The Timing of Transition Sentences

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The Timing of Transition Sentences Bas A. Andeweg ([email protected]) Tel. +31 (0)15 2781559 Fax: +31 (0)15 2787105 Delft University of Technology Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management Institute of Technology and Communication P.O. Box 5015 2600 GA Delft The Netherlands

The Timing of Transition Sentences Bas A. Andeweg, PhD Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology, Delft, the Netherlands, [email protected]

Abstract A message can be communicated more effectively if the structure of the information is apparent to the receiver. By using transition sentences a presenter can make the presentational structure more explicit. Although empirical research suggests that the use of transition sentences has an effect on the retention of a presentation, there is no answer to the practical question when a speaker should say this structure enhancing sentence: before or after clicking to the next PowerPoint® slide? A straightforward experiment was designed in which the timing of the transition sentence was the only independent variable. A 15-minute lecture was presented in two ways: transition sentence – click to next slide versus click-transition sentence. The presentations were recorded in a studio (without audience) and afterwards combined with the PowerPoint® presentation. The dependent variables were a mc-question list to measure the retention of the listeners and a list of statements accompanied by a 5-point Likert-like scale to measure the attitude of the listeners. Both presentations were shown to comparable groups (N-total=186). The results show that a small decision like clicking to a next slide before informing the audience about the structural place of the next passage within the whole of the presentation, affects the aftertaste of the presentation itself. Keywords: communication instruction, oral presentation, PowerPoint®, presentation structure, rhetoric.

1

INTRODUCTION

New technology breeds new habits. The development of an oral presentation to a PowerPoint® presentation has changed the presentation habits of many presenters. A new type of presenter emerged. His or her speech behaviour can often be characterised as follows: click, a new slide appears; the speaker turns his head to the screen and reads out the title of the slide aloud. Then he turns to the public. This sequence repeats itself (click; turn to slide; reads etc). It is as if the speaker is conditioned by the slides. The slides take the lead, the speaker follows. Advice on how to present an effective presentation is abundant. Since our classical forefathers Aristotle, Cicero and Quintilian much is (re)written on how a presenter should prepare and present an informative and convincing speech. In this paper we will focus especially on how a presenter can make the transition in a PowerPoint presentation from one slide or presentation segment to another. We will present an experiment on some of the choices a speaker has in signalling the next part.

2

PRESENTING WITH POWERPOINT®

Traditionally advice on how to present a presentation focuses on the classical speech tasks already laid out two millenniums ago: 1. Inventio (Invention): The invention of content: what to say; the choice of arguments. 2. Dispositio (Arrangement): The arrangement of the parts of a presentation. 3. Elocutio (Style): The choice and combination of words into phrases, sentences and rhetorical figures: how to formulate a speech. 4. Memoria (Memory): how to learn a speech by heart.

5.

Pronuntiatio (Delivery): the oral presentation of a speech, the suggestion of improvisation; masking the learning. Of course nowadays we have new jargon like audience analysis, text design principles and new multi-media attention getting techniques. But also in Roman days presenters used many other means than speech to persuade the listeners, so teaches us Quintilian [1]: crying children were brought on the stage, the wounded would show their wounds undressed and the swords were shown dripping with blood (pVI.1.30). Although they had no Powerpoint® those days, the writings of Quintilian suggest that he would not have been a supporter of the program: “But I would not, for that reason, approve of a device of which I have read and which I have myself seen adopted, a representation, displayed in a painting or on a curtain, of the act at the atrocity of which the judge was to be shocked. For how conscious must a pleader be of his inefficiency who thinks that a dumb picture will speak better for him than his own words?” (pVI.1.32)

