Scientific Skills Workshops

This seminar provides you with tools and practice in essential rhetorical techniques and how to consider your audience when preparing and delivering scientific presentations.

You will develop a presentation that is convincing and creates audience interest while also making your content clear and concise.

We will examine typical differences between German and international English presentation approaches.

Most importantly, you will hold your own presentations and become more comfortable with your own style. You will receive constructive feedback and advice on how to handle especially challenging situations.

The training follows an interactive approach with skills being practised through multiple short activities, building up to a longer academic talk.  Preparation assignment Participants need to prepare a short talk (8 minutes) on their research topic before seminar begin. 

Learning outcomes  

• Structuring your talk to be audience-friendly
• Expressions for introducing, summarizing & making transitions
• Connecting with your audience
• Emphasizing key messages
• Using your voice: intonation, pace, pausing
• Body language & eye contact
• Effective style and format for visuals
• Dealing with difficult questions

Teaching methodology

The is an interactive seminar that provides opportunities to hold short presentations and develops practice in dealing with questions.

You will discover what you need to improve through constructive feedback from the trainer as well as other participants. Furthermore, we will use small group activities to develop your competence for building rapport, emphasizing key messages as well as language for introducing, summarizing, and making transitions.

About the trainer

Tim Korver is a native speaker of English who has been living in Munich since 2002. He owns a language school where the focus lies teaching Communication Skills to business people as well as academic researchers. Apart from ‘Scientific Presentation’, he also runs workshops on ‘Scientific Writing’, ‘Effective argumentation’ and ‘Job Applications’ at a number of universities and scholarship programs across Germany. He attained his MA in Linguistics, which focused on language change in the scientific journal article. He has a strong interest in Rhetoric of Science, and regularly helps individuals to argue their ideas more effectively.