Dr. Werner Binder Spring 2023
Sociological Diagnoses of Our Times GLCb2025
Guidelines for Presentations
The aim of a presentation ‒ in this course ‒ is
• to make your fellow students familiar with a text, that they don’t have read
• to train and assess your ability to prepare and deliver talks in English
Requirements:
• A presentation or a final essay is necessary to pass the course
• A presentation for this course should last around 10 minutes (not much longer!)
• If you would like to make a power point presentation (which is not required!) or use
the internet, please be on time, so that we can deal with eventual technical problems
• You should always connect the presentation to the text(s) all students were required
to read for class
• Use empirical examples to explain abstract concept and ideas
• If you want to make a presentation, let me know in class or via mail and I’ll put your
name in the Interactive Syllabus under the respective presentation. You can also
consult the Interactive Syllabus to see what texts are still available
Recommendations:
• If you want to make a presentation, pick your text early; if there are no spots for
presentations left, you will have to write a final essay
• Don’t hesitate to pick an early presentation; it is a common misconception among
students that you will have more time for preparation if you choose a later one; get
rid of it early, because the end of the semester is often packed with other obligations
• Practice your presentation at least once (ideally with audience, but it also works
without), particularly if you are not sure how much time it will take
• Make up your mind before the seminar which parts you could skip in case the
presentation takes more time than you expected
• Try to keep eye contact with your audience (and not only with the teacher!),
particularly if you read your presentation (or parts of it)
• If you are using power point for your presentation, please make sure that you don’t
overload the slides: try to use bullets and avoid full sentences (not more than 4-6
bullets per slide); you can include important quotes from the text, but avoid huge
blocks of text at all costs (people should be able to read them in a few seconds)
• You don’t have the time to discuss everything that is mentioned in the text(s); please
focus on the general argument of the text(s) and elaborate only those points which
you think are the most interesting for our discussion (usually those which connect to
the obligatory reading)
• Keep in mind that the audience has not read the text(s) you are talking about