TOPs - Working on Introductions

Dear all,

This is what we said about Introductions for TOPs last Wednesday. We hope you profit from them!

Introduction - Steps to follow:

- Introduction of the participants or members of the team. A feasible possibility is: “The members of this/our team are: ......, ........., and myself ............”

- Announcement of the main ideas / aspects that will be discussed. (=TOPIC) (sometimes a short background information is also recommended)

- Announcement of development / how the presentation will be organised.

SAMPLE 1

The members of this group are X, Y and myself, Z and we have based this oral presentation on the short stories “25 Years Too Late” by Corina Murcia and “Mr. Loveday’s Little Outing” by Evelyn Waugh. We’re going to focus on the main characters Ignacio and Angela respectively. In both stories, we can see that these characters seem to take care of their elders. In the case of Ignacio, he wanted to see his father after twenty-five years of distance. As for Angela, she wanted to help Mr. Loveday be released from the asylum where he was. However, Ignacio and Angela seemed to have solved the problem in a very selfish way.
 
In the presentation, we’ll explain how these characters tried to overcome these difficulties; and then, we’ll refer to the evidence in the short story that tells us how selfishly they were actually acting.
 
First, X is going to speak about Ignacio and Angela’s dilemma. And then Y will explore on each character’s selfishness.
 
As Z said, Ignacio and Angela tried to assist their elders in different ways.
 
As for Ignacio, […]

SAMPLE 2

My name is XYZ and I’ve based this presentation on the novelette “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros. I’ll be concentrating on how women were treated in the Hispanic community and how this idea is developed throughout the different vignettes.
 
As we start reading, we realise that the main characters are living in a Mexico-American environment in which women are sometimes object of oppression. I’ll give the characteristics of Mexico-American culture in the 1970s and then I’ll show how the idea of women’s oppression is made evident in the novelette.
 
As I’ve said, in “The House on Mango Street” we see characteristics of Mexico-American culture. [...]

Why are Introductions important?

- They engage the listener. (If it is good enough, the listener will find the topic to be developed relevant and/or interesting).

- They activate the audience’s previous knowledge on the topic of the presentation. (Sometimes we provide background information to activate this knowledge and some other times we add some information that we think the listener will need to know in order to better understand the presentation).

- They serve as a guide to the listener (the addressee gets to know the order in which the presentation will be developed), which helps him/her to better follow and understand the text.

To sum up, you should consider...
- Who the members of the team are.
- Which topic you are going to develop.
- Background information that is necessary for the better understanding of the presentation. (Relevant information!)
- The way the presentation will be developed. (Definitions and Conclusion should not  be anticipated!)

We wish you the best of luck for your first TOP!