By Hu Wo (Cuckoo’s Song)
IN our Yangon University of Education, presentations on the three major subjects of education _ Educational Theory, Educational Psychology, and Methodology _ are often made by students themselves, individually or in groups, before the class. So far as I am concerned, a presentation is an act of sharing what we have known well with others with the best of intentions, especially orally. By Oxford, a presentation is described as a way in which something is offered, shown or explained to others. On the other hand, according to Longman, a presentation is identified as a formal talk about a particular subject. Certainly, I am satisfied that any presentation must be a kind of useful art, and even that of fine art. Several good preparations should be carefully done beforehand in order to achieve a successful presentation for some educational subject. Such careful preparations to have been well done in advance may include academic, physical, spiritual, and emotional ones for a well-prepared presentation.
A student presenter can definitely read academic subjects, to begin with until he gets them right. Exceptionally speaking, some subject matter cannot be explained only by word of mouth; it will possibly be done with the aid of facial expressions, gestures, pictures, photos, charts, diagrams, tables, projectors or practicals if a presenter has got enough time to do so for an effective and efficient presentation. The pictures and other similar things may be obtained by creating on his own, going to the university library or searching on the internet. More importantly, the educational subject matter must be articulated with other examples, self-experiences, and general knowledge acquired from various books, being closely connected with real-life situations. In other words, every presenter must have read a lot apart from the educational subjects ahead. If he gives a presentation on only an educational theme, his classmate listeners will get bored with it very quickly for sure. Almost all of them are usually anxious to hear as many jokes as they can tell while being given the presentation. Even a student who is a mine of information about non-educational topics will be able to make just a proper presentation on education, linking up with those topics, with his eyes closed.
Perhaps a presenter’s style of clothing is the very first sight of listeners, following a sort of presentation. People tend to wear clothes for beauty, attention, respect, and legitimacy and so do they in a type of presentation. For my money, clothes can be said to be the third face of a person upon his physical appearance. In making a presentation, clothing should be inexpensive but adequate for a listener’s attention and respect only. Clothes have to be clean, clear and tidy, even though they are not as good as new ones. Personally speaking, suitable clothing can get an initial impression on listeners at the drop of a hat. Schoolboys should comb their hair neatly and schoolgirls’ hair needs to be tied back in a neat bow as well. Presenters probably put on make-up or whatever to an acceptable extent before a certain presentation. As far as I can see, some listeners like to pay attention to even what shoes presenters are wearing. Thus, the presenter had better choose to buy the shape and size of shoes that may suit them. Making themselves look good with clothing is not necessarily a mode of sight pollution for listeners, anyway.
Of course, it would be better for anyone to do presenting anything with more `cetana´, which means a form of love, any time. The more love he put into the presentation, the more popularity he will have won with the presentation among many classmates of his own age group. Actually, a presentation is a process in which something practically interesting or new for listeners is shared by a presenter with the aim of letting them know these facts. However, the presentation is neither the job of teaching children nor the task of just giving instructions. No doubt listeners will be bored with a presentation in the form of instruction to death at short notice. In addition to this self-awareness, presenters must never underestimate their listeners, whoever they are, that is not to bluff them by speculating the subject matter to be presented. For there are occasionally a few listeners who have already known that subject matter from A to Z turning up in the classroom. Plus, a presenter does not have to consider himself a better one in the art of presentation than his listeners at all, even if he is a brilliant orator. It is important that he is nearly always willing to be able to make up an off-the-cuff presentation perfectly.
Maybe there are different fears for everybody to have at least one each. Some are afraid of ghosts; others are scared of heights. Some are terrified of death; others are frightened of toads. Among these fears, standing in public or going onto a stage is supposed to be the most common one in the pit of the stomach by almost everybody. In order to be free from this fear, each presenter has got to do the exposure and practice classroom presentation whenever he is given a window of opportunity. The more times he has made presentations anywhere, the more proficient and confident he should become in the coming ones. Sceptical as listeners highly look of it, in reality even an expert on presentation might also suffer from presentation nerves after a fashion before a presentation. Standing on stage, needless to say is a pounding in one’s heart. Only after this has happened once or twice can presenters finally manage to keep emotional control over presentation-related negative feelings. To my eye, what someone wants to make any presentation in name only is by far worse than that he does nothing. Speaking as a former presenter, whichever presentation needs at least reading enough, thinking about listeners’ sound understanding of presenting ideas relative to education. Moreover, it is constantly driving a presenter to the core stressed and tired indeed. In spite of this, listeners’ applause is likely to become the heart desire of presenters-to-be.
Before a presentation, the above-mentioned preparations must be done as far as presenters could. When they start the presentation after they have finished the preparations, they must say hello to their listeners for a few minutes with a smile at first. They ought not to be standing still like a marble statue ahead of the listeners. Kinesthetic intelligence such as body language and sign language could be applied by them if necessary. Then, they should speak out the heading and objectives of a presentation to come as well as speak in a loud and clear voice where necessary. The presentation heading and objectives need to be both short and to the point. Presenters themselves will always still be very active in presenting their facts and figures with auto interest. Next, they can unquestionably make eye contact with all of their listeners one by one while presenting. All too often this gives the presenters a great opportunity to see whether or not the listeners show an interest in their presentation styles. Furthermore, eye contact absolutely helps presenters have more confidence in presentation skills. They shall, therefore, avoid staring at the sole listener or anything during the presentation. Some newcomers to the presentation try beginning a presentation with a few inconclusive questions, no matter who does. It matters that they must have found divergent answers to those questions to start with for this Q & A method of the presentation. Having a good sense of humour frequently breaks through that listeners seem tired either out of sheer boredom or due to a quite long presentation. In the longer term, those who give just an educational presentation without their external book-learning and experiential knowledge may have run into presentation difficulties early on every single time an essential presentation is made. After a presentation, a question-and-answer session is allowed by teachers very often. What is right is not wrong or vice versa. Nonetheless, divergent opinions and thoughts are barely easy to be determined which is right or wrong despite being of the pros and cons. That divergence should be moulded into a meeting of minds by students and teachers, depending on the present educational climate. Otherwise, the students are always arguing with each other over strong educational points of view without arriving at the best solution to education. Student presenters and listeners will pass over not only foul language but also disrespectful manners amongst themselves before, while and after presenting to one another.
In my experience, most students want to skip a class presentation if at all possible. Seldom do they have readiness for presentation _ they scan through even academic subjects themselves just by the time they are in the classroom, excluding a variety of other subject-related knowledge. They find it hard to share their presentation of education solely owing to their weak language speaking skills. In actual fact, it is somewhat okay for them to be able to present many a good subject of interest rather than their ability to speak languages. Whether or not student presenters have got any classroom presentations, they are able to study readily available educational or non-educational resource books for teachers in the library or on the Internet prior to presentations. They can also have held a rehearsal of the presentation from beginning to end all by themselves. They should have written down the words to be said literally on paper about future presentations as well. After presentations, teachers and student listeners will doubtless give them diverse feedback on the presentations, yet they must not answer them back if and when the feedback is negative. They have to think positive and big in relation to negative feedback, too. As the saying goes, practice makes flawless and fluent. In summary, continuous self-directed learning, reliability, validity, creativity, repeated presentation practices, and motivating activities of education are accurately on the road to classroom presentation.
