Speaking Technically - A Handbook For Scientists, Engineers And Physicians On How To Improve Technical Presentations

SPEAKING TECHNICALLY SPEAKING TECHNICALLY A Handbook for Scientists, Engineers, and Physicians on How to Improve Technical Presentations Sinclair Goodlad Imperial College of Science, Technology €+ Medicine, University of London Imperial College Press Published by Imperial College Press 57 Shelton Street Covent Garden London WC2H 9HE Distributed by World Scientific Publishing Co. Re. Ltd. P 0 Box 128, Farrer Road, Singapore 912805 USA oflce: Suite lB, 1060 Main Street, River Edge, NJ 07661 UK ofice: 57 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9HE British Library Cataloguing-in-PublicationData A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. First published in 1990 by Sinclair Goodlad, Petersham Hollow 226 Petersham Road, Petersham, RICHMOND, Surrey T W l O 7AL. First published 1996 Reprinted 2000 SPEAKING TECHNICALLY Copyright 0 1996 by Imperial College Press All rights reserved. This book, orparts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, includingphotocopying. recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission from the Publisher. For photocopying of material in this volume, please pay a copying fee through the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. In this case permission to photocopy is not required from the publisher. ISBN 1-86094-034-X Printed in Singapore by FuIsland Offset Printing For Emily Preface If you have ideas and information to communicate; want to do so effectively; find the process stressful; have little time in which to prepare then this booklet is for you. The booklet is designed as a bag of tools to help you to tune up your presentation of complex information and ideas. To help in the run-up to a speaking assignment it offers headline points for rapid reference; brief commentary; review points and a check list for practice. vii Preface viii A major part of this booklet (Chapter 3) is devoted to an analysis of strategies which (in my observation of technical presentations over some 25 years) can make speaking technically lively and memorable. As a teacher, and provider of courses for university teachers and for scientists and engineers from industry and the civil service, I could see the need for a short, sharp, even provocatively directive booklet dealing, as this one does, with matters of immediate concern to professional people in a manner which, while not doing violence to the research literature, is not clogged up with references to it. The booklet deals briefly, even dogmatically, with matters on which I draw upon my own observation of people speaking technically in after-dinner speeches; conference presentations; coping with visitors; inaugural lectures; industrial presentations; industrial tourism; lectures to students; presentations to funding bodies; project reports; public inquiries; school talks; section and departmental meetings; telephone calls and consultations. The list of points in Appendix A is designed as a "flight check" to be used from