In philosophy it is not just in written form that ideas are presented; oral presentation is just as common and important. Presenting philosophical ideas usually precedes a discussion, with questions from the audience and answers from the speaker. Presenting philosophical ideas requires different skills, different use of language, and different standards of analysis. In this section, you read more about how to present effectively and how to use a visual aid.

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Structure and visual aids

Overview

Preparation: what do you want to achieve?

Contextualizing the topic

It is obvious that you need to know what you are going to say in a presentation. But great presenters go a step further: they make sure they have a secure command on the topic. They are familiar with all the elements of a topic, anticipate questions, and provide illuminating answers. This does not mean you have to become an expert on all related matters; rather it means understanding your topic in a larger context and understanding the debates that the topic is involved in. So think about the larger context first, and make sure you anticipate the questions your presentation will raise. You don’t need to cover all those questions during the presentation: you can leave some for the questions and discussion afterwards.

Know your audience

The most important aspect to pay attention to concerning your audience is their background knowledge. You can easily ‘lose’ your audience when they do not understand fully what you are talking about. As a bachelor’s student, you will likely be presenting for your peers, so your level of background knowledge is a good indicator of the audience’s level of background knowledge. But if you decide to present on a more specific, less familiar topic, you have to take into account that your audience won’t know certain authors or concepts. If you present for an audience outside of the classroom, you need to take into consideration that they may have a completely different educational background.

Finding focus

If you give a presentation on a certain topic or paper, there is no need to cover all of the paper’s contents and sub-topics. Ask yourself what the main idea or takeaway message is, and structure your presentation around it. You don’t have to consider all the arguments in favour or offer answers to all possible counter-arguments. Focus on the core message, and offer the most important reasons and arguments in support only. Better to discuss a few lines of thought in-depth, than aim for completeness.

The practice of public speaking

The better you know your presentation beforehand, the more confident and relaxed you will be when giving it. You shouldn’t try to write out and memorise an entire presentation. Rather than taking a full text with you, use flashcards and only write down the main points, or keywords, of your presentation. The flashcards should be used to jolt your memory when needed.

To keep your audience engaged, it is very important to make eye contact with them. If you find this difficult, just look in the audience’s general direction, or to someone who looks like they are engaged/interested – this is a good confidence boost!

Tip: see if you can get your friend, partner or family member to listen to your presentation. This will simulate what it is like to present it in front of an audience. Ask them to pay attention to your body language. You want to find a middle way between standing too still and moving too much.

Practice your body language:

Stand firmly on both legs, should width, facing forward
Relax your shoulders
Remember not to turn your back to the audience, and not to talk to your slides on the wall
Use of arm gestures is good; though try to avoid being too wild with this as it might be distracting. A rule of thumb: paint a square in front of you, shoulder width and in between chin and hips. That’s the space for your hands to move in, as you see fit
Claim the space, so avoid standing behind a table or in a corner of the room

Here’s a great video about body language when giving a presentation.

Take care to speak clearly and loudly, so that the audience at the back can hear you. Also, remind yourself throughout to speak slowly. You already know what you are going to say and know the arguments inside out; for your audience everything is new, so they need time to process the information and think about it. In between sections, leave small pauses for people to think and gather their thoughts, before moving on. You are more likely to rush than to go too slow.

When you practice, monitor the duration of your presentation. It should not exceed or be much shorter than your goal time, which will nearly always be specified beforehand by the instructor or event organizer. Make sure to take into account adequate speed (roughly 150 words a minute) and time to leave small.

Finally, do not panic when you have forgotten to say something. If it is only necessary to make your broader point, more detailed points can always come to it at a later time. If you momentarily forget what you were supposed to say, this is completely fine; take a deep breath, glance at your notes, flashcards or slides and from there you can pick things up again. Your audience will barely notice, and they might welcome a moment of reflection.

Structure and visual aids: how are you going to achieve your goals?

Attention grabber

To capture your audience’s interest, start your presentation with an attention grabber. This could be something funny, interesting or shocking having to do with the topic of your presentation.

A common example is to start the presentation with a question to the audience: this wakes up the audience, gets them to think about your topic, and makes them more open to listening to what you have to tell. Do give them a moment to think and respond.

Other examples of attention-grabbing might be:

A bold statement at the start of a talk about euthanasia such as “not all killers deserve to be punished.”
An anecdote of something that happened to you; usually humorous (“So, I walked into a bar the other day…”)
A joke. It’s okay it’s a bit cheesy; jokes are a great way to break the ice and make people feel comfortable. (How many Marxists does it take to change a lightbulb? None. The lightbulb contains the seeds of its own revolution.)
(Introducing a talk on free will) “So… how many of you came to this lecture out of your own free will?”
A hypothetical situation – “imagine if…”
Relate to your audience – “who hasn’t…”; “I’m sure you all know the feeling of…”
A (historical) cartoon containing elements you can describe or explain

See here and here for more examples of attention-grabbing:

Visual aids

Presentations can be improved by using aids such as PowerPoint, handouts, or props. If done well, these aids will help the audience understand and focus on the content; if done poorly, they only distract and make your audience neither listen nor read. (Your instructor or event organizer might specify which kind of visual aid is mandatory or preferred).

