Guide to Student Presentations and Oral Exam

When you are revising you have to prepare a 10 minute presentation of a text as well as put some notes for the rest of the class on the blog (see the blog post Revision Notes).

Depending on what type of text you get these are the things you have to look at. This is a good exercise for the exam where you have to do the same thing.

Remember to always use examples from the text to support whatever you are saying.

(Look for further inspiration for your presentations on pp. 244-256 in Contexts.)

Fiction

• Plot
• Setting (time, place, social environment)
• Characters
• Composition
• Narration
• Atmosphere
• Language
• Title
• Theme
• Message
• Perspectives

Non-fiction

• Type of text
• Structure
• Sender
• Receiver
• Language (specific vocabulary, tone/style, rhetorical devices used, imagery, quotations (if yes by whom and how are they used?))
• Arguments - strong or weak?
• Message
• Intention
• Reliability

Poetry

• Title
• Setting
• Speaker
• Composition (stanzas, verses)
• Rhyme
• Poetic language (metaphor, style, symbols etc.)
• Theme
• Message
• Perspectives

Speech

• Type of speech (informative, persuasive, special occasion)
• Topic
• Structure
• Speaker
• Audience
• Language
• Rhetorical devices (alliteration, repetition, anaphora, epistrophe, imagery, tricolon, references (direct/quotes or indirect/allusions))
• Forms of appeal (logos, ethos, pathos)
• Message/intention
• Perspectives
• (Inspiration - think of the pentagram we worked with)