As you move further into your graduate program, you will likely begin to seek out opportunities for sharing your research in a public setting, most frequently at academic conferences. When presenting your work, you may be giving a talk on a topic you have previously written about, perhaps in a seminar paper or in one of your dissertation chapters. So, when preparing to present your work, you may have a piece of written material that will form the basis of your speech – congratulations! However, it is important to remember that writing with the intention of speaking is not the same as writing an essay meant to be consumed through reading, so you will probably need to do some substantial revision of your work in anticipation of presenting it at a conference. You should also think about the elements of presentation that go beyond the words you will speak. This guide will talk about the process of writing for speaking, and the related process of preparing to engage in the embodied act of speaking to a group.

Writing and Revising for Speaking

When crafting a talk, either from scratch or as a revision of a previous essay, keep in mind how different the experience of listening is from the process of reading. Human beings have a shorter period of focus when listening, and listeners do not have the opportunity to skim, slow down, or re-read text. As a result, your guiding principles in writing for speaking should be simplicity, directness, and clear signposting. These guidelines may feel totally at odds with your instincts since you are going to be speaking to a room full of professional colleagues – that environment may feel pretty high-stakes, and you may want to make yourself sound as impressive and scholarly as possible. So, the guideline of moving toward simplicity may not feel natural. But do not confuse simplifying with “dumbing down,” and do not confuse complex language with sophisticated thinking. Directness and concision are the marks of a researcher whose thought process has crystallized, and who understands how to communicate their ideas beyond their narrow subfield. In pursuit of direct, simplified revision for speaking, consider:

• Making a clear statement of your argument near the beginning of your presentation
• Previewing the direction of your argument by stating early on what the major parts of your presentation will be
• Re-stating central ideas at multiple points in your presentation (remember, your audience can’t go back and remind themselves, so you have to remind them!)
• Relying on a limited number of illustrative primary sources and cutting references to some of your secondary sources (the more voices and elements you introduce in your talk, the more complicated it is for listeners to understand the relationships between them)
• Breaking down long sentences into shorter sentences (this is particularly important because listeners cannot see complex punctuation markers)
• Defining important key terms and resisting other subfield-specific jargon that your audience will have varied familiarity with

When writing for speaking, you should also allow timing to act as a major guide for your process. You will have a strict number of minutes in which to give your presentation, and it’s actually very important that you come in under time so that you don’t eat into your fellow presenters’ allotted time. An imprecise rule of thumb is that 1 page of double-spaced text takes about 2 minutes to read aloud, so if you have 20 minutes for your talk, you may need to take a 30-page seminar paper (for instance) and cut it down to only 10 pages. If you are using a slide presentation, you can also use the guide of one slide per minute. With that in mind, the goal of simplification becomes even more important. What is the central, boiled-down idea in your writing? How can you keep that as your focus and let some of the other ideas go? Personally, I like to structure my conference talks with my topics in descending order of importance, so that when I find myself running out of time and getting the 2-minute warning from the panel moderator, I feel comfortable that I have said what’s most important and that I can skip to the end. When you are going through this process of major cutting, though, don’t despair! Keep a document with all of the material you cut out and read over it before you give your presentation. It’s likely that much of that cut material will become relevant when you’re responding to your audience in the Q&A.

In terms of the style of the writing itself, beyond making everything more concise and direct, think about interesting lecturers and speakers you’ve heard in the past. What made their style work so well? A few things to consider might be, first, structuring some or all of your talk in the form of a narrative. Stories are sometimes easier to follow than lists or logic-patterns. You could think about adding in some narrative by relating your own journey that brought you to your research. What got you interested? Humanizing your work a bit will draw audiences in. When describing abstract academic ideas, you might also consider working in some language that anchors the idea in a relatable example. Think: as a listener, would you rather hear an engineer relate the details of a mathematical formula, or would you prefer them to describe a scenario in which the formula would be used? If you feel comfortable doing so, you might also try to plan some unstructured moments for ad-libbing or asking questions of your audience. Having just one or two points in the presentation when you are not deeply engrossed in reading from the page can help you to connect with your listeners and wake them up a bit.

Finally, think about how you can make the physical document that you will have with you on the day as useful as possible to you as a reader. Remember that the pieces of paper you are creating will not be seen by anyone but you. How can they serve you best? You may want to increase the size of your font, write notes for yourself in the margins, or highlight the most important sentences so that you can see something like an outline on the page in front of you.

Preparing to Speak Aloud

Of course, though, speaking to an audience is a form of communication that goes beyond the writing! Speaking to a group is its own skill, one that is anchored in your physical body, and one that is connected to intense feelings of anxiety for many people. However, there is no reason to feel that you inherently are or are not “good at” public speaking – there are simple things you can do to prepare for the embodied aspect of presentation.

