ACADEMIC

SPEAKING
Prof. Dr. Drs. Mashadi Said, Dip. AppL.Ling., M.Pd
 A. Introduction
1. What is Academic
Speaking?

A process of speaking to a group of

people in a structured and
deliberate manner to inform and to
influence
(what do I want my audience to
know and to do
 2. Creating Great Slides

Outlines Background

Slide structure Graphs

Tips to be
covered
Fonts Spelling and
grammar

Color Conclusion
Outline

1 2 3

Make your 1st or Follow the order of Only place main points
2nd slide an outline your outline for the on the outline slide
of your rest of the
presentation presentation Ex: Use the titles of each
slide as main points
Ex: previous slide
 Slide Structure – Good

• Use 1-2 slides per minute of • Write in point form, not

your presentation complete sentences

• Avoid wordiness: use key • Include 4-5 points per slide

words and phrases only
Slide Structure - Bad

This page contains too many words for a presentation

slide. It is not written in point form, making it
difficult both for your audience to read and for you to
present each point. Although there are exactly the
same number of points on this slide as the previous
slide, it looks much more complicated. In short, your
audience will spend too much time trying to read this
paragraph instead of listening to you.
Fonts - Good

Use different size fonts for main

points and secondary points

Use at least an 28-point Use a standard font like

font Times New Roman or
Arial
 Fonts - Bad

CAPITALIZE ONLY WHEN

NECESSARY. IT IS
DIFFICULT TO READ

If you use a small font, Don’t use a

your audience won’t complicated font
be able to read what
you have written
 Colour - Good
• Use a colour of font that contrasts sharply with the
background
– Ex: blue font on white background
• Use colour to reinforce the logic of your structure
– Ex: light blue title and dark blue text
• Use colour to emphasize a point
– But only use this occasionally
 Colour - Bad
• Using a font colour that does not contrast with the
background colour is hard to read
• Using colour for decoration is distracting and annoying.
• Using a different colour for each point is unnecessary
– Using a different colour for secondary points is also
unnecessary
• Trying to be creative can also be bad
Use backgrounds such as this Background -
one that are attractive but
simple Good

Use backgrounds which are

light
 Background – Bad
• Avoid backgrounds that are distracting or difficult to
read from
• Always be consistent with the background that you
use
 Graphs - Good

Items Sold in First Quarter of 2002

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Blue Balls
50
Red Balls
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10
0
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 Graphs - Bad

100

90
90

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Blue Balls
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Red Balls

38.6
40
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30.6 31.6
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20.4 20.4
20

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January February March April
Spelling and Grammar

Proof your slides for:

• speling mistakes
If English is not your first
• the use of of repeated words language, please have
• grammatical errors you someone else check your
might have make presentation!
All the great speakers
were bad speakers once
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thank you