In this assignment you should prepare an oral presentation of the American Historical event that you have written and present it during a lesson. Pretend that you are a reporter that tells about the event on TV. Try to summarize what the interviewed people have said in the article. You can use your written article, but you are not allowed to read it! Learn to talk about it with keywords. Length: 2-4 minutes.
When summarizing your text try to:
Introduction / lead :
- have an interesting (and relatively short) lead so that it grabs the listeners interest (for example: “Today an 80-years-old man was slowly pressed to death under a bed of rocks in Salem.”)
- only answer the most important questions in the lead like “what” and “where”
- avoid “yesterday” and “last night” in your leads. Instead use “today” to make it sound more current
- don’t mention the name of the person unless that person is known by everyone like Barack Obama
- prepare the listener for the information to follow (for example: Simply, because he was accused of witchcraft, and then tortured to bring forward a plea that he would not utter.”)
Body:
- keep the sentences a bit shorter so the reporter can breath and stress some of the keywords in your sentences (for example: This all started with a girl named Mercy Lewis who claimes to be haunted by Giles Corey. She also tells me that his ghost used to visit her in her chamber and was therefore very pleased to hear that Giles Corey was being tortured for it. However Mercy Lewis didn’t know exactly why )
- don’t add personal opinions
- use present tense verbs throughout the story whenever possible
- use active voice: “subject-verb-object” sentence structure like (for example “The boy hit the ball” and not “the ball was hit by the boy”)
- when you’re quoting make sure that you always introduce who you are quoting (for example: “Mercy Lewis who has been haunted by Giles Corey says and I quote “…”)
End:
- For example: “This is (your name) reporting for ABC news and back to you in the studio”
When you’re delivering your speech try to
- have good posture
- take it slow and speak with confidence
- make eye contact with the audience
- avoid reading from your reportage
Student example
Mr Smedjeback's English Class 