Nan in Mass Posted October 13, 2011 Share Posted October 13, 2011 In one where oral presentations are more common than in the USA... Would you go look at this post and answer it? Please? http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?p=3230772#poststop (Advice from the USA would be welcome, too.) Nan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
regentrude Posted October 13, 2011 Share Posted October 13, 2011 We did oral presentations in school in Germany, starting in elementary. We use oral presentations in our homeschool a LOT. A few things that come to my mind: Present with notes containing no full sentences, but only a few key words. That way, the student is not tempted to read a prepared text, but will make eye contact with the audience- one of the most important features. Speaking freely, without only occasional glances at the notes, should be practiced prior to presenting. (Practicing the presentation beforehand is essential if there is a time limit) Gear the level of the presentation towards the audience. If talking to non-experts about a technical subject (such as giving science presentation to fellow students), define all presumably unknown terms and talk TO the audience, not above their heads. The point is not to impress somebody with your expert knowledge, but to communicate your knowledge to others. Begin the presentation with an outline and tell the audience what you are going to talk about and about which subtopics in which order. For a longer presentation, showing the outline again when moving to a new section can help the audience stay oriented. Stay on topic. If using visuals, such as Powerpoint, the most common mistake is too much text. Graphics and fotos should pertain to the subject. If the student shows a picture, he needs to be able to explain what is on it. Avoid hard-to read text such as light blue on dark blue background; dark on light is easier to read. Choose an easy to read font, not a fancy one. Font must be large enough for the selected venue. That's all I can think of right now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FaithManor Posted October 13, 2011 Share Posted October 13, 2011 We did oral presentations in school in Germany, starting in elementary. We use oral presentations in our homeschool a LOT. A few things that come to my mind: Present with notes containing no full sentences, but only a few key words. That way, the student is not tempted to read a prepared text, but will make eye contact with the audience- one of the most important features. Speaking freely, without only occasional glances at the notes, should be practiced prior to presenting. (Practicing the presentation beforehand is essential if there is a time limit) Gear the level of the presentation towards the audience. If talking to non-experts about a technical subject (such as giving science presentation to fellow students), define all presumably unknown terms and talk TO the audience, not above their heads. The point is not to impress somebody with your expert knowledge, but to communicate your knowledge to others. Begin the presentation with an outline and tell the audience what you are going to talk about and about which subtopics in which order. For a longer presentation, showing the outline again when moving to a new section can help the audience stay oriented. Stay on topic. If using visuals, such as Powerpoint, the most common mistake is too much text. Graphics and fotos should pertain to the subject. If the student shows a picture, he needs to be able to explain what is on it. Avoid hard-to read text such as light blue on dark blue background; dark on light is easier to read. Choose an easy to read font, not a fancy one. Font must be large enough for the selected venue. That's all I can think of right now. I agree with all of this, though we have pretty much outlawed Powerpoint presentations...dh has his reasons. We use oral examination in our home as much as written. DD will tell you she still feels "scarred" from one of my orals on Macbeth! :D Don't believe her...it wasn't THAT bad. This was one in which she was orally questioned instead of making a presentation on a specific topic. We do both kinds of oral examinations in our homeschool. Science is one field in which our kids excel at this. They do a lot of projects for 4-H and a simple interview of the student by the judges is required. Of course, we can't leave it at that, so our kids work on 5 minute presentations for each project - the presentations are memorized and the have just a handful of notecards with them to use to jog their memories, but otherwise no other aids because they need to interact with the judges, make eye contact, and since many of these projects were in physics, engineering, chemistry, and robotics, they need to do demonstrations along with the oral presentation. Our youngest, 11, is a master at this. It must come to him naturally and this is the kid that was somewhat apraxic from the ages of 3-7! At the end of high school, we have "oral boards". Dh and I gave dd a list of up to 200 topics in mathematics, science, literature, and history that we could feel free to ask about. If you've ever seen The Prince and Me movie...the scene where the main character stands on a stage in a lecture hall answering questions put forth by her English Literature professors, you get the idea. This is what she went through before we would officially plan her high school graduation party. 80% to pass. Dh and I did not confer on the grade. We each reached our own conclusion and then took the average of the two. All of our ds's will have to do the same. Apparently, we were considered "mean" by other homeschoolers, but I can tell you this came in sooooooo handy for dd. As a paramedic, all clinical exams are physical/oral exams. 1 minute to take a medical history, 30 seconds to diagnose (must talk through your mental processes aloud to the proctor), 30 seconds to recommend a course of treatment, etc. Most of her classmates had to learn the skills necessary to do this on top of the actual medical skills. She didn't. She was a WHIZ and ended up hosting tutoring groups so she could teach her skills and help her classmates practice. So, I think it is an avenue of evaluating education that is absolutely worth pursuing. Though I've never attended school in another country (hope you don't mind my posting in this thread), one thing that dh and I did before dd began high school was to research how "oral exams" are done in other educational systems and then harked back to how these things were handled by the Greek and Roman philosophers - we tend to lean towards the Socratic Method anyway. I doubt that what we do is really similar to any one educational culture. The one thing it is not, is American! Faith Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nan in Mass Posted October 14, 2011 Author Share Posted October 14, 2011 Faith (and anybody else) - How do you design an oral exam? How is it carried out? I've been curious about this for a long time. Nan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
