I don't know why, but last week, I witnessed three presentations in three different classes, and all three of them were...not very good.
In the first class, "The Canterbury Tales", the two girls who did the presentation had prepared the wrong topic, which resulted in a lot of organizational problems, because they had prepared someone else's topic. They basically asked the girl who chose next week's topic to let them do it and, well, she'd still be able to do something else, right?! Thank god the teacher didn't go for it.Unfortunately for the rest of us, that meant the girls had to improvise. Which they did, and they did it poorly. First of all, they weren't even sure what the text
(The Pardoner's Tale) was about, because of the "difficult language" (Middle English). What the hell? There's Modern English versions of the text and even German translations. If you don't understand it in the original, go look it up in another version. But no!
There was also no use of any kind of media, they just sat there and talked for 90 minutes straight. Most of the time, they didn't know what they were talking about, and the class fell asleep.
The second horrible presentation happened in our "Science Fiction Films" class. Of the three group members, only one did the talking. This time, there was a great Power Point presentation, and they used film clips, but unfortunately, the girl did not mention the main themes of the movie once. She did lots of fancy media stuff, but the content was all over the place. She tried to involve the class, but all she got was a "No, thank you" silence. The good thing for evil little bitches like me was that in the end, the professor told her that it was a crappy presentation, and that she had obviously not understood what the movie was really about. At all. He put it nicely, but he was rather pissed.
And then in the last class of that same day, disaster struck. One member of the group was missing, and this person had been responsible for their Power Point. As they went along with their presentation, we found out that there were two major parts missing. The group decided to leave these parts out, not even trying to improvise, making this presentation implode. This was enhanced by the complete lack of basic knowledge of linguistics that four out of five people showed(I hate linguistics, but even I remember the basics). One of the presenters used his laptop for notes, cradling it in his arm, and then he constantly lost his train of thought, AND where he was in his note. It was the most ridiculous thing to watch ever.
I understand that sometimes you have to give a presentation on a topic that is not your field of expertise. So sometimes the content may not be so great and not in as much depth as you might hope for. But you can always be well prepared, know the most important information, and answer the basic questions that come along with every topic.
Rant over ;)
