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Chapter 12 of Oral Presentations for
Technical Communication examines presentations
designed to teach an audience how to perform a task
or series of tasks. These "how-to" presentations
involve include informative features but primarily
focus on the steps required so audiences members
can accomplish something.The chapter covers the
following topics:
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What are How-to Presentations?
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Types of How-to Presentations in
Technical Communication
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Tips for Creating Effective How-to
Presentations
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Preparing Your First How-to
Presentation
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These exercises build on the ideas addressed
in Chapter 12:
1. Select an everyday task, similar to the
peanut butter and jelly example. Now, define
several different audiences for this task: young
children, technical experts, people with no
experience. For each audience, outline the steps
and levels of steps you'd need in order to give a
thorough how-to training presentation. Since you
won't be able to perform a real audience analysis
for this presentation, you can make up certain
features about your audience as needed, including a
"pretend" audience and task analysis. Notice how
very different one task becomes depending on the
audience and their differing backgrounds.
Presentations and Cyberspace. Learn more
about training and instruction by looking at the
Web site for the American
Society for Training and Development
or the International
Society for Performance Improvement.
Present your findings to class.
Presentation and Teamwork. How-to
presentations can be given individually or as part
of a team. Often, these presentations will be
designed collaboratively and then presented by one
or two people. Form a team of three or four people
from your class, and select a how-to topic that
interests all of you. Assign each member a specific
set of research tasks. Work as a group to design
the presentation, and select two team members who
will deliver the presentation. Work carefully on
your audience analysis, paying special attention to
the task analysis if you are going to be presenting
a series of tasks. Then, decide how you will divide
the presentation itself. Should one presenter do
the first half and the other presenter the second
half? Or should one presenter introduce and
conclude the topic and circulate around the room,
helping audience members (if it's a training
presentation) while the other presenter continues
to speak? As you work on your group presentation,
keep track of group interaction, much as you have
done for other presentations in this section.
Presentations and International
Communication. Locate a set of multi-lingual
instructions (look at the instructions that came
with your VCR, TV, computer, coffee pot, or other
appliance, for example). Compare the various
languages to the English-language instructions in
terms of the number of steps given, the amount of
space taken to give each step, the punctuation used
by various cultures (does each different language
appear to use the same punctuation markings and are
they used in the same places, the use of images).
How will these factors affect the way in which you
plan a speech that will involve the use of a
translator (consider the length of the presentation
and the kinds of phrasing you will use)?
Presentations and Your Profession.
Because so many professions offer such a variety of
how-to presentations, you will learn a great deal
if you interview a professional in your field and
ask about training and how-to presentations. Does
the company have a special training department? Do
scientists and engineers also give how-to
presentations, or are all presentations given by
professional communicators? Do presenters travel to
customer sites or present at the company location?
Present your findings in a 2-5 minute informative
presentation in class.
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