regentrude Posted October 14, 2011 Share Posted October 14, 2011 Faith (and anybody else) - How do you design an oral exam? How is it carried out? I've been curious about this for a long time.Nan We had oral final exams in high school in fours subjects, every year in college, and comprehensive oral exams in math after five semesters of math, and in theoretical and experimental physics after six semesters, respectively. Oral exams can be designed to have a written component. For instance, I could ask the student to explain some theoretical concepts, ask questions checking for deeper understanding, and then ask the student to work a problem for me on a sheet of paper, narrating his solution and explaining the steps as he goes along. You can have oral exams with a preparation time. In sciences, you could give a problem 15-30 minutes beforehand and have the student prepare the solution. in foreign languages, we would get a topic for a speech and have 20 minutes to prep, or we would be paired up with another student and get 20 minutes to prepare a dialogue about a topic which we then had to present to the examiner. You can center the oral exam around a presentation the student had a long time to prepare; you use it as a starting point and probe deeper. Or you can simply draw up a list of questions and ask them. The nice thing about orals is that they give a much more thorough picture of the student's knowledge and allow for flexibility. With a written exam, if the student can not do one of the problems, I won't find out if he might have had a good knowledge in another area; with an oral, when I see that the student draws a blank, I can switch topics and ask about something else to see if he knows anything. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nan in Mass Posted October 14, 2011 Author Share Posted October 14, 2011 The nice thing about orals is that they give a much more thorough picture of the student's knowledge and allow for flexibility. With a written exam, if the student can not do one of the problems, I won't find out if he might have had a good knowledge in another area; with an oral, when I see that the student draws a blank, I can switch topics and ask about something else to see if he knows anything. Or if, as the teacher, you haven't phrased the question well, you have a chance to rephrase it. I've done this informally all the way along but I have never done this formally. I've never had to take an oral exam, either. It seems to me that the USA is moving in the wrong directions. We are worried about fairness - cultural fairness and fairness to those with learning disabilities and student cheating, and yet we continue to move in the direction of multiple choice questions and computer grading. If we incorporated more oral exams, I think it would help with some of these problems. It would also help with the critical thinking that we see emphasized so much these days. Nan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cleopatra Posted October 14, 2011 Share Posted October 14, 2011 It seems to me that the USA is moving in the wrong directions. We are worried about fairness - cultural fairness and fairness to those with learning disabilities and student cheating, and yet we continue to move in the direction of multiple choice questions and computer grading. If we incorporated more oral exams, I think it would help with some of these problems. It would also help with the critical thinking that we see emphasized so much these days. Nan Ahem to that! The school system in Canada is not much better. Our friends, who grew up in France and are now attending university in the US, were shocked to see multiple choice questions on university exams. They said they never had multiple choices questions in France, even in elementary school! But I digress :tongue_smilie:..... my reason for posting was to suggest Mortimer J. Adler's companion to How To Read a Book, How to Speak, How to Listen. http://www.amazon.com/How-Speak-Listen-Mortimer-Adler/dp/0684846470 It is fantastic for teaching oral fluency, something that us North Americans have little practice with. It doesn't directly cover oral exams but it might be helpful ...... ????:001_smile: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joan in GE Posted October 14, 2011 Share Posted October 14, 2011 (edited) You can have oral exams with a preparation time. In sciences, you could give a problem 15-30 minutes beforehand and have the student prepare the solution. in foreign languages, we would get a topic for a speech and have 20 minutes to prep, or we would be paired up with another student and get 20 minutes to prepare a dialogue about a topic which we then had to present to the examiner. For French, German and English end of high school oral exams here (there is a separate written exam that is a persuasive essay in our experience) the students have to say the books they have chosen (3-5 depending on the language - first vs second or third) from a given list. The judges choose one of those books and give them a list of questions which they have 15 minutes to prepare for on the spot. Then they go in and the teachers/judges ask them questions for 15 minutes. That is from memory but I'll check with my guys.... Joan PS. click on the tag - there are two other threads that come up (seems like there was another but it isn't tagged...) Edited October 14, 2011 by Joan in Geneva Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Create Your Ritual Posted October 14, 2011 Share Posted October 14, 2011 Listening in... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roadrunner Posted October 14, 2011 Share Posted October 14, 2011 Example of an oral exam in history. You have a box with 50 tickets. Each ticket has 3 questions. You pick a ticket and then have about 10 minutes to think before standing in front of the panel and telling all you know about those topics. Then you are asked numerous questions from other material and finally graded. Oral exam in math. Dictating about 10 problems covered over the course of the semester that you write on the chalk board and solve step by step while explaining what you are doing and why. Chemistry: about 4-5 questions you picked randomly from different topics covered that you will have to explain in detail. Then you will be given 4-5 Chem problems to solve on a chalk board similar to math. That's how my school was in all the subjects. Of course we had essays as well in literature. Again, you were given 3 topics and you could chose one to write about from all the literature covered (ex: talk about legal system of so and so country based on 13th century writing of so and so). You had to support everything with direct quotes (I can't tell you how many pages of prose and how many poems we drilled by memory). :001_smile: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nan in Mass Posted October 14, 2011 Author Share Posted October 14, 2011 Roadrunner - Yikes! I can't imagine having to give quotes on an exam from memory! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roadrunner Posted October 14, 2011 Share Posted October 14, 2011 Roadrunner - Yikes! I can't imagine having to give quotes on an exam from memory! Some from 4th century texts :lol: Oh yes, history writing exam, you had to quote original sources (thank you Greeks). You know, it sounds really terrible, but somehow we all did it and at that time it wasn't so bad. And now I can lay it bed on a rainy day and just recite poetry to my heart's delight. I am glad they put us through all this. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nan in Mass Posted October 14, 2011 Author Share Posted October 14, 2011 Yes, it must be nice to be able to take your knowledge around with you. I am totally sieve-brained. Sigh. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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