How should we teach presentational talk?

by Alan Howe
Image created with DALL-E by ChatGPT

The unsettling rite of passage

“According to most studies, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.”[1]

“Stop forcing students to present in front of the class and give them a choice not to.”[2]

For some (many?) people, having to speak in public sends shivers down the spine. Many school students, adults in education or employment, and those who deliver speeches at weddings and funerals will be familiar with this. Giving a presentation to your class in a rite of passage that many secondary students are extremely anxious about, and often devise ingenious ways of avoiding.

Yet the world of business and employment is full of testimony that being able to ‘command the room’ through talk is vital for achieving success. I’ve just googled ‘giving a presentation’ and spent half an hour skimming numerous websites to get a flavour of what’s on offer. They are chock full of guidance, advice, consultancy offers and positive testimony about how to be a persuasive, confident, assured speaker. Maybe it’s just the sample I looked at, but there is an ‘image’ of the successful presenter that jumps out at you: super-relaxed, smiling, sharply attired, ‘corporate’. Even the school versions show students who appear to already exude these characteristics.

The argument against requiring students to do ‘presentations’

Some versions of the plethora of websites offering guidance (often at a price) are more useful than others, but most suggest that getting better at presentations is mainly a matter of watching some good models and then mastering a few tried and tested techniques. I’m not so sure. I suspect there are deep-seated reasons for why speaking in public is a barrier to many. Writing the requirement to do presentations into curriculum plans and then providing some time for practice may not be enough.

And then there’s the plea from the student blogger quoted above. Why make it compulsory? Why not give students the choice to opt out of a situation that at best they feel bad about and at worst could be harmful to their mental health? What’s so special about speaking about your recent assignment/project/ hobby to your class or in assembly, that everyone should be forced to endure doing it? Those who are already confident, conceited, or passionate enough to shout their views from the rooftops can do so – but please leave the rest of us to do the listening!

Back-stage versus front-stage talk

Or so the argument against ‘presenting’ goes. As will become clear, I don’t subscribe to this negative view of young people’s capabilities. Nor do I believe that removing the source of the anxiety is the answer. Instead, we ought to take on the challenge of teaching students in ways that help them to find their public voices and experience the satisfaction and self-esteem that accompanies speaking ‘up and out’. We owe it to all, including the shy, nervous, diffident ones, to help them to opt in. We also owe it to the over-confident, verbose ones to learn how to better meet the needs and interests of their listeners.

In thinking about this, I’ve found it helpful to reflect on the differences between ‘exploratory’ and ‘presentational’ talk based on work carried out by Douglas Barnes in the 1970s and 80s.[3]

Exploratory talk is where attention is on constructing ideas, trying them out, ‘thinking aloud’… usually in collaboration with others. Neil Mercer’s definition captures its essential features:

“We engage critically but constructively with each other’s ideas. Statements and suggestions are offered for joint consideration. These may be challenged and counter-challenged, but challenges are justified and alternative hypotheses are offered. All actively participate, and opinions are sought and considered before decisions are jointly made. In exploratory talk knowledge is made more publicly accountable and reasoning is more visible in the talk.”[4]

Language is being used as an instrument of learning, rather than to communicate what has been learned. There is less a sense of ‘audience’ and far more one of sharing together, of overlapping voices in dialogue rather than solo ones. It’s what Barnes called ‘working on your understanding through talk’. This type of talk is largely free from the anxieties that many feel when asked to ‘go public’ with what they think, believe or know.

In presentational talk, the emphasis is on talking to an audience. This requires combining the purpose for talking with an understanding of the nature and needs of listeners. Audiences may range from small to large, from comfortable to ‘intimidating’, from familiar to unfamiliar and so on. Another variable is the level of interaction: some presentational talk contexts are interactive, where the audience is expected engage with the speaker; in other situations, the role of the audience is to listen attentively and silently. All of these variables influence the way that we present. A crucial difference between exploratory and presentational talk, then, is the much more public nature of presenting. One commentator explains that there is a psychological aspect to this:

“Presenting… consists of interaction which establishes each participant as a unique and separate identity. It is a process in which the self-boundaries of each participant remain intact.”[5]

It might be helpful to think of the differences between these two broad types of talk by using a dramatic metaphor. Exploratory talk is ‘backstage’ talk: not intended for anyone but the participants, and by its nature ‘messy’, uncertain, full of stops and starts, reformulations and redirections, open to take in other points of view and perspectives. Presentational talk is ‘front stage’ talk: directed towards others, shaped and polished for effect, rehearsed and controlled. The presentation is not only of ideas or content, but also of one’s self. We open ourselves to the scrutiny of others. It is far more ‘exposing’ which may be why many instinctively fear talking in public.

How should we teach presentational talk?

What might this all mean, then, for how we might go about teaching students to present their ideas? To begin with, we should guard against adopting too narrow a definition of a ‘presentation’. At one end of the spectrum are speeches of well-practised oratory, such as TED talks; at the other, the many less formal situations in which the clear, assured expression of what we think, feel or know is still important. For instance: arguing for your point of view; cross-questioning a witness or another speaker; explaining to one other person how to go about a task… and so on. All of these require the speaker to be aware of the need to speak with clarity and control over content, and a clear eye on the need to influence or inform others. The linguist Gillian Brown makes a useful distinction between ’listener-oriented talk’ and ‘message-oriented talk’. In the latter the emphasis is on trying to affect the listener’s state of knowledge in some way. She explains that:

“There are times in a complexly structured, technologically developed, literate society when it is necessary to be able to produce a clear description, a straightforward narrative, or a complicated argument laying out pros and cons. There are times when we need to be able to pack information efficiently, and to use the structural resources of the language to make the meaning clear… [This] is a skill that the majority of the population does not acquire without a good deal of help… It is a skill that most children are going to have to acquire in school, if they acquire it at all.”[6]