Although Powerpoint® is a very much bashed program; there is hardly an advisory firm in our Western society that does not use a program like Powerpoint® to present research results, advice or professional considerations. In every book on oral presentations there is an obligatory chapter on PowerPoint®. This chapter is mainly filled with details on how to build a slide: Legibility (use of contrasting colours; font size) Comprehensibility (brevity) Avoiding bullet points Using pictures Although there is an overwhelming amount of advice on how to use the software program there is rather little on how to present with it, how to link it with the speech itself. Some of the most mentioned presentation tips are: look at your audience not at your screen. The advice – in western culture - that a speaker must keep continuous eye contact with his listeners is endangered by the use of a computer and a video screen. do not read the slides aloud. Some writers call it the ‘kiss of death’ [2]. According to Paradi [3] it is the biggest annoyance of listeners to a PowerPoint® presentation. It suggests that the speaker notes are not on the desk of the speaker but projected for all to see and to read. do not obscure yourself. Leave the lights on. Most people tend to lower the lights to make the slides more readable. Leaving the light on enables the audience to see the speakers’ eyes. 2.1 Transitions: how to move from one part of a speech to another? The transition from one point in a presentation to the next is a point of special consideration for advisors in oral presentations. The idea is that a transition helps digesting the story. Osborne & Osborne [4] for instance state that transitions serve as signposts that help the listeners to see the overall pattern of the presentation. “Transitions bridge ideas and aid understanding” (p91). Van der Laaken & Van der Laaken [5] give the following example: “We have just seen how important magic realism is in South American literature. Unsurprisingly, it is also gaining ground in film. Let's analyze a concrete example of a very influential film, which ...”(p37). The transition ends a segment of the speech and forms a bridge to the next part of the presentation. Transitions can be categorized in all sorts of ways. Osborne & Osborne discern for instance 7 categories (table 1). The table shows that there is no easy single criterion for distinguishing the categories from another. Furthermore, a difference appears between the transition words in the table and the example sentences encountered elsewhere in the book. Table 1: Common transitions according to Osborn & Osborn [4] To indicate Time changes Additions Comparison Contrast Cause-effect Numerical order Spatial relations Explanation Importance The speech is ending

Use until, now, since, later, eventually moreover, in addition, furthermore compared with, both are, like, just as but, yet, in contrast, on the contrary therefore, thus consequently first, second, eventually nearby, in the distance, eastward to illustrate, for example, in other words most importantly, above all, take note of In short, finally, in conclusion

Alley [6] makes transition a central point in preparing a presentation. He suggests that presenters can signal topic transitions with:

-

phrases in speech: "That concludes what I wanted to say about the building stages of Hawaiian volcanoes. Now I will consider the declining stages.". - changes in slides. In particular he argues that well formulated slide titles can compensate for spoken transitions missed by the audience. - in the delivery; Alley points out that pauses are especially good techniques to indicate a transition “a pause is not initially taken as a sign that the speaker is lost. Rather, the audience assumes that the speaker is collecting his or her thoughts”. (p88) Hager & Scheiber [7] suggest that repeating key words is also effective to help the listeners recognize a shift to another key topic in the presentation. The research of Anthony, Orr & Yamazaki [8] shows that in reality speakers seem to do hardly anything to switch from one point in their presentation to another. Anthony et al. observed speakers on a conference (four American and one Japanese presenter). Although the pilot study is too small to draw firm conclusions, it gives an impression of what happens. Their observations show that speaking professionals in real life do not exhibit the behaviour you would expect on basis of the advisory literature. The observed speakers use al kind of rather simple signals to make clear where they are in their presentations: body language (e.g. turning the head to the screen), the word “and eeh” or they just click to a new slide.

2.2 Transition: part of the fabric of speech The idea that a transition helps the processing of the information is rather new. In earlier days, a transition was meant to refresh the attention of the listener. A transition like - "You have heard what occurred before; hear now what followed." [pIV.2.50] - would prevent, according to Quintilian, the distracting of the mind of the listener. Cicero [9] concurs: “it appears right […] to remind the reader of what remains to be mentioned of that division of the subject, and why it remains” (De Inventione, xxxvi). Nowadays researchers are primarily focussed on information processing aspects of transitions. In a research article Chaudron & Richards [10] refer to the bottomup / top down processing of texts. Comprehension is the result of both processes. In a top-down processing of a text the listener or reader uses expectations about the topic and structure of the (speech) text based on real-world knowledge and knowledge of various types of frames, schemas, and macro-structures [11, 12, 13]. Chaudron & Richards distinguish two kinds of text markers micro-markers and macro-markers. Micro-markers are small cues that indicate relation between sentences or pause-fillers (e.g. and, but, so, well). Macro-markers signal the relation between whole text segments (e.g. what I’m going to talk about today is; there are three elements I want to discuss). Macro-markers are a type of meta-discourse: they instruct the listener to comprehend the following discourse in a special way. Chaudron & Richards show in their experiment that macro-markers lead to a better recall of lecture text material than micro-markers. They suggest that macro-markers aid the listener in constructing appropriate schematic models of the major portions of the lecture. Similar results are found by [14, 15]. Jung [15] states that “When these markers are missing, listeners experience difficulty understanding the message, and communication problems ensue”(p1928). In an upcoming article Fraser [16] labels these markers Topic Reorientation Markers – these include markers as anyway, back to my original point, before I forget, by the way. He states that there are four classes with little overlap: markers that can be used to signal a transition to a new topic; markers that can be used to return to a prior topic; markers to add to or continue with the current topic or markers to signal a digression from a topic. In addition he discerns ‘attention markers’ which act as a lubricant to discourse and interaction.

