Mini Presentations: How To

Purpose of a Mini Presentation

• The purpose of this mini presentation is to see how clear your research paper and question will be for your classmates, many of who *do not* have a background in your study area.

Mini Presentation Structure: 5min.

• Introduction (1~2 min.): Begin by introducing what you will cover in your research

paper. Describe the purpose of your research, its significance, and background information related to your topic.

• Research Question: (1 min.)

• Tentative Arguments (2 min) Describe how you plan to review previous literature and what arguments from the literature you will use to answer your research questions.

• Audio/Visual Aids may be used for the presentation.

Knowing Your Audience

How would you describe your major to:

What will be different?

What will be the same?

Effective Mini Presentation Tips

• 1. Know your audience: before giving a presentation know as much as possible about the interest and importance of the audience

• 2. Know your content: make sure you have a thorough understanding of the topic

• 3. Know your environment: room, technology

Knowing your Audience

• In preparing your speech you should gather information about your audience and their needs. What are they interested in? How much knowledge do they have about your topic? What do they already know?

• A well prepared speech given to the wrong

audience can have the same effect as a poorly prepared speech given to the correct audience.

Importance of Audience Analysis

• The more you know and understand about your audience and their needs, the better you can prepare your speech to assure that you meet their needs.

• Proper audience analysis will assure that you give the right speech to the right audience.

• The level and scope of content depends on to whom the presentation is intended.

Mini Presentation Audience Analysis

• Target Audience: Intelligent

graduate students who may not be familiar with your field.

• Fill out the “Audience Analysis : Who are my classmates ?” to know your

classmates better.

What is PT?

• Processability Theory (PT)– We learn a second language (L2) in steps– We first learn words: words build phrases:

phrases build sentences: simple sentences build compex sentences

– Makes some unusual predictions about what kind of mistakes language learners will make

• More errors in subject-verb agreement than in adjective-noun agreement

Why Russian?

• Russian has a complex grammar– three genders, six cases, free word order

• Russian has not been previous discussed in a PT framework– Most PT research has been on English,

German, Turkish and Japanese

• UIUC has many L2 Russian speakers, including me.

What kind of research should be done?

• Most PT studies focus on naturalistic data like interviews and free writing– These are hard to analyze and take time– Students may avoid hard structures!

• A grammar judgement task– Students read a short sentence and must

decide whether it is correct

What do I predict?

• Beginning students will have trouble with all morphology

• Intermediate students should have more trouble with nouns than with verbs

• Advanced students