Incremental progress

Students who may be unfamiliar with the linguistic and cognitive demands of conveying ideas or information cogently, clearly and engagingly, can be taught to do so incrementally. Their public voices can be nurtured in classrooms where there is respect for others’ views and tolerance of difference. Students can learn to elaborate their thinking, or to shape a thought so that it is expressed with authority, through dialogue, in situations where the emphasis is on small steps. Teachers have a crucial role here: to encourage and ‘scaffold’ elaborations and explanations and to ensure that other students listen and respond positively. To use another metaphor: rather than throw them in at the deep end to see who can swim and who can’t, we should provide students with linguistic armbands and provision of shallower social and emotional waters. Douglas Barnes again offers some clear advice:

“Classroom learning requires a full range of uses of language, from language for exploration at one extreme and language for a strange audience at the other. The former emphasis the ordering of knowledge for oneself and the latter emphasises the ordering of knowledge for others… if they are used together each strengthens the other.”

The ‘ordering of knowledge’ for self, and then others, is also what links learning to use talk for different purposes with the ‘knowledge curriculum’. Telling others what you know, think and believe, is a powerful way of consolidating and re-affirming what you are learning for yourself.

This is challenging oracy work for teachers and for students and there are risks involved. There is a danger in expecting students ‘to have arrived without having travelled’. We risk saddling students with the possibility of failure if we don’t provide plenty of time for exploratory talk and opportunities to rehearse, take feedback and adjust their performance before presenting their ideas to others. Students will benefit from practising and presenting in smaller groups, for a limited amount of time, with an easy task so that attention can be directed to delivery rather than content. All of these adjustments will lower the degree of ‘communicative stress’ that public speaking contexts usually offer. They also need to have opportunities to learn from, emulate and analyse models of this type of talk – both from highly skilled speakers and from those still learning.

The importance of listening

Let’s not forget listening here as well. Whilst we would want to focus on teaching students to present with a sense of how to select content, plan and organise their ideas, to think about how to convey them and how to engage an audience, we shouldn’t neglect teaching the skills needed to listen with attention and engagement. There are important possibilities in teaching presentational talk to also teach active listening.

The importance of authentic assessment

Students may equate presentations with being assessed, being judged (by their peers as well as their teachers) – which can create the desire to fly from the threat rather than take it on. Decoupling ‘learning to present’ from over-zealous assessment will help, as will emphasising in feedback the level of interest generated, and which ideas landed powerfully, rather than placing too much attention on the forms of language. Again, we can turn to Douglas Barnes for guidance:

‘It is at the level of content, situation and purpose that greater reflective awareness is most likely to influence pupils’ language behaviour, so it is to these levels that the teaching of oracy should initially be addressed… we should look critically at any tendency to isolate spoken language from the topics and content in which it is used.’[7]

There is also a risk of presentational tasks being inauthentic – that students do for our purposes, rather than something that smacks of the real world of talk, of interaction and action. Creating audiences who are not ‘in the know’, and who therefore are more likely to be interested in what they are hearing, is critical. If, for example, we ask students to present their ideas or information to listeners who have studied the same material, the task is immediately inauthentic. Our aim ought to be to enable them to feel the buzz that comes from sensing that your audience finds what you have to say interesting or useful, which makes their language grow in extent and range as a result. Confidence breeds competence. It’s about enabling students to feel that they are ‘experts’ and to step up to share that expertise with others.

The importance of authentic voices

And what about matters of ‘register’ and ‘formality’? If we only provide students with models (and therefore expectations) of adult Standard English speakers from particular backgrounds there is a risk that many will perceive only too clearly the gulf between how they speak, the language of their homes and communities, and what they are hearing and seeing. As a consequence, they may feel that speaking in this way is not for them. Should we push students towards switching to a Standard English form of speech when they are presenting, or encourage non-standard varieties to be used?

Perhaps it all comes down to helping students to adapt how they speak to the situation. There is no reason to think that a student expressing their ideas in a particular dialect is somehow deficient in their ability to think logically, or to handle complex concepts. But we should also be wary of underestimating students’ language abilities, including their knowledge of standard forms and being able to use them when they choose. In the end, what matters is that the speaker is understood by those listening. Learning to use presentational talk ought to involve discussing issues of appropriate register, formality, vocabulary choice and the importance of clarity of expression – all of which are important aspects of oracy education.

When we teach presentational talk well, there are potentially huge benefits to students’ self-esteem and their sense that their voice can ‘count’. When we don’t, there are serious risks to their self-confidence and self-concept.

Effective teaching of presentational talk can be a powerful ingredient in enabling all students to extend their linguistic repertoire, in helping them grow as learners and as human beings, and in knowing that they have a voice and that it can influence others. As one year 8 student said after a successful presentation to parents at an open evening:

“When someone’s really listening to you and encouraging you it makes you want to talk about it even more.”

 Footnotes

[1] US comedian Jerry Seinfeld in ‘I’m Telling You For The Last Time’.

[2] Y10 student blogger.

[3] Douglas Barnes ‘From Communication to Curriculum’, Penguin Books Ltd. 1976

[4] Mercer, N. and Hodgkinson, S. ‘Exploring Talk in School: Inspired by the Work of Douglas Barnes’ (pp.55-72), Sage Publications 2008.

[5] Watson, J and Potter, R.J in ‘Human Relations’ 15:2, 1962

[6] Brown, G. ‘The Spoken Language’ in Linguistics and the Teacher, ed. Ronald Carter, Routledge, (1982).

[7] Douglas Barnes: ‘The Politics of Oracy’ in ‘Oracy Matters’ ed MacLure, Phillips and Wilkinson, OU Press 1988