Key terms (part 1)

Key terms
Conference
Congress
Symposium
Debate
Forum
Keynote Vs Plenary
Meeting
Poster Session

1 Why is it important for you to give presentations at international
conferences?
2 I s merely attending a conference (i.e. without actually presenting) useful for your career?
3 Which is more important: your slides or how you explain them?
4 What kinds of presentations do you like to see?
5 What typical faults do you notice in other people's presentations? Do you
personally have the same faults?
6 Is being a good presenter an innate talent or can you learn to give better
presentations?

Good presentations: typical features
Audiences from all parts of the world appreciate presentations that:
• are professional and are delivered by someone who is credible and confident
• look like they were prepared specifically for us and make it immediately clear
why we should be interested
• have clear slides, with minimal detail and helpful and/or entertaining images
• tell us interesting, curious, and counterintuitive things
• don’t make us work too hard to follow what is being said—two or three main
points, lots of examples, and not too much theory
• are delivered in a friendly, enthusiastic, and relatively informal way
entertain us and interact with us

Bad presentations: typical features
No audience will be pleased to attend a presentation where the speaker:
has clearly not practiced the presentation
has no clear introduction, a confused structure, and no conclusions
appears to be talking to himself/herself rather than engaging with the audience
reads the slides
has a series of similar slides full of text and diagrams
relies on animations
fails to address the audience’s interest and only sees things from his/her point of
view is too technical, too detailed
speaks too fast, speaks with a monotone, speaks for too long
shows little interest in his/her topic