CHAIRING A SESSION


Here are some expressions that can be used when chairing a conference slot. They differ in their
levels of formality and effectiveness. They should serve as inspiration.


Can you, please, welcome Ms. Stone.


Just raise your hand and I ask you to give your name and institution.


OK, first we’ve got Andrew who needs no introduction from me. And we are visiting CARELTS, I am
sure you will tell us more about that as you go on. OK, thank you. Do you want to start?


I am afraid, there are not enough handouts for everybody but I think sharing is a good opportunity
to make friends.


Welcome back everybody. Have you refreshed and reinvigorated?


I am not going to introduce the speakers as you want to hear them speaking not me speaking about
them.


Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this session in our afternoon programme. Some household first.


In the interest of time we need to move on.


Just wave your hand and say your name and institution.


Welcome to the first of the parallel session. The system we have got this year is that there are
breaks between papers, so if you want to go off and go to another one you are not stuck in this
stream. Allan and Michelle would be very happy if you stayed but there is not obligation to stay
for the whole three. So we’ve got five minutes between each session for you to go and find other
things to do if you want to.


Ok, welcome everybody to this presentation on Media and I really must thank Rosalind and Marta for
the last presentation because it was strikingly similar in context to what we are going to hear
now.


OK, I will be chairing this afternoon session in this track or strand. The three papers in this
session, and, in fact, in all of the sessions, are 30 minutes long and that will generally comprise
of 20 minutes of presentation and hopefully 10 minutes or so for questions from the audience.


In order to make sure to be fair on those that are presenting subsequently to have time to change
over, but also for those of you who may wish to go to a different strand or those who wish to come
to a strand in mid-session, I am going to try to be fairly strict on time. So, that is for the
presenters and also for the audience, so we will try to keep to the half hour slot. So this should
give an opportunity to move to another session if you need to and for others to arrive.


I think that’s all I need to say. Except when it comes to question time because all of this is
being recorded, if you can indicate clearly that you want to ask a question, once my colleague here
has decided who he is selecting for a question, I will then pass the microphone to you so that
everybody can be heard clearly but also so that it’s been recorded as well.


So I am about one minute late. It gives me a great pleasure to introduce Martin Lawson from the
University of Cumbria, UK. Over to you Martin.


This is the final paper of today’s session; we are going to try to stick carefully to time because
we want to give you the opportunity to get to the keynote at 25 past. After which there is the
surprise and then fun on the beach.


OK. This is the last one, I think, this is the last session. I would like to introduce Rita
Hejtoff. And Rita is going to talk about ….. . Over to you.


Chris is here from the University of Leicester. And it is great because he is here, he is in the
right place and he is on time. Well done, Chris, thanks for that. OK, so Chris is going to be
talking about – well, you can see it on the board – ……………… and some other stuff.


That is an interesting day today. The last speaker went to the wrong room and we were all here and
he was somewhere else looking for us. Quite interesting he finished exactly on time. Right, this
is, let me introduce Peter Roy, who comes from deepest Dorset in UK and he is going to talk to us
about ……….


Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce Ian Huglop, who is going to talk about his personal
experience with ….


The problem we’ve got is that we have to finish at 9:30 or at 9:35 at latest, there is another
speaker in here and there is another speaker downstairs which I have to be there for, so you’re
gonna have to be a little bit quicker, if that’s all right….