3. Giving
a Report
When you give an oral
report it is critical to explain "what they did" and "why they
did it." These steps are often neglected, so they are emphasized here.
Even if you want to go on and do an extensive analysis, you have to explain how
they got the results first. That's why the instructions below focus on how to
get the "what" and the "why" across; how to do an analysis
of the results is important too, but is not discussed below.
If you need help
deciphering the paper, see the handouts titled "Paper Questions" and
"How to Take Notes on a Paper." The instructions below focus
primarily on paper questions 1-3; If you want to go on to do an analysis, look
at paper questions 4 & 5.
RECOMMENDED
PROCEDURE
1) Identify the
question*
Usually you report on a
paper in order to answer a specific question; this is not necessarily the
question the authors had in mind. So be sure to get your question straight and to stick to the
information in the paper that answers your question. Be selective - your entire
report should take 15-20 minutes (if you are focusing on one question).
2) Explain how the
author's approach is supposed to answer the question.
When you prepare a
paper you often spend hours figuring this out, but then you tend to get it so
clear in your mind (and it seems so obvious) you don't explain it. So don't
forget to explain "why" before explaining "what".
3) Explain their
procedures
Explain what they did
in a way that is as clear as possible and that includes all critical details
but omits all unnecessary details. It usually
works best to explain the details one experiment at a time. If you try to
explain all the experimental procedures at the beginning of your talk you will
probably bore everyone to death. It usually helps your listeners a lot if you
write the basic steps on the board, or project them on a screen, as you go
along. It is very hard to keep an experiment straight in your head
without anything to look at. If you use Power Point or the equivalent, be sure
to walk your listeners through the information on the slides as carefully as if
you were writing it out.
4) Present the
results
Be sure to stick to the important results, i.e. the ones that answer your question. Also be sure to translate
the results into English, no matter how clear they seem to you.
5) Explain how the
results do (or do not) answer the question:
Don't just say
"the results are as expected"; explain why the results are (or are not) as
expected. This may not seem necessary to you (especially if you explained point
2 properly) but remember that you have been thinking about this paper for a week
and your listeners haven't.
THINGS TO WATCH FOR
1. There is a
temptation to repeat everything in the paper non-selectively for fear of
omitting something important. This temptation should be avoided like the
plague. Decide what is important and LEAVE OUT the rest.
2. Don't be
hypercritical or super credulous. There is a tendency
to assume that either everything in print is true, or to assume that every
paper is full of mistakes (and it is your job is to point them out). Neither of
these assumptions is valid. So don't spend too much time talking up their
conclusions or listing your objections to their
methods, conclusions. etc. -- unless you are specifically asked to
evaluate their results. When you give a report, it is usually better to
emphasize the results, including how and why they got them, and not to focus
too much on the authors' interpretation of the results. The evaluation of data
is very important, but is often best left for other occasions.
* Note: These guidelines were written for a course in which
each oral report addressed one question. If you are giving a report on an
entire paper, or a series of experiments, then you can break the content down
and present it one question at a time, following the procedure outlined
above.
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