Presenting Your Work

Abstract

In this chapter, we discuss technical presentations. The first topic talks about planning towards a presentation, and the different steps you need to think about when planning. Then, we discuss briefly the different formats that can be used to make a presentation. The second topic deals with the logical order of a presentation. Two styles are discussed. The first style contains the following major building blocks: motivation, research question, experiments, results of experiments, conclusions. The second style contains the following major building blocks: proposition, proof, conclusion. Both styles are suitable for technical presentations. A third topic looks at the different types of presentations. Depending on the audience the student presents to, different ways of presenting may be suitable. As in the chapter about academic writing, a special section is devoted to the difficulties non-native English speakers face when presenting in English. Following these tips for non-native speakers is a series of tips valid for all presenters on how to gain confidence in presenting, and how to give clear presentations. Finally, we discuss what to do with the material of a presentation after the actual presentation.