By T.R. Girill PhD, STC Fellow and IDL SIG member
Unless you use an assistive device to communicate verbally, you don’t compose a written sentence first before pronouncing it in conversation. Such speech spontaneity is certainly convenient, but it poses the danger when giving a formal talk to a group (perhaps of classmates) that what is spontaneously said will be confusing, ineffective, or both. So talk design, like text design, becomes the duty of everyone who wants to explain something (complex) by speaking to a group effectively. And for most people, such talk design needs to be explicitly taught and learned.
CTE (career technical education) programs are generally post-high-school classes (often offered by community colleges) that focus on career-relevant technical skills (such as paramedic work or car repair) and are not part of four-year college degree programs. In December, 2023, Michelle Lockhart suggested in edutopia.org that high-school students in CTE classes, with their focus on nonverbal trade and technical skills, could boost their verbal skills too if instructors built in “demonstration speeches,” in which students take turns presenting to their classmates. Students could demonstrate tools, techniques, or processes. (https://edutopia.org/article/teaching-communication-skills-cte/, Dec. 20, 2023. For this to really work, however, the students will need not only technical knowledge to reliably share, but also overt guidance on HOW to reliably share technical knowledge by public speaking.
Scope-Depth Tradeoff
The most basic choice once a student has picked a CTE talk topic to explain and demonstrate to others is how to balance scope and depth. One can survey many aspects of a chosen topic (perhaps a safety precaution or tool-use technique) lightly, or one can get deep into the procedural details on a chosen narrow aspect. Trying to do both in the same talk almost always frustrates and confuses listeners. And of course, announcing one’s chosen strategy at the start will helpfully signal the audience whether to expect a broad, introductory overview or a narrow, focused analysis.
Milestone Signals
Even an enthusiastic or vivid explanation or demonstration of some trade’s tool or technique can leave listeners (especially inattentive ones) overwhelmed, accidentally overlooking some key features or sequence steps. So good speakers helpfully include overt verbal signals (“second…next…finally”) as they talk to refocus their listeners and to overtly segment the flood of words that their audience must absorb. This makes up for the lack of text headings and paragraphs when one speaks (instead of writes) about technology.
Data Density Aids
Virtually all professional technical talks use visual aids–usually a sequence of drawn figures or photographs, enhanced with on-screen callouts to clarify key terminology and to focus audience attention on important details. For talks to a large class, such images may be the only way that every audience member can simultaneously see relevant parts or features of some CTE device or procedure. Of course, preparing and then practicing with such visual aids is another speaker responsibility. Advance planning (on what images will help) and iterative refinement (to discover that no one can see a key detail from the back of the room) are important features of professional presentation that instructors can guide CTE students to incorporate as part of preparation for any talk to their classmates.
So truly beneficial student talks to CTE classes call for the instructor to lay some groundwork with the future presenters–partly to calm their pubic-speaking fears and partly to enrich their repertoire of relevant technical-talk skills. With such groundwork, the presenting students can avoid practicing bad habits and instead build genuine presentation skills that are valuable in life as well as in school.
For a big-picture overview of effective technical text, see
http://writeprofessionally.org/techlit/handbooktoc
For more on technical talk design, with a checklist, see http://writeprofessionally.org/techlit/talktips-analysis]
BIO
T.R.Girill is a long-time STC IDL SIG member and is retired from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. During his tenure, T.R. led outreach efforts to K-12 science teachers who taught literacy and communication skills that align with Common Core State Standards. He posts monthly suggestions on the National Science Teaching Assoc forum/bb, and his contact email is trgirill@acm.org.