18. Reflections on my presentation

I am currently studying for a Certificate in Trainer Training - in other words, I am doing a qualification that will enable me to teach teachers. On Friday all 8 of the participants on the course - all of whom are teachers in the SU School of Languages - were asked to do 10-minute mini-presentations. We worked in pairs to choose two related articles on any aspect of teaching and learning, preferably ones that had some sort of research dimension. We could present individually or together within our pairs. The two presentations, along with questions at the end, were to last no longer than 25 minutes.

I was not at all satisfied with my performance. Firstly, although this project was assigned before the Bayram, because I went to Egypt for 5 days, I was unable to locate suitable articles until after I came back. It was much more difficult to find good articles than I had anticipated. My partner and I were not very enthusiastic about our initial choice of topic, andragogy, and I was unable to find any good research articles on it anyway. I finally came across two interesting articles on Freshmen students' conceptions of essay writing, and how student-teacher trust influences how students act on feedback comments. This was on Monday; the presentation was on Friday. Because my partner and I have very different teaching schedules, and because I also had two translations due during the week, we were forced to prepare separate presentations. I realised once again how poor my Powerpoint skills are, and how much better my students are at creating nice slides. We met up Friday morning just to briefly talk through our respective presentations.

I was strangely nervous during the presentation itself and I kept stuttering! I cannot understand why I felt this way; perhaps because I was presenting in front of my peers, rather than in front of my students. I realised that I should have perhaps made better notes; I had assumed I would just be able to talk off the top of my head. I have no idea about my timing, but I seemed to go for too long. No one asked questions at the end, which I found discouraging, although one teacher did say that my presentation had been very clear.

I know that I didn't put in as much effort as I would have done had it been assessed; I get motivated when the stakes are high, and I tend to get de-motivated when expectations are low.

I am writing this here because I felt a strong sense of empathy for all my brave students who did their presentations in a second or even third language; this is a psychological as well as an intellectual experience, and it made me appreciate your efforts even more. I was also reminded of how difficult it is to work with someone else.

It also made me realise that my April presentation at the biggest international conference for English teachers is going to be terrifying indeed, and I will need to do a lot of preparation if it's going to be successful!