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How to Prepare a Paper Presentation

Many students throughout their academic career encounter situations where they need to present a paper either written by themselves or written by someone else. Whether the presentation is for a class, conference or thesis defense, simply reading the paper or presenting the main points of the paper linearly is not the best approach because audience members could read it themselves. In most cases, the audience has already read the paper and this presentation is simply an opportunity to enhance and explain the argument an author is displaying throughout the work in a more personal, understandable fashion.

Computer
Microsoft PowerPoint program
Printer

Instructions

- 1
  Identify the thesis of the paper. In other words, identify the main argument or purpose of the paper and the key ideas used as evidence to that main idea. The paper consists of many ideas and various pieces of evidence to back up the primary argument, but isolating the main purpose of the paper, and the two or three main points that back up that argument, will provide focus for your presentation.
- 2
  
  Create an outline that includes an introduction, an overview of the main argument or purpose, the evidence used to support that argument, any critiques of the work and the conclusion.
- 3
  Create a PowerPoint presentation. Began with a title page as the first slide of the PowerPoint. This should include the full title of the paper and your name.
- 4
  Create an introduction slide that immediately follows the title slide. This will usually be the sentence that serves as the paper's thesis statement. Include a quotation from the paper that best describes the overall purpose of the paper and the main points used to support the argument.
- 5
  Make an evidence slide that includes the main evidence that supports the paper's thesis or main purpose. This evidence can take the form of quotations from the paper itself that further explain the main idea proposed in the thesis or quotations from secondary sources that support the author's statements.
- 6
  
  Create a criticism slide. This slide will contain quotations from secondary sources, those being the quotations included in the paper taken from research, and quotations from the paper showing the author addressing the criticism. The secondary source quotations can either support or refute the author's thesis.
- 7
  Make a conclusion slide. Think of this slide as the "so what" slide. Here you should include a few lines from the end of the paper that describe the overall conclusion and importance of the paper. In other words, show the audience members why the paper is important to them and important to the topic on which the paper was written.
- 8
  Finally, create a work cited page. This should be the last slide and should list all references used in writing the paper.

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