General

jesus 30 minutes is a long time...

I once had to present for 4 minutes and before that I thought that was too long. LOL so good luck OP. Then a 10 minute one which wasn't so bad, 2 mins were taken up by a vid.

However though once you're up there it goes by quick.

I [b]WISH[/b] I was allowed to give presentations that long.
You have so much liberty with this.

Make an over-dramatic introduction video.
Synch up your powerpoint slides perfectly and get some fitting background music.
Slip in jokes and small pieces of media throughout your presentation to keep people involved.
Make a dramatic ending.

just a few suggestions of mine... choose to do none of them, all of them, some of them, all of them and more, etc. Up to you.

just don't stand there reading off a sheet and hoping to keep people interested for 30 minutes.

[quote=fradddd]@Sezbeth: Teachers have always just said I am a good writer, but I need to provide more support/evidence for things, rather than logical reasoning. I guess it would depend on the type of paper being written. I've always had trouble being detailed, yet people seem to understand exactly what my point is anyway, so I don't see a purpose in going into more detail. I'm more into the whole brevity thing.[/quote]

It's true that empiricism tends to be valued more in academics than rationalism (unless we're talking about mathematics).

People might seem to understand the point you're making (and the point you're making might very well be simply "cut and dry" ), but academic writing tends to hold the flaunting of superior understanding of a topic higher than anything else (within reason, of course).

I understand the whole brevity deal, though. I was like that with my writing and pretty much everything else up until about age fourteen. Until I took that Psych201 course, I couldn't understand why things which were so obvious (primarily from where I was standing) had to be explained past a certain point.

@Sezbeth: Teachers have always just said I am a good writer, but I need to provide more support/evidence for things, rather than logical reasoning. I guess it would depend on the type of paper being written. I've always had trouble being detailed, yet people seem to understand exactly what my point is anyway, so I don't see a purpose in going into more detail. I'm more into the whole brevity thing.

@fradddd : I don't have those students' papers in front of me, so I can't really comment on the supposed proficiency.

That said, while it may sometimes seem like "good" papers just bloat the topic by "consulting a thesaurus" (provided that their papers do actually have depth), it's really a bit more complicated than that.

Advanced vernacular, rather different words for the same reference, are invented to refer to something more specific within that reference. One of the challenges to producing what people would consider a "well written" paper is using those terms to explain your stance on a topic in a coherent manner (i.e. you can't just flop words you find in a thesaurus on the paper at every chance you get). If done correctly, the slight difference you're noticing should provide a different dimension to the topic at hand.

@sezbeth I read the papers of people who got the highest score possible in my English class (they get their names in a frame because it's supposedly rare to write that well) and it just seemed like they consulted the thesaurus more often, in order to repeat their ideas while sounding slightly different, so they could make the paper longer.

@fradddd : Seems more akin to an over-simplicity issue than anything else. Depth gets grades, not filler.

[quote=Thiefy996]Dude, how big is your class? Gonna spent half the summer listening to everyone's speeches.[/quote]
almost 30, but most are football players that never show up.

@sezbeth I always had the problem of trying to figure out the simplest possible way of explaining something, so most of my essays are 1.5 or 2 pages long. I just can't BS that well.

[quote=Avatar] A thread created in the summer where the student says his presentations are typically 5 minutes long makes you think its a college course? [/quote]

There's also the possibility of him just having graduated from high school and deciding to take a compacted summer class for whatever college he may have gotten into; or even being a college student for a while without having to a give a presentation spanning past five or eight minutes (always depends on the professor). Using sites like "Ratemyprofessors" to find easier instructors seems to be popular these days.

[quote=Avatar] I've had to do 30 minutes presentations in high school and I did one in my 12 year chemistry course except it was 30 minutes of interacting with the class and teaching the topic through games and practice examples [/quote]

I had to do something similar for an elective philosophy class back in high school. It was mainly using a media piece to present a topic, explain the topic, then lead a 10-15 minute discussion. That said, not everyone takes the same courses with the same teachers.

[quote=Avatar] But you're free to believe whatever you want. [/quote]

I'm willing to admit that I may have jumped to a conclusion with little grounded in a solid affirmative. However, on what grounds are your arguments any different?

[quote=Sezbeth]It's true that making a paper longer doesn't necessarily make it better. However, this is usually because students often make the mistake of unnecessarily bloating one topic without actually going into greater detail of said topic, as well as those relating to it (which usually expands the size of the essay anyway). In other words, the mistake underlying a lot of larger papers students present is the lack of meaningful material amongst all of that extra content.

Also, judging from the presence of a 30-minute presentation assignment, it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that he's taking a college course; and even with a book like TKaMB, it wouldn't be difficult to expand on a single chapter, provided that one did some short research on civil rights issues within the context of a legal dispute.[/quote]

A thread created in the summer where the student says his presentations are typically 5 minutes long makes you think its a college course? I've had to do 30 minutes presentations in high school and I did one in my 12 year chemistry course except it was 30 minutes of interacting with the class and teaching the topic through games and practice examples. But you're free to believe whatever you want.

