps both, and keeps them clearly labelled.

The research run

Five quick questions on the research half. Three lives.

Four minutes, three weeks of notes

You have three weeks of notes on how your area has changed and four minutes in which to speak. The notes run to eleven pages. Some of them are copied wording. Several of the best facts have no source written beside them. Work through three decisions.

• Where do you start?
• Two of the strongest facts have no source recorded anywhere. What do you do?
• A whole page of your notes is copied wording that says the thing better than you could. How do you use it?

Plan the research

You have been given a broad theme and four minutes in which to speak on it: how the place you live has changed over the last fifty years. Write a plan for the RESEARCH, not the talk. Do not write the talk itself.

• Turn the theme into one question narrow enough for four minutes, and say why it is answerable
• List what you would need to find out in order to answer that question
• Say how you would take notes so that they still work three weeks later
• Explain what you would do with a strong fact whose source you had not written down
• Say what you would expect to cut, and how you would decide