Presentations were one of the points of my high school education. Hence, Goldberg’s writing resonates with me as I have always enjoyed presenting. To be perfectly honest I was never really given that much opportunity to practice making speeches except for perhaps one or two times in elementary schoo. Hence, powerpoints have always been my regular mode of operation. My memories of speeches during elementary school and their relative effectiveness revolve around memorizing an inordinate amount of text so I would not be glaring at note cards for the entire presentation then finding the speech to be a dry boring affair once given.
As the number of presentations I have done has increased I’ve noticed a few things I’m decent at and some I can improve while presenting. While I convey emotion and enthusiasm fairly well throughout all of my presentations, I find that often if I am especially nervous about a particular presentation I am liable to take refuge in the slide. I will only look at the prompts I have on the slide (similar to Goldberg’s idea of using the slide as a note card) but never take the time to look back at the audience. I my propensity to do this is based off of whether I am nervous as well as my grasp of the material I am presenting (obviously material that I am more comfortable with requires less prompting from the slide).
One other thing I find I need to be more conscious of in my presentations is taking the audience into account. I often find myself ignoring the audience I am presenting to completely and simply presenting the subject to the extent of my knowledge. While I did get to hone this skill in the last year of high school with various presentations to elementary aged children, I think I could use more practice with this especially with audiences that have a less defined difference than simply age.
