Tutorial and Seminar Papers
Preparation
Effective tutorial or seminar presentations do not just happen. They are the outcome of careful planning and thoughtful preparation. This presupposes that you have allowed enough time to prepare and organise your material. As for any task that you undertake at university, time management is an essential consideration. Good oral presentations cannot be done at the last minute.
Before you can organise your material you need to consider a number of preliminary issues.
- The audience
- Allotted time
- Reason for speaking
- Other speakers
- Research your topic
- Remove the padding
The audience
For tutorials and most seminar situations this might seem superfluous, as your audience will be other students. However, you should always consider the audience:
- How many people will there be?
- What background knowledge can be assumed?
- Will there be other speakers?
These considerations will have a bearing on what material you select for your talk and how you might shape it to meet their needs. In this context, the idea of the 'needs' of your audience refers to their need first, to understand the topic and second, your presentation.
One way to do this is to imagine that you are part of the audience. Ask yourself:
- What information you would need to hear in order to understand the topic?
This will then lead on to other questions relating to how you might organise the material, how you might best use the time allotted for your presentation, and so on.
Once you have established what your audience might need to hear, you should then ask yourself whether the information so designated is actually essential for your presentation.
If yes, then find a way to incorporate it.
If no, eliminate it from your talk.
Allotted time
Your tutorial or seminar might run for up to two hours, but you need to establish how much of that time is allowed for your presentation and how much for questions and group discussion. Once you have established how long you are expected to speak for then you will be in a position to make organisational decisions about content and detail.
Reason for speaking
Your primary reason for giving a tutorial or seminar paper is to provide information about a particular topic.
Your paper may be descriptive, argumentative, or evaluative but it must, above all else, be informative and relevant.
That is, it must address the topic, and if a question, answer the question.
Other speakers
It will often happen that you will not be the only student presenting a tutorial paper. (This is less likely in a seminar situation, but can happen if you are part of a panel of speakers.) This might mean that you have to consult with the other speakers so that you do not duplicate the material.
Note that this consideration applies only for the purposes of presentation. Your lecturer or tutor will expect that the written version of your discussion of the topic fully actually answers the question or covers the topic as set.
Research your topic
Gather relevant information by consulting the appropriate literature. For most tutorial situations, your lecturer will have set a number of readings. You will be expected to:
- Have read them thoroughly
- Know the key ideas, arguments and issues
- Be able to explain their relevance, importance and usefulness for your topic.
Remove the padding
In drafting your tutorial or seminar paper you will probably have much more information than can be delivered in the time allotted to you.
This means that you will have to focus on the essential points when delivering your talk. Extra information can be given during the time allocated for questions or group discussion.