Self-evaluation of my oral presentation (II)

I just realised that my oral presentation always tend to take about 6 minuts. It's interesting how the internal clock sometimes works... Maybe it's time for another psychoanalysis by Dr. Koch (no, not the one who isolated the tuberculosis bacteria and formulated the Koch's postulates, which determine when a disease is considered to be caused by an infection)...

Back to the topic, pleaaaaase!

So, here it is, my self-evaluation. Let's look carefully but purposefully through the different points:

By the way, (hehehe, I always find something to delay the main part... muahaha!) I don't know if I recall correctly the actual evaluation chart for the second term, but I'll try this one:

Body language & eye contact (10%):

I don't know why, but I look at my paper every 10 second or even less if I am actually not reading anything. Maybe I try to flee from the peering eyes of the public, perhaps I simply have to move and do something. I don't really know. Let's try next time to change that, because it's really getting on my nerves when I see myself in the video! 7,5 out of 10

Presentation & structure (10%):

Well, I would say the prezi was quite simple but effective. I think I made a good use of the images and the little text on the screen to help the people to understand the facts... And I would say that the different parts of my presentation were clearly separated (by a decent "That was the boring part, now I will move on..." Maybe this is a bit too much..). Still I would say 10 out of 10

Content (40%):

Well, this is quite subjective in my opinion (yeah, this means it's also subjective to say it's subjective).

The content in this presentation was a bit strange to be honest. The task was to do something related to an English-speaking country and it's culture. Or at least something really peculiar of this country. My first idea was the part of the stereotypes. I try to make my presentations funny and enjoyable, but I realised that only the stereotypes wouldn't be enough for a half-serious presentation. So I decided to involve some useful general and... well, more or less interesting facts about the countries. Maybe the beginning was filled with too straightforward things, most of us know about the general things about the geography and the history of the countries. But I really tried to find things that would catch the people's attention, like the map comparing the populations and the origins of the Canadian country. And then later the stereotypes were... well, to show the relationship between the two countries in a slightly humorous way. Slightly. So, what was positive? The gags worked. What was negative? Somehting missed. I really don't know how to evaluate this "something", but I would say 35 out of 40 is okay.

Vocabulary & grammar (20%):

I think I did a good job as for the language part. I always try to use a simple but sophisticated grammar (paradox time). I mean, I try to use sentences with a higher level of complexity, but in way the public won't have any problems to understand my presentation. Because an oral exposition isn't worth anything if the people listening to it have no idea what the clown in front of them is talking about. And my vocabulary was varied, I watched out to use different words to express similar ideas. So, how do the youngsters say nowadays? Bitch please, that was flawless. 20 out of 20

Pronunciation & intonation (20%):

Earlier, in a more immature phase, I forgot to assure myself that I pronounce correctly each word.  

Bah, Christian, in the end you will seem to be obsessed.

Doing a presentation I notice how many words I always pronounced arbitrarily: independence, rebel, Canadian, symbolic, obesity, ignorant.

But I checked them before the presentation and they were no later objectives by the teaching section of the class. So I assume everything was alright. 

When it comes to the intonation, well, it's something really important for the jokes and the general understanding of the exposed ideas. The people laughed and I didn't see any question marks on their faces. 20 out of 20, baby

Final mark:

Doing some maths I reach the conclusion that my mark would be a 9,25.

Basically, what I want to improve for next time is, first, to watch less at my paper and more at the beautiful faces within the audience and second, to define my topic better and offer the people more unknown facts about an interesting theme in a half-serious way.

Finally, here you have my initial speech in the written version if you're interested in the process of an original ©Koch-Presentation (and another copyright for this unique way of using the © symbol to write my own name):

Canada and the USA

OVERWIEW

- Hello everybody, TGI… Oh no, it’s still Tuesday. Well, forget it.

-For the presentation of the second term we were asked to treat a topic which has to do something with an english-speaking country. I couldn’t help myself and I decided to talk to you about two countries… Yes, I know, I’m a rebel.

-Today I wanted to tell you something about the relationship between Canada and the USA.

1 (POPULATION)

- First of all, I’ll start with the the history and the geography of the two countries.

Both countries are located on North-America and both countries are very large, being Canada slightly larger than the USA. The big difference is the population and the way it’s distributed.

- Have a look at these two maps please. Here you can see that the Canadian population is concentrated on the southern part of the country, at the border between Canada and the USA. The big question is „WHY?“. Basically because up here it’s VERY COLD. And I’m from Germany, I know what the word „cold“ really means.

- While we can see that the population in the USA is concentrated mostly at the coasts, we have more people on the eastern part of the country and this part which is the more… desert area is not much populated.

- To show you the difference between the population of the two countries, this map does a good job, you see it’s quite striking. That means that the number of the whole population of Canada is found in the USA in each of these parts, so there are 1,2,3, 10 times more people in the USA than in Canada.

2 (HISTORY)

- Both countries had been initially part of British colonies, in the case of Canada also French colonies (due to that today French is also spoken in Canada). The 13 British Colonies of the USA became an independent state in 1776 after military conflicts with Great Britian and later expanded to form today a country with 50 diferent states.

- The country Canada was formed by Great Britian itself in 1867 because they feared the expansion of the United States and wanted to create a strong country next to it. Canada had been granted some independence in 1931 but it was not until 1982 that Canada was declared completely independent.

- Being the two countries fully independent, there is still one difference, which is that Canada is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. The Commonwealth is a non-political organization and the Queen of England is the official symbolic leader of the whole organization and its members. In fact, in official terms, the Queen has got a different name in each country when she is referred as the Commonwealth leader, so for example, her official in Canada would the “Queen of Canada”, being still the same person.

So my comrades, that was a lot of information, I hope that you could learn something and that it wasn’t too boring, now I want to move on to a little funnier part, which are the typical stereotypes between the Canadians and the Americans. The relationship and the respect between the citizens of each country could be better... But let me show some examples:

3 (STEREOTYPES I)

1. Canadians (and many other people) think that all Americans are fat. Well, actually there is a high obesity rate in the USA, but obviously not everyone goes everyday to McDonald’s. They also go to Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken... Just a joke ;)

2. All Canadians love/like/play/watch/live hockey. Hockey is probably the most popular sport in Canada, although not everyone is into it. But, here you can see the backside of a Canadian 5$ bill. This is real, here you can see kids practicing winter sports and among them hockey.

3. Americans are violent and rude/ Canadians are peaceful and polite. Well, we all know the USA has participated in many wars and is still doing. I would say it’s because of the politics and the history of the country that many have this opinion. And as the Canadians have to be opposed to the Americans, they have to be angels ;)

4. Canadians are bilingual. This is not true, most of the Canadians only speak English or French, but not both of them. Yet the Canadians are happy about this stereotype because it’s makes them look more sophisticated.

4 (STEREOTYPES II)

5. Canadians live in igloos and ride polar bears...

6. Americans are ignorant. I don’t know if they really are, but at least the people who invented these stereotypes are really ignorant.

5 CONCLUSION

Finally, to conclude this presentation, I think that if you really want to know a country and its culture, visit it and make your own opinion by your own experiencies.

 

As you may have noticed, I cut some parts off, like the further explanation of the Commonwealth, or the German/cold joke. I thought they weren't proper for the presentation. Then there are some sentences I simply... well, forgot to say, being most of them long connectors (maybe the surprising or striking effect was better).