If mathematics is the queen of all sciences, then literature is definitely the love of a lifetime for all students of humanities. And already this fact will significantly speed up the task of creating a presentation on literature. Right now, there is a complete guide in front of you that will help to cope with this task even for those who have more mathematical than creative abilities.
Below we have described how to properly distribute your time and organize your work in such a way that this task becomes a fascinating and calm scientific research, and not a source of stress and tension.
Most likely, you have already seen from personal experience that putting off homework at the last moment is a bad idea. This is a direct way to get in a bad sense a magical but sleepless night, impaired concentration and productivity, a sense of rush that only harms the quality, plus an inability to think soberly the next day.
When you need to prepare a presentation, this is especially true. A presentation is not a movie review of a 500-word text, which is quite realistic to write overnight, especially if you watched the movie. It will be a long work consisting of several stages. Therefore, we recommend allocating time this way.
The next day:
Plus, it is advisable to leave at least one day in reserve so that you can take a break from this work, be able to look at the result with a fresh look, plus make changes if the insight comes to you at the last moment.
So, it all starts with a topic selection. Two options will be available here. Either your teacher will independently distribute the topics between the students, or you will have the opportunity to choose. Both approaches have their advantages.
But in any of the options, it’s still really possible to cope with a presentation on literature.
Well, if you really don’t know where to start, here are a few topics that are definitely suitable. And in any case, you will be able to customize them a little, so that they correspond as much as possible to the studied section of the literature, plus they give you interesting opportunities for research.
So, any research, including literature, begins with a search for suitable scientific articles which you will rely on in the course of your presentation. Of course, the specifics of the materials will depend on your topic. Sometimes it happens that one literary work that you are considering is enough, while other topics require a strong scientific reinforcement.
The universal rule is as follows: do not use obsolete research. Although the literature is eternal, science does not stand still. Or use the thoughts of previous scientific generations to compare with current scientific results.
Try to immediately grasp the main idea of the author of each scientific article, and even better write it down. This will help you to formulate your thesis and plan.
If you followed the previous advice and wrote down the main ideas of all the researchers whose work you looked at, then it would not be difficult to write a thesis. But try to come up with something individual. Compare different ideas, find common and different features.
And remember that your thesis statement should be capacious, not contain more than two sentences, and it should give room for argument.
Since literature is science and art in one package, it is obvious that you can use the most winning combination to substantiate your thesis. So, you can use personal and scientific evidence. The top of skill is to give personal proof and back it up with science.
Everything is simple here. If you ever wrote an essay, then you can immediately catch the point.
Now, after you have thought through the structure, developed the thesis and gathered evidence, it’s time to move on to the visual design of your work. Here are some rules:
And yet, since literature is primarily art and creativity, and only then science, it is impossible to study this subject without the use of creative abilities and without the involvement of one’s personal life experience.
And if in the case of anthropology, for example, everything depends on science, then in the case with a presentation on literature, creative and personal initiatives are welcomed. But here, too, you need to maintain a reasonable balance. The academic rules are such that you will have to reinforce every creative impulse of your personality with scientific justification. Here’s how to do it.
This is the case when literature comes into reality. You can analyze literary heroes and transfer them to modern conditions, you can analyze modern literary trends and transfer them to the plane of ancient Greek literature. This is the case when creativity and science work in conjunction, creating more and more creative ideas and approaches.
Now we finally got to the main task and to the deepest essence of the presentation – you need to present it. A presentation is not just about collecting scientific material, not just about forming a thesis, your vision, and its justification, and not even about visualizing the result. It is also about the ability to convey your thoughts to the target audience, reinforcing each of your words with an appropriate slide.
Therefore, in the end, you get as many as three papers that will help you – this is a draft plan of your presentation, which we used to fill the slides, the slides themselves, and the text of your speech.
Obviously, it would be wrong to just go to the pulpit, turn on the projector and read everything from the slides. This is what your audience will do without your help. And you need to compose the text of your speech. But fortunately, this will be easy to do.
Go back to your plan again and open the slides. Now imagine that right now you need to tell everything in such a way as if the audience does not see the slides, but only hears your speech. And start writing down your thoughts. If you start your presentation with a quote, then you can start like this.
Scientist X said XYZ. This phrase most accurately conveys the essence of my literary research. It is devoted to topic Y, and the key problem of literary science within the framework of this topic is …
I conducted a study of available resources and concluded that …
Next, you move on to your argument, reinforcing each of your evidence with an appropriate slide.
When working on the text of your speech, try to write as you speak. You should not complicate your speech with long constructions and complex terms, at least in situations where it is possible to do without it. Your speech should sound like an interesting story, which will lead the audience along a logical chain, and they will pay attention to the slides in order to maximize the visualization of your story.
So, as you see, everything is not as difficult as it might seem to you before starting work. Presentation is an invaluable experience that allows you to develop research, writing, visualization and public speaking skills at the same time. Therefore, do not ignore this task, but rather, give yourself a chance to get such a cool arsenal of skills in one action.