Presenting and Writing about your Research

Lecturer: Tim Korver (Individual English Training, Munich)
Date: October 14-15, 2024
Venue: Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH) – Member of the Leibniz Association, Leipziger Straße 100, 06108 Halle (Saale), Germany, conference room, 3rd floor.
Registration: Please register for the course until September 30, 2024 by sending an e-mail to cgde@iwh-halle.de.

The course is designed for a maximum of 12 participants. Places will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.

Announcement: pdf

Seminar description
Day 1 | Focus on Presentation Skills for Research Talks (09:00–17:00 including lunch break and coffee break)

In this seminar, participants will learn to think more about their audience when creating research talks. Their talks will be developed to make them more interesting, clear and concise so that their audience can better understand the content and key messages. They will also learn about typical differences between German and international English presentation style.

The training is interactive, with skills practised through a range of short activities, building up to the longer research talk.

Assignment: Participants need to prepare a short talk (8 minutes) on their research topic.

Key content
– Structuring your talk to be audience-friendly
– Expressions for introducing, summarizing & making transitions
– Building rapport with your audience
– Highlighting key messages
– Using your voice: intonation, pace, pausing
– Body language & eye contact
– Effective style and format for visuals
– Dealing with difficult questions

Day 2 | Focus on Scientific Writing for Clarity, Conciseness and Flow (08:30–16:30 including lunch break and coffee break)

In this seminar, you will learn techniques for writing good journal-style texts that meet publication standards of clarity. We will look at a range of writing skills to practice and develop your writing techniques – techniques that help ensure clarity, conciseness and coherence.

To understand what good writing is, you also need to develop a better knowledge of how readers read. Understanding how the brain processes written language helps to ease the job of the reader.

In this seminar, we will first gain insights into a range of principles of clear writing style. These principles will be followed by short application exercises. Then, building onto this foundation, we will create research-based texts that combine a range of techniques for writing texts that are clear, concise and easy to read.

Assignment: Participants need to bring an abstract of their current research. If this is not yet possible, you can bring an abstract of your Masters thesis instead.

Key content
– Removing useless words
– Avoiding long sentences to be reader-friendly
– Working with verbs to better visualize your research findings
– Implementing ‘flow’ devices for easier reading
– Writing effective paragraphs
– Writing clear arguments