Month: April 2022

The Halfa Kucha Presentation was eye-opening because it confirmed a long-held suspicion I had regarding my ability to communicate.

I always seemed to talk better than I wrote and it became clear to me while working on the Halfa Kucha that it was in fact the case. While writing essays/papers, I find myself having decent ideas for arguments, however, those thoughts can never stay in my head for more than two seconds before devolving into something incoherent and round – aboutish. When asked to say my arguments out loud, my ideas come together and make sense to a listener whose next question would be, “Why can’t you just write that?”

The Halfa Kucha allowed me to utilize my strength in explanation and verbal communication to make an effective and coherent argument on Stitches and Sabrina’s investigation into trauma and healing.

The process of preparing for the presentation was enjoyable as I had not had to give a speech in front of people in over two years. I was somewhat disappointed in my actual presentation as I felt I prematurely removed certain aspects of my presentation that had helped me during my practice sessions and even some technical difficulties at the beginning threw me off my rhythm.

Regardless, coming back to my first point, I felt my argument came through clearly and everyone was able to understand it well.

The final thing I would like to reflect on is the uniqueness of the Halfa Kucha style of presentation. Forcing myself to stick to a 20-second time limit prevented me from rambling on and making my sentences more concise and informative. Overall, I would love to present in this format again.

I thoroughly enjoyed working on this presentation, due to its uniquely different style. I started from finding a quote from Judith Lewis Herman that I found was profound, and worked from the books to making slideshows formulating a hypothesis, then finalizing my argument. I found that it was similar to formulating for an argumentative essay, in that I started off with researching through the books, and then formulating an argument. One active choice I made was to split up the novels from talking about one and then another. Instead I went back and forth between them for each slide. I felt this made my arguments more straightforward, and also made it feel centralized and united of an idea. This could also be implemented into written work. My thinking process overall, however, was definitely more visual oriented than an essay would be. Furthermore, I think this argument would work in an essay format as well, with simply less visual feedback.

Luckily, my slides had a very strong visual energy, as the topic I chose were all very clear cut signs of conveyed silence, or an intense breakage from that silence. I think these specific slides made my argument much more clear cut and straightforward, as each slide directly correlated to my ABT thesis.

