ENG 3015 DR. MARY MCGLYNN

ORAL PRESENTATION DUE MARCH-MAY

GUIDELINES FOR ORAL PRESENTATIONS

The purpose of the oral presentations is to give you a chance to direct the discussion of the novel in a direction of interest to you while honing your skills in making an organized address to an audience. Working alone, or in pairs or trios, you will develop a 6-8 minute talk in which you close read a passage or make an argument about a text. While I encourage you to familiarize yourself with the general historical/cultural context of your poem’s composition, you should not spend more than one minute on the biography of the poet.

Please plan to communicate with me before your presentation—this can be an email, a short conversation after class, or a meeting in my office. I have some very short supplementary readings that you may want to draw on or incorporate. Please refer to the page on the blog about effective close reading, as I imagine that this is the direction most presentations will go and is a worthwhile tool for essays as well.

In terms of the format of your presentation, you have a lot of flexibility. You might want to read prepared remarks, in which case, I would expect each presenter to read some of them. Another option is to prepare a series of questions to ask the class in guiding them towards your reading of the passage. It might be helpful to have visual aids, like a copy of the passage or a relevant image. PowerPoint is acceptable for the presentation (you may as well know I find it deadens the intellect) but by no means a requirement. I would advise that you develop a goal for your presentation—something along the lines of a thesis statement or argument from which the presentation unfolds or to which it builds. Because the time frame is so limited, I would also advise practicing the presentation in advance.

Please remember that if you are working in a group, someone else’s grade hinges in part on your efforts—above all else, staying in contact with that person/people and me about any problems is a crucial courtesy!

This assignment is worth a total of 100 points, which will be awarded thus:

·  ARGUMENT/GOAL: your presentation should have a clearly-defined objective towards which all its elements are working: 30 points

·  EVIDENCE: you should make a clear connection between your argument and specific language in the poem: 40 points

·  DELIVERY: you should speak clearly, in complete sentences, loudly enough to be heard and in a manner that engages your audience: 30 points

GOOD LUCK!