2.3 Problem: using transitions In conclusion both theorists and advisors underline the importance of transition sentences, although in practice speakers do not frequently use them. The practise of using them is seldom a point in discussion. One of the few writers considering when and how a transition sentence has to be spoken is Cherie Kerr [17]. In her light-footed even humorous book Death by Powerpoint (2001) she makes an issue of the simultaneous speaking of the speech text and the showing of slides. “One of the biggest traps I see my clients get into is when they throw a slide up on the wall during their show and rather than pause for a moment to allow the audience to take that message in, (we call that pause a “beat), they just talk right over it” (p48). She advises to wait a moment to allow the audience to “take the message in”. An advice that is reformulated by a much cited article at Microsoft.com by Jeff Wuorio [18]: “a well-orchestrated PowerPoint program brings up a new slide gives the audience a chance to read and digest it, then follows up with remarks that broaden and amplify what's on the screen”. It seems that the exaggerated anecdote of the modern presenter in the introduction of this paper has a ground. Although some teachers abhor the PowerPoint® centred approach of some contemporary speakers, the focus in this paper is practical: does this way of presenting damage the presentation? Do the listeners remember less of it

or does the speaker only makes a poor impression presenting this way? Does the timing matters when you say your transition sentence and click to the next slide?

3

RESEARCH DESIGN

We devised a simple experiment in which this transition timing was the only independent variable. A 15-minute lecture was presented in two ways only differing in the position of transition sentences: before the click to the new slide or after the click. The presentation. We wrote a 15-minute lecture that discussed the use of communication techniques in persuading an audience. Several theories and communicational techniques were presented that where meant to modify planned and non-planned behaviour. The lecture was accompanied by a PowerPoint® deck of 19 slides. The presentation was presented by a seasoned presenter not known to the intended audience. The presentations were recorded in a studio (without audience) and afterwards combined with the PowerPoint® presentation by means of the free Microsoft program Producer for Powerpoint 2007. Figure 1 shows a scene from the presentation right after the presenter clicked to the next slide.

Figure 1: scene from presentation (right after clicking to the next slide) Transitions. Every slide was linked to the next with a macro-marker (Fraser’s Topic Reorientation Marker) or transition sentence. The sentences do not carry much informational or conceptual value. There were 19 sentences. Table 2 shows that the sentences used in this experiment can be ordered – following Fraser’s [16] classification - in several subtypes. - New topics (6 sentences). These sentences alert the listener to upcoming changes in the topic. - Adding (9 sentences). These sentences indicate where the speaker is in text segment sequence; Sentence 19 (Closing) can be interpreted as a special type of this category: the last element in the sequence. - Questions. These sentences focus the audience on the upcoming information by arousing the interest [4]. A type of ‘attention marker’ in the terminology of Fraser [16]. Table 2: transition sentences in the experiment Transition sentences 1. The following points will be addressed 2. First of all, what is communication actually? 3. The main point in this case is as follows. 4. What do you want to change? 5. In order to be able to change behaviour we first need to know what kind of behaviour we are dealing with. 6. There are different views on these kinds of behaviour. 7. How big is the difference between planned and automated behaviour effectively? 8. Can these kinds of behaviour be influenced? 9. Let ‘s start with three techniques to influence planned behaviour. 10. Which is more effective? 11. Let us continue with a second technique to influence

Transition type New Topic Adding & Question New Topic Question Adding New Topic Question Question Adding Question Adding

Transition sentences planned behaviour . 12. And finally a last technique to influence planned behaviour. 13. There are three types of methods to that can be used. 14. First one of the techniques for changing existing behaviour. 15. I mention two techniques. 16. A second technique for subtle influencing is the following. 17. A last method for influencing behaviour is as follows: 18. There are other options. 19. I will round off.

