Structuring your material

There are several recognised strategies for organising information in an oral presentation.

Eric Walters and Gale Climenson Walters summarise 5 different 'recipes' for structuring a presentation (Scientists Must Speak: bringing presentations to life, 2002, pp17-26). You may like to investigate these, and adopt or adapt one that will suit your material and purposes.

For the confirmation presentation, however, it is generally expected that you will speak to the written report you have already prepared. The report, and hence your talk, have an implied structure in that you must inform your audience about 5 main items. The research questions you will investigate:

What is already known on this topic - the literature review
The framework or methods you will use in your investigation
The work you have done to date - how much of your research plan is already completed?
The importance and relevance of your project.

One means of presenting this information is through a simple introduction-body-conclusion structure:

Tell your audience what you will be talking about (the 5 listed items),
Proceed to do so, and
Conclude by recapping your main points.

Using this structure, your confirmation presentation might proceed as follows:

Introduction	Preview Who you are Your field of research What your talk will cover
Body 1: Outline of topic and statement of research questions	What need or problem will the study address? What exactly will you investigate? What questions will your study attempt to answer?
Body 2: Literature review and analysis	What work has already been done on this topic/problem? What are the highlights of earlier research? Where are the 'gaps' or needs now?
Body 3: Framework or methods to be used in the investigation	What methods or approaches will you use to answer your research questions?
	Why these and not others? What data will you collect?
Body 4: Summary of progress to date	What are the major stages of the project? What has already been done?
Body 5: Argument for the importance and relevance of your study	Once completed, how will your study address the need, problem or gap identified in body 1 and 2? What are the potential outcomes and benefits of the study?
Conclusion	Review (in order): The questions that your study will address How they relate to the current research literature The methods you will use The fact that your project is in its early stages, but You hope that when completed, it will make a significant contribution.