Section 3. Outlining, the standard topic outline form. How to present a seminar paper.

In this talk, I'm going to give some advice on how to present a seminar paper. At one time, most university teaching took the form of giving formal lectures.

Nowadays, many university teachers try to involve their students more actively in the learning process. One of the ways in which this is done is by conducting seminars.

In a seminar, what usually happens is this. One student is chosen to give his ideas on a certain topic. These ideas are then discussed by the other students, the participants, in the seminar. What I'd like to discuss with you today is the techniques of presenting a paper at a seminar.

As you know, there are two main stages involved in this. One is the preparation stage which involves researching and writing up a topic. The other stage is the presentation stage when you actually present the paper to your audience.

It is this second stage that I'm concerned with now. Let us therefore imagine that you have been asked to lead off a seminar discussion and that you've done all the necessary preparation. In other words, you've done your research and you've written it up. How are you going to present it? There are two ways in which this can be done.

The first method is to circulate copies of the paper in advance to all the participants. This gives them time to read it before the seminar, so that they can come already prepared with their own ideas about what you have written.