In academic presentations, two types of visual aids are generally used: digital slides (such as a Powerpoint/Prezi) and physical handouts. Although their content is roughly similar, they differ in use. In a classroom setting, slides might be useful in keeping your classmates engaged, especially if they have lots of presentations to listen to back-to-back. However, if they do not add anything that a handout is not able to provide, they might be distracting! If you are presenting at a conference a handout might be more suitable as you can provide your audience with a tangible bit of information about your project, topic of study and contact information. Handouts are also a great tool in Q&A discussions since you as well as your audience can refer to definitions, steps in your argument or crucial quotations.

Slides

Slides are a helpful tool for presentations. This is especially the case if your presentation incorporates infographics, videos, or telling images. It can also be used to demarcate the different steps of your presentation. Here follow several do’s and don’t’s:

Do’s:

Use slides to grab the audience’s attention: if you do this correctly, the audience will be taken drawn in again: it may be amusing, compelling, or induce some kind of ‘light’ emotional experience. Again, this should not distract from the content, but be an addition to it. Pictures are often much more helpful than text.
Use slides for relevant information: slides can be used to visually support the steps in your presentation. But some parts of the presentation can be better helped with infographics or images. If you want to show the evolution of nation-states in Europe from 1648 onwards, using maps to indicate the development is more helpful than text.
Use words, not full sentences: when you use text to help structure the presentation, use keywords or short (incomplete) sentences only. When you put a full sentence on the slide, the audience has to stop listening to read it, and will still struggle. Should you decide to put a full sentence on the slide, you must either read it out or give the audience the time to read it.
Guide the audience through citations. If you use text or quotations, either pause for a minute to let the audience read the citation by themselves, or read it aloud (and take the time to allow the audience to let the information sink in).

Don’ts:

Don’t have a “table of contents” slide. This is not necessary for a short presentation; you have to make the structure of your talk clear by the use of language such as “to start…”; “before moving onto the theory’s implications, I will go over…”; “to conclude…”
Don’t use too much text: if you use too much, the audience will be reading the PowerPoint instead of listening to you. A good visual presentation contains not only (short bursts of) text but also pictures, and other types of infographics. There is a rule of thumb known as the “2.4.8 rule:” stick to a maximum of two minutes per slide; four bullet points per slide; and eight words per bullet point. See https://www.slidexpress.com/cracking-the-2-4-8-rule/ for an example of this strategy.
Don’t use too many slides: slides help outline important steps in your presentation. They shouldn’t be used to repeat each point you want to make. Stick to a maximum of 2-3 slides per minute.
Don’t include distracting information. You want your slides to contribute positively to what you are saying. Scrap anything that may be distracting rather than engaging.

Handout

The advantage of handouts over slides is that the audience can look back at the material during and after the presentation. Handouts can contain more text, as the audience is not expected to read everything during the presentation. The audience can also write comments and questions on the handout, precisely on the topic or claim they wish to focus on (without having to recapitulate them from memory). A handout is also an item that listeners can take with them, so important quotations and a bibliography can be shared without the listener having to flick back and forth between slides.

Do’s:

Add details: add your name, date, the title of the talk and context of the talk at the top of the page.
Number every item on the handout so that you can easily direct your audience to a relevant section, quotation or argument. The points on the handout should be a blueprint of the structure of the presentation.
Point to the handout (number) when you want the audience to look at something (an argument, a citation, a graph), then draw the attention back to yourself as the speaker.
State definitions of technical terms clearly on the handout, so the reader can always return to them during or after the presentation.
Schematically summarize arguments. You can explain and contextualise an argument in your presentation. The handout only requires a short, schematic form. It serves only as a tool for the discussion afterwards (and perhaps a reminder for yourself as presenter)
Keep it short: one page for a 20-minute presentation should normally suffice.
Keep it tidy: use the same font, comfortable spacing and wide margins. It should be pleasant to the eye, instantly clear what an entry is supposed to give and not become a puzzle in its own right.

Don’ts

Your handout shouldn’t be a transcript: the handout offers support for the presentation; it doesn’t need to contain the full text or every aspect of the presentation. Leave plenty to say.
Don’t include a table of contents: the handout already shows the structure of the presentation, so don’t add a separate table of contents.
Don’t use full sentences: the audience needs to be able to read parts during and after the presentation, so keep the sentences as short and to the point as possible.
Don’t add pictures: tables and graphs are fine but pictures on the handout (contrary to slides) can distract.

Overview

Familiarize yourself with the (broader) topic of your presentation.

Take into account the audience’s background knowledge.

Less is more! Aim to provide depth into a topic, rather than quantity.

Practice your presentation:

speak clearly, slowly and at an appropriate volume
look at your audience; try not to read off a piece of paper
be mindful of your body language

Take time constraints into account.

Decide in advance which visual aids will best help you achieve your goals:

slides should only be used if they add something to your presentation; the default is a handout
stick to around four bullet points per slide and eight words per bullet point
do not include any information that is distracting from your main argument