[quote=Avatar]How did you come to the conclusion that it wasn't a large assignment when the subject of the assignment wasn't revealed? Perhaps the OP is reading Hamlet or something like To Kill a Mocking Bird judging by basil's typical school threads. If it takes seven to eight pages to discuss a chapter from the likes of those books, then you're doing something wrong, at least I was taught that writing longer essays doesn't make it better.[/quote]

It's true that making a paper longer doesn't necessarily make it better. However, this is usually because students often make the mistake of unnecessarily bloating one topic without actually going into greater detail of said topic, as well as those relating to it (which usually expands the size of the essay anyway). In other words, the mistake underlying a lot of larger papers students present is the lack of meaningful material amongst all of that extra content.

Also, judging from the presence of a 30-minute presentation assignment, it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that he's taking a college course; and even with a book like TKaMB, it wouldn't be difficult to expand on a single chapter, provided that one did some short research on civil rights issues within the context of a legal dispute.

[quote=Sezbeth]@Avatar : 3000 words isn't exactly a large assignment.

That would be approximately seven or eight pages non-double-spaced.[/quote]

How did you come to the conclusion that it wasn't a large assignment when the subject of the assignment wasn't revealed? Perhaps the OP is reading Hamlet or something like To Kill a Mocking Bird judging by basil's typical school threads. If it takes seven to eight pages to discuss a chapter from the likes of those books, then you're doing something wrong, at least I was taught that writing longer essays doesn't make it better.

@Avatar : 3000 words isn't exactly a large assignment.

That would be approximately seven or eight pages non-double-spaced.

[quote=Omegathorion]It's not exactly ridiculous. In my experience, 30 minutes is like a 3000-word essay. Convert your essay into a speech and there you go. That would be speaking for a full 30 minutes of nonstop speaking, but if you wanted to scatter in some videos, audience discussion, slow talking, live skits, whatever, you can hit 30 minutes easily.

Try your best to talk about something you're really interested about. That's the real thing. If you're not interested it's gonna be horrible, but you'll find that you can talk for a very long time about things you care about. I could talk for hours about fashion, or physics, or level design.[/quote]

I too enjoy writing 3000 word essays on a single chapter from a book.

It's not exactly ridiculous. In my experience, 30 minutes is like a 3000-word essay. Convert your essay into a speech and there you go. That would be speaking for a full 30 minutes of nonstop speaking, but if you wanted to scatter in some videos, audience discussion, slow talking, live skits, whatever, you can hit 30 minutes easily.

Try your best to talk about something you're really interested about. That's the real thing. If you're not interested it's gonna be horrible, but you'll find that you can talk for a very long time about things you care about. I could talk for hours about fashion, or physics, or level design.

I had to give a 30 minute presentation in a theatre lit class this past semester.
Talk about literally everything and allow people to ask questions. It's really not too bad if you're informed on your topic and have half decent public speaking skills.
I ended up making an A.

Make the audience speak.
Point at them and go "You there, tell the world what you think!"
Start off with a bad joke

These are tricks I've done to presentations in useless classes like
Engineering ethics (I'll build a recoiless gun if I want to)
Engineering writing
etc

It's going to be easier than you think, believe me.

If you can't handle a 30min presentation which you can blow through with stalls like videos, slow-paced speaking, and the like, then depending on what your major/desired career path is, you'll have trouble making it through that.

lol i had to present with a group for the whole period in english class (75 mins)

@superswift12: SUNY Stony Brook :^)

[quote=RitoPls]When I was in APUSH way back in high school, we were in groups of 5 and each needed to present for 10 minutes.

This kid in our group played a 7 minute video for his portion.

We got a 92.

Try that.[/quote]
What college do you go to ?

[quote=RitoPls]When I was in APUSH way back in high school, we were in groups of 5 and each needed to present for 10 minutes.

This kid in our group played a 7 minute video for his portion.

We got a 92.

Try that.[/quote]

Ah, we did that too. I was presenting something about food and spent the whole time doing my best impression of an Italian voice to appeal to the emotions of our Italian teacher, but it came out sounding more like Borat.

We got a 87.

use videos

I had to give a 20 minute presentation all in German as part of my final. Just ask the class things, explore tangents, and so on. It feels a lot shorter when you're giving the speech than it seems when you're thinking about it beforehand.

Show then this thread during the presentation to kill time

What course are you taking?

When I was in APUSH way back in high school, we were in groups of 5 and each needed to present for 10 minutes.

This kid in our group played a 7 minute video for his portion.

We got a 92.

Try that.

Just repeat all the stuff you say 6 times in a row and voila 30 minutes

Go in depth with analyzing the chapter; find what the author was trying to convey and provide quotes and examples... In song