Design of Slides, Text Design the background of the slides with plenty of contrast. Minimum font size for main body and bullets: 18 points; preferred font size: 24 points Preferred font size for headers or titles: 36 to 44 points Avoid: all caps, italics, script fonts, distracting animation. There is nothing more distracting than spinning, pointless PowerPoint animations in an oral presentation of scholarly work. N.B. – Present ideas, not details
Practicing Nobody is born knowing how to give presentations of their scholarship to an academic audience. It takes practice. And oral presentations of your scholarship is much more difficult when presenting in a foreign language. The 2 best ways to gain expertise presenting for international audiences are: 1) Practicing your presentation; and 2) Seeking out opportunities to give presentations to an international audience (gain experience by doing). It will be assumed by an international audience that most of the following elements of your scholarly presentation have been practiced beforehand: Table III: Categories of Practice for Presenting to an International Audience No. To Achieve This 1 Being Heard Clearly
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Understandability and Required Length
Do This Rehearse your talk by watching yourself in a mirror or by reading your copy aloud to a colleague. Find a room approximately the size of the room you think you will use at the conference and position your colleague at the back of the room. Stand up at the front with a lectern and read the paper out loud; your colleague should be able to hear you clearly. They will also be able to tell you whether you are talking too fast -- or, in rare cases, too slowly. Ask Departmental colleagues to: sit through a full, dry run, of your presentation; time it; then give you their specific feedback -- positive and negative. For example: “You went much too quickly through slide 3 for me to follow – perhaps you could make two slides at this point to slow yourself