Presentation Guidelines

(from faculty.uwstout.edu/maylathb/ > now 404)

You will be expected to give one oral presentation in this class. Read the following guidelines carefully, and ask me about any item you don't understand. Use the guidelines to prepare your oral presentation and the handout that must accompany it.

1. Consult CMS, and other handbooks that the library or I can lend you, for information on the topic that you are assigned in class. Read all the material that you can obtain, and compare these materials for clarity and organization. Decide which elements are essential to understanding your topic and how these elements might best be arranged in your oral presentation and the accompanying handout.

2. Prepare a ~10 minute oral presentation and a typed handout that allows you to accomplish the following tasks:

(1 min.) a. Define your topic in language that is as free of linguistic jargon as possible.

(3 min.) b. Identify and explain the major points that must be understood in order to comprehend your topic.

(3-5 min.) c. Provide three or four examples (extracted from your own writing, the writing of your colleagues, or textbooks from other classes—not copied from CMS or a handbook) that illustrate each of the major points you wish to make about your topic.

(5 min.) d. Produce a few practice sentences or examples (4-5) with which the class members can work to increase their proficiency with your topic. If these sentences or examples are from sources, you must cite them.

I will grade your handout for accuracy, completeness, usability, and mechanical correctness. Completeness includes citing any sources you've used.

Possible Presentation Topics
Minimizing nominalizations: turning verbs turned into nouns back into verbs
Word choice: connotation vs. denotation
Avoiding sexist language
Subordinating and coordinating conjunctions
Misplaced or dangling modifiers
Subject-verb agreement
Pronoun-antecedent agreement
Identifying and correcting comma splices/fused sentences
Identifying and correcting sentence fragments
Strategies for revising wordy sentences
Shifts in tense
Shifts in mood and voice
Parallelism (and predication)
Proper uses of comma
Eliminating unnecessary commas
Correct use of semicolon
Correct use of colon
'Who' and 'whom,' 'that' and 'which'
Correct usage and forms of transitive and intransitive verb pairs: 'Lie' and 'lay,' 'sit' and 'set,' 'rise' and 'raise'
Creating transitions between paragraphs
Strategies for handling numbers in text
Strategies for handling acronyms