1. Introduction

In this part of the library you will take a look at presentation skills from various angles. The first section deals with the introduction to the topic, so read on to find out more.

The MICASE section of the library is built around a sample presentation given by Richard Van Camp, a teacher at the University Language Centre. The main focus will be on words and expressions, which make a presentation run smoothly and help formulate your speech. The presentation, originally 25 minutes long, was cut into 5 sections each lasting about 2 minutes. It is worth noting, however, that this sample presentation is not the only way to go about it and that there are many other ways of giving a successful presentation.

Welcome to MICASE

Before moving on to the presentation and exercises, let's take a look at the MICASE corpus.

MICASE, the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English, is a collection of transcripts of spoken language recorded at the University of Michigan. There are two possible ways to search for a word or a phrase: you can either search or browse the corpus. The link underneath Edna will take you directly to the search option. Let's start with screenshots of MICASE at the Library Help Center.

Now you have an idea of how MICASE works and we can try out our first searches. Let's suppose that you want to see how the word research functions in a sentence. Open MICASE from the link underneath Edna and then follow these instructions:

• Type the word research in the 'word or phrase'-box.
• Let's suppose you want to see what you can do with research: type to do in the 'context word or phrase'-box and then set the proximity of the context word to 3 words to the left (left because the preposition and the verb precede the search word in normal sentence word order).
• Then choose the speaker attributes you wish to observe. We recommend that you set the native speaker status to American English. Then just hit the search button and see what you get. You can also find help from the screenshot on the right.
• When you wish to search phrases which contain two or more words, do it in the same manner as with the one-word seaches. Just type the phrase into the 'word or phrase box'. No quotation marks are needed. NOTE: it can be very difficult to search for long phrases in this corpus - so keep your search phrase simple and short!
  

Video clip 1: Introduction

For the first time around just watch the clip carefully. Then read the instructions to the exercises below, watch the clip again and answer the questions.

NOTE: If you feel like it, you can also read the transcript of the presentation.

Exercise A: Transitional devices

Transitional devices are like bridges between parts of your speech. In other words, they link your sentences and add flow to the paragraphs. There are several types of transitional devices and here is a table of some of the most commonly used ones.

Exercise B: Linking expressions

There are phrases and expressions that are commonly used, for example to introduce a topic or to show cause and effect, or simply to illustrate or clarify an idea. The following table gives a collection of such useful phrases. You can also find examples of the same expressions in the presentation clips.

Watch the clip and listen for the language items that fit these categories. Write the expressions into the appropriate boxes below.

Can you come up with more related expressions yourself? If you can, make searches in the corpus and see if you can find them there.

Now that we have got off to a good start with presentation skills and MICASE, you are ready to move on to the next section: Giving background .