Student's guide to writing college papers, Fourth edition - Kate L. Turabian 2010

Preparing an oral report
Drafting your paper
Writing your paper

It will not be until you are ready to draft that you can even think of giving an oral report to your class. Before then, you will have too little to say and you will be too unsure of what you do have. But you can learn a great deal from giving an oral report as you draft. It cannot be the same kind of report you give after you have completed your paper (see 13.4), but it can be a useful exercise.

At this point, your oral report should have two goals: (1) to force you to formulate a coherent forecast of what you final paper will say, so that you can discover whether it makes as much sense when you say it as when you just think it; and (2) to test your ideas through the responses of your classmates. In particular, a report at this state should do three things:

✵ Present your research question and answer/claim.

✵ Outline your reasons and sub-reasons supporting that claim.

✵ Forecast the kind of evidence you will use to support those reasons.

8.6.1 Prepare Notes, Not a Script

Most of us are at least a little anxious at the idea of speaking before a group, and you're likely to be a tad more anxious at the idea of presenting a paper you have not yet written. Many students think that the cure for that anxiety is to write out a script for their presentation, so that they can just read rather than remember and think. That's generally a bad idea. You don't have the time to do all that extra writing, and no one wants to sit while you read it.

Instead of a script, prepare good notes that include the following:

✵ a complete introduction and conclusion

✵ your reasons, in order, in large bold type

✵ for each reason, a bulleted list of your two or three best bits of evidence, named but not explained

8.6.2 Write Out a Complete Introduction and Conclusion

There are two parts of your presentation that you must get right: your introduction, which prepares listeners for what's coming, and your conclusion, which tells them what to remember. Because they are so important, these are the only two parts for which you should write a script that you rehearse. You don't need to memorize them, but you should rehearse enough that you can deliver them with only a few glances at your notes. That way, you will get off to a confident start, which will improve the rest of your performance, and you will end with a confident close, which will improve how your audience remembers your report (and your performance of it).

If you have been filling your storyboard as you go, you have there a sketch of a working introduction and some notes on a conclusion. Write them out in language to be spoken. Except for necessary technical terms, do not use any words that you will feel uncomfortable saying or that make you sound like a textbook. State your research question as clearly as you can. Be sure to end with your answer. In between, do what you can to explain the significance of your research question.

8.6.3 Make the Body of Your Notes an Outline

Concentrate on reasons in the body of your presentation. Use them to organize your notes and put them in big bold type. These are the sentences you must be sure to say. For everything else, adapt to your audience: spend time on what seems to engage them; skip what doesn't. But do cover each reason. And just before you conclude, run through your main reasons in order: this is the best summary of your argument.

If you have time, present some of your best evidence, especially for reasons that your audience is unlikely to accept right off. But at this stage, your report should be focused on your problem, its answer, and your reasons supporting that claim. Communicate them clearly, and you will have done a fine job.