PROCESS

The Creation of my Oral Presentation

I was to create an "Ignite" style oral presentation for my CAT125 course, and after much thought, I chose to relate it to the topic featured in my online project. An "Ignite" style presentation is specific to 20 Powerpoint slides with an automatic slide advancement of 15 seconds each. In total, the presentation should be five minutes. Since I recently returned from my semester abroad in Hong Kong, I felt this would be my area of expertise, and a topic that I would be passionate to present. My goal was to persuade my audience (my classmates, TA's, and Professor) to choose Hong Kong as a Study Abroad destination. The purpose of this presentation was to communicate my message effectively through use of rhetorical and public speaking strategies to positively influence them to take action. I did this through presenting facts and sharing my personal experiences to introduce Hong Kong to my audience.

The Content

I began the process of this project by writing a script of my presentation. Since I was on a five-minute time constraint, I had to make sure that every piece of content was a good enough reason that would encourage my audience to go to Hong Kong. To be more credible, I did research on the city in addition to my own knowledge of the topic. The structure of my presentation included an introduction where I presented my argument followed by multiple points to support that claim. These points included information on Hong Kong's ranking in Best Places to Visit in Asia by U.S. News & World Report, and World's Most Expensive Billionaire Cities by Forbes. I talked about the student aspect, showing pictures of the university dorms and emphasizing that campus housing is extremely cheap and affordable. I presented rankings of the top three universities in Hong Kong to promote the prestige of the academic programs there. The university I attended is the second best in the city. These schools were so great because courses were taught in Cantonese, Mandarin, and English, so you can survive by just knowing English!

In addition to its affordable campus housing, food was super cheap, so I talked a great deal about the food there. Two popular activities are eating Sui Yeh, which is midnight street food, and eating Tong Sui, which is fruity and milky dessert. I thought it would be persuasive to compare the cheap and efficient subway transportation system in Hong Kong with the slow public transportation that we have in San Diego. The most exciting part of my presentation was when I described all the fun activities that would appeal to college students. These included partying in Lan Kwai Fong, lounging at skybars, roofing the city's skyscrapers, riding on a junk boat, and hiking at nearby islands. I ended my presentation by describing the superb location of Hong Kong. It's very central for travels in Asia, so I made sure to show a map so that people have a visual of the surrounding countries. I tied everything about Hong Kong back to Study Abroad, and concluded with a call to action for students to study abroad in this fine city. If people are interested in studying abroad or would like to learn more about my own experiences, they can check out my online portfolio (here) to find useful links and my video-blog series where I filmed all my fun travel experiences.

The Images & Design Concept

To make my Powerpoint presentation as personal as possible, most of the images that I used were photos that I personally took during my trip. This was great because they were high quality images that didn't give off a generic look like what stock photos would do. I was seen in at least nine of the photos on my slides, so it really proved that I did have that experience. I listed the source on the bottom of the slide for images that did not belong to me. I tried to avoid using a lot of text on the Powerpoint slide, and instead put one or two images. I made this layout consistent throughout my whole presentation. I wanted the audience to focus their attention on me, the speaker, as opposed to reading text on the screen. Most of the slides, but not all, had a caption or header in the font called Impact. I selected the background of the slides to be white so that it could better contrast with the vibrant photos.

The Drafting & Rehearsing of the Presentation

After completing the script for my presentation, came the endless hours of memorizing and rehearsing the presentation. I perform speeches better by writing out my entire speech and then memorizing it. Because of the nature of this presentation, I preferred not to carry notecards with me, so memorizing it and being well versed with my topic so that it comes naturally, was important. As I rehearsed, I played the Powerpoint on my laptop so that I could practice with the slides automatically transitioning. This helped me make the timing of the script and the slides match. At times, the slide transitioned to the next slide before I could finish speaking, so it was a bit strange that the next image on the screen did not make sense with what I was saying. To fix this problem, I re-ordered some of the content and worked on specific sentences to transition the topic of one slide to the next. By doing so, it made my presentation go much smoother regardless if I was a little off on the timing. During the drafting and the rehearsing process I consulted with many of my peers to get an idea of what they would like to hear. I asked other Study Abroad students what they liked best about studying in Hong Kong. I asked prospective students what kinds of questions they would have about the city. I also met with my Teaching Assistant (TA), Jose (pictured left) to get feedback on my presentation and progress. The one-to-one meeting was helpful in reinforcing what I needed to improve on, and I was grateful to receive reassurance on my work and progress. My TA held a practice day where everyone in my section class presented one minute of their presentation to the section. I thought this was a brilliant way to get a feel of what the final presentation would be like. I had to come ready with the Powerpoint on my laptop, and be prepared for any technological problems. We gave each other a bit of feedback and this practice helped me realize what I could do differently for the final presentation. The final presentation to my section went really well! It got selected to be presented in front of the entire lecture of students in CAT125, which made me see my performance in the presentation to my section as a practice for the presentation to the entire lecture hall of students. I wanted to make my last performance the best, so I watched a recording of my presentation over and over again to figure out what I needed to improve on and what strategies worked nicely.

My Rhetorical & Public Speaking Strategies

Use of rhetorical and public speaking strategies are what makes a presentation powerful and compelling. I used the following rhetorical and public speaking strategies to better engage my audience.

Rhetorical question - It had an effect to stimulate the listener's mind, but it doesn't necessarily need an answer.
Asyndeton - There were many times when I spoke without using conjunctions such as 'and' between successive phrases, and this had an engaging effect on the audience.
Distinctio - I used this rhetorical device to elaborate on the meaning of a phrase so that the audience would hear the emphasis and clearly understand what I meant.
Expletive - When I wanted to emphasize an important word or phrase, I used an expletive to interrupt my normal tone or speech.
Story-telling - I shared my own experiences in Hong Kong to highlight main points.
Facials - I tried my best to keep smiling and provide eye contact to every part of the room.
Posture - I tried to keep a comfortable posture by relaxing my shoulders and slowly pacing back and forth from time to time. Moving to different spots on the stage was helpful for me to make eye contact with students in different areas of the lecture hall. Being active made me feel more confident.
Gestures - I used hand gestures to keep my presentation engaging, and even pointed at the screen a couple of times.
Humor - I tried my best to incorporate a bit of humor in my presentation to make the audience laugh so I knew that they were actively engaged.
Ethos, Logos, and Pathos -I used all three of these strategies to establish my credibility and to appeal to my audience. I provided facts from credible sources and cited them at the end of my presentation. I used pathos by pulling in my own experiences to show the audience that this can happen for them too.