First – and you know this one – you need to practice aloud. Probably, you need to practice aloud a lot – at least three times, but probably more. It is no small feat to get your revised talk finished with enough time to practice, but make it a goal to do so. Practicing aloud will help you to familiarize yourself with the patterns of your sentences so you don’t get tripped up when reading them on the day of the conference. You should also time yourself when practicing aloud, and try to speak slowly, deliberately, and clearly during that timed run! The first time you read your talk out loud, you may find that you actually need to cut another page or two, and it’s important to find that out early. Practicing multiple times will also help you to start internalizing your talk a bit. Even if your plan is to read your essay word-for-word, internalizing its contents will allow you to take your eyes from the paper sometimes to look at your audience as you speak to them.

Preparing for embodied speaking also means taking care of your body on the day that you will speak. Be sure that you aren’t putting undue stress on yourself by depriving yourself of sleep, food, or water during the hectic days of conferencing. Dehydration and exhaustion can wreak havoc on your mental state, of course, but they can also affect your voice in a very noticeable way. Bring water with you and take sips as you speak!

An aspect of oral presentation that may be on your mind is the anxiety that can go along with speaking. If you are someone who experiences a lot of stress when speaking in public, the most important thing to know is that most people experience stress when speaking in public. The key to dealing with that stress is to accept it and not become anxious about the possibility that you will be anxious. In high pressure situations like public speaking, human beings often naturally enter a state of heightened bodily response, where heart rate increases and breathing becomes more rapid. A good strategy for dealing with that stress is to simply notice that it is happening and tell yourself that it is OK and normal that you are feeling stress. That in itself may calm you down. When beginning to speak, you can also try calming yourself down by making soft eye contact with just one audience member at a time, for a few seconds. This strategy helps to reduce your awareness of the whole group in front of you and to bring your communication back down to the level of conversation. Finally, it can help to get out of your head by paying attention to the feeling of your physical body as you speak. An easy way to do that is by taking a moment to notice your feet on the ground.

In terms of the act of speaking itself, just remember: your natural speaking voice is completely sufficient. Just make an attempt to speak slowly and to project. You might also consider how you can use your vocal presentation to help readers see your logic. Pauses communicate a shift in your ideas (something like a paragraph or section break), while a variation in your pitch and tone might signal that you’ve come to a central point. You can also use your body language to underscore important moments of your speech or indicate a shift in thought – perhaps by physically moving to a different location as you move from point to point. You should rehearse these embodied aspects of speaking during your practice runs as well. These elements of speaking rhetorically may feel a bit intangible and hard to plan for – if it helps to make things more concrete, you can watch some videos of effective speakers and try to adopt some of their techniques. The Bernard L. Schwartz Communication Institute at Baruch College has a website with a store of annotated videos of speeches, with notes pointing out their effective elements – take a look!

There are other elements of public speaking we do not address here, but that you should consider in your preparation. Below, we list a few of them with one quick tip and a resource that will give you fuller advice:

Effective visuals: Don’t pack your slides – use them to give short, guiding ideas and supplemental graphics, data, or quotations. See Amanda Miller for more advice

Accessibility: Bring printed copies of your slides for accessibility and be sure that you have high-contrast, readable text on them. See Allison Ravenhall for more advice

Working with technology: Get to your presentation room early and make sure everything works as you think it will! Have a backup plan if your technology doesn’t work! See the MLA Grads Blog for more advice

Engaging the audience in the Q&A: Write down questions as people ask them if they have multiple parts or are complicated. This will help you think through your response. Admit if you don’t know the answer to something. See the NCSU History Department for more advice

MORE RESOURCES

• Butler U, “Presenting with PowerPoint” gives helpful advice on how to interact with the slides you’ve created during your presentation.
• Coleman’s “A Speech Is Not an Essay” for Harvard Business Review discusses the differences between what makes for an effective piece of writing and what makes for an effective speech, emphasizing the rhetorical elements of both verbal and body language.
• Fassett & Nainby, A Student Workbook for Public Speaking offers an in-depth discussion of all elements of speech-making with students in mind, from topic selection to reflection practices after the speech is over.
• Kingsley’s “How to Overcome Fear of Public Speaking” is a video that captures some professional advice from the company Presence Training on reducing anxiety during public speaking.
• Miller’s “6 Dos and Don’ts for Next-Level Slides” is a guide from the perspective of TED talk presenters on how to create the most effective visuals for your slide presentation.
• The MLA Grads Blog, in “Tips for Conference Presentations”, provides conferencing advice from the perspective of fellow graduate students about what it will be like to go through the entire conferencing process.
• The NCSU Department of History, “Tips for Presenting Conference Papers”, gives a strong perspective on what an academic conference presentation needs to do to satisfy the expectations of its genre and setting.
• Purdue’s “Tips for Successful Conference Presentations” is a set of slides that gives advice not only on presenting but also on the different formats of presentation you might work within as well as the process of applying for conferences. It also has particularly helpful advice on the Q&A.
• Ravenhall, “Inclusive Design for Accessible Presentations” gives a wide range of advice on how to make your presentation accessible for all audience members, from the design of your slides to the kinds of language you are using to timing.