Asked to Give a Lesson

[TheHmmmm]

Was hoping for some advice on the ability to ramble to a class for a long time

Alright, my AP English teacher has sorted my class into groups and asked each to prepare and present a 50-minute lesson to the class on some book (that the class won't have read). Given that my public speaking experience is minimal, I expect I will have a hard time coming up with a class period worth of material. The book our group chose was Lord of the Flies.

So I guess my ultimate question is, what general advice do you guys have on pontificating to peers for extended periods of time? I'd also like to keep self-humiliation for entertainment factor minimal.

 

[Architectonic]

Practise, practise, practise.

 

[Geminii]

Fortunately, that book is a standard English school text. You can find more material about it online than you'd ever possibly need. Note also that speaking is slower than reading - you can probably stretch out fifteen or twenty minutes of reading material to that long.

And presumably the others in your group will also be doing parts of it.

 

[SoulsWeepingAbove]

Sparknotes, lol.

You can waste a lot of time readin excerpts, then explaining their significance. Make sure to have the worst/slowest reader be the one to read it aloud.

 

[Vrecknidj]

1) You have to know as much as possible about the material you're covering.
2) You need a ready supply of anecdotes that tie in to the material you're covering, interspersed in good intervals so it doesn't sound like you're just trying to tell stories to kill time.
3) You should be able to connect what you're lecturing on to other topics, and be willing to make connections for others, to help them get a more synthetic grasp of the content.
4) Don't be afraid of pauses.

Dave

 

[asdfasdfasdfsdf]

be humorous, sarcastic.
if you are anything like me, and i assume you are, you are good at being funny while making a point at the same time.
be easy going. it doesnt matter what the class thinks of your presentation.
if you have a friend in the room stare at him the whole time
hopefully you will have more than one, if so, you can rotate your eye fixation.
just make sure you know allot of what you want to say, and that you know it well enough that you can point out funny details as you make your points.