A Guide On Creating a PowerPoint Presentation on Argumentative Paper
Argumentative or persuasive writing is an inherent part of the curriculum. A student's goal is to choose a controversial topic, conduct research, and then use the information gathered to prove the opinion or idea. It's not enough to be an excellent writer to tackle this assignment. Students need to obtain analytical skills and be proficient in researching and critical thinking to argue or support a statement and present sound evidence. Creating a PowerPoint presentation on an essay basis is a kind of challenge as well.
Some of the critical components of an argumentative essay are a (1) clear and concise thesis statement,(2) a firm position on an issue, and (3) supportive solid evidence to convince the reader to adopt the position of the author.
Presentation aids such as powerpoint can be beneficial and advantageous to a presenter if appropriately implemented. The main issues to consider in presenting with this method are (a) deciding how to use the program as an aid (please see below for details) (b) extracting the necessary points from the paper to present a clear argument (c) and effectively presenting the information onto slides to ensure that the information is easily understood and received by the audience.
So how can I use the powerpoint program in my presentation?
This may seem like a peculiar question, but an important factor that needs to be thoroughly understood by students is that; when utilizing powerpoint, the slides provided by the program are only meant to aid you in delivering your presentation and should not actually be your presentation. Therefore, considering the abovementioned information, you must define why your slides are necessary for your presentation.
Here are a few variants:
- Be used to outline the information that you plan to cover in your speech
- Highlight significant points and provide brief descriptions and examples
- Be used as a visual aid by displaying pictures, charts, tables, or graphs to the audience
- Combine two or more of the uses mentioned above
In most cases, students will choose # 4, and combine several of the different uses mentioned. It's optimal in certain situations where the audience can benefit from visual aids, brief descriptions, and explanations of the discussed aspects. And as with any presentation, the audience's characteristics and needs should also be considered when compiling presentation materials.
For review purposes, since the audience is likely to be other students and or professors, the pressing need for note taking, for instance, is not present. Therefore in situations such as this, the presenter may find it more beneficial to share very short and brief slides (similar to an outline) along with relevant and valuable graphics rather than giving more detailed descriptions of topics in some educational presentations.
Extraction: Making slides out of your argumentative paper
After organizing your presentation method, help you identify exactly what content to add to each slide. To do it, you'd better revise the purpose of the paper you're writing. More than anything else, an argumentative essay seeks to persuade (quite aggressively) the reader into accepting and adapting the position held by the writer. In doing this, one of the writer's most powerful weapons is their evidential support (*and due to this the research involved in developing such an essay is fundamental).
So during a presentation, to leave your audience positively convinced about your position, each powerpoint slide should work supportively to help illustrate and drive home your main point. An example of what can be included in each slide is detailed below.
A sample breakdown of slides for an argumentative paper:
*Slide 1: A comprehensive thesis statement or a topic sentence giving clear and substantial information. For instance, a sample sentence may be: 'A significant amount of the population is addicted to and dependent upon technological devices such as cell phones and laptop computers.'
*Slide 2: An impressive statistical figure to support the topic sentence.
*Slide 3: 1-2 lines introducing the first point of the argument. For instance, an author could write about 'the recent surge of smartphones on the market and its impact on people's daily lives.'
*Slide 4: Support the first point with a graphic (it could be a picture of a smartphone or a table showing an increase in android and smartphone sales in the past three years)
*Slide 5: Connect the point made in slide 3 to the overall sentence mentioned in slide 1 (to show a relationship amongst the ideas.)
*Repeat steps 3-4 if necessary and make changes to the support evidence on slide four as deemed necessary.
Now that you understand what information needs to be extracted for each slide, the final and most important aspect of the powerpoint presentation is effectively displaying your notes on each slide.
Creating slides that are easy to understand and comprehend
Visually appealing slides are a significant part of effectively utilizing the powerpoint program. Cluttered, distracting, and poorly written slides will not only be hard on the reader. Still, they may also take away from your research by belittling and trivializing some acceptable conclusions. With an argumentative paper especially, presentation is very important. To act as a proper persuasive and convincing tool, an audience should feel that the presenter is qualified and knowledgeable of the topic being discussed-and clean and effective slides will aid in accomplishing this goal.
Some helpful tips for creating powerpoint slides:
- Place one idea per slide and avoid writing more than a couple of lines
- Use contrasting solid colors that will be easy to read such as blue on white
- Aim for consistency when using fonts, colors, and sizes
- Avoid distracting templates and graphics
In addition to the above tips, it's also worth mentioning that the presenter should prepare other materials to add variety and interest to the presentation, such as handouts or physical samples. Likewise, notecards or an outline should also be prepared beforehand to assist in speech-making rather than relying on powerpoint slides for critical information.