Transition type Adding New Topic Adding New Topic Adding Adding New Topic Adding (Closing)

The varying position of the transition sentence is illustrated in table 3. In the transition/click condition the transition sentence is the last sentence of a text fragment (position A in table 3); in the click/transition condition the transition sentence is the first of the text segment (position B in table 3). After each click to a new slide the presenter looks very shortly sideways to the screen (see Figure 1). Table 3: Example transitions: click position A (after transition sentence to the next slide) or B (before)

[…] ‘loss framing’ appears to be more effective than ‘profit framing’. The reason for this was discovered in the 1980’s by the psychologists Tversky and Kahneman. They found that people find loss more unpleasant than that they find profit pleasant. [click A-11]

Transition [11]

Let us continue with a second technique to influence planned behaviour .

[click B-11] Discussing the arguments of your opponent. Is it wise to mention these arguments at all? The answer is ‘yes’. Research from amongst others Kardes shows that […] [click A-12]

Transition [12]

And finally a last technique to influence planned behaviour.

[click B-12] The order of the arguments. Should one mention the strongest arguments first, or are they better retained until the end? Research shows that […]

The dependent variables. The dependent variables were a mc-question list (30 items) to measure the retention of the listeners and a list of statements accompanied by a 5-point Likert-like scale to measure the attitude of the listeners. The statements could be grouped in three factors (see table 4). A reliability analysis showed that the statements were connected closely enough to be counted as representative to each of the three factors (Cronbach’s Alpha > .75) Table 4: measuring attitudes Presentational structure (a=.77) Interesting content (a= .85)

Ethos (a=.78)

-

The speaker made the coherence of the presentation explicit The speaker made continuously clear where he was in his presentation During the presentation the structure of the presentation was clear The presentation was structured The presentation on Communication and Behaviour was interesting The presentation on Communication and Behaviour was dull The subject Communication and Behaviour is interesting The presentation made me curious about the topic of Communication and Behaviour The speaker has expertise The speaker seems reliable The speaker is an expert on the topic The speaker is trustworthy The speaker is convincing The speaker is well prepared

Audience. The presentations were shown to two groups of first year students of the University of Technology Delft (N-total=186). They were told that the presentation was part of an experimental educational program that was meant to support their regular course. A questionnaire (three questions; 5-point scale) was used to assess possible differences between the groups. The groups did not differ on (self assessed ) foreknowledge on the topic (mean: 2.76 t(184)=1.192 p=.235); they all found the topic somewhat interesting (mean 3.45; t(184)=.543 p=.588) and in their opinion the lecture was somewhat necessary (mean: 3,30; t(184)=.486 p=.627).

4

RESULTS

Table 5 shows the data obtained from the multiple choice test. The difference between both conditions is statistical not significant (F(1, 184)=.054 p=.816) Table 5: retention results (mc-questions; percentage correct answers) Condition

Mean

sd

N

Transition -click Click - Transition

63,37 63,73

10,342 10,646

97 89

Total

63,54

10,462

186

The data from the attitude measurements are presented in table 6.

Table 6: attitude towards presentation and speaker

Presentation structure Interesting content

Ethos

Condition

Mean

sd

N

Transition-click Click-Transition Total Transition-click Click-Transition Total Transition-click Click-Transition

3,78 3,42 3,61 3,40 3,26 3,34 3,76 3,63

0,616 0,594 0,631 0,807 0,786 0,798 0,518 0,537

94 85 179 94 85 179 94 85

Total

3,70

0,530

179

A multivariate analysis shows that there is a main effect for condition (F(3, 175)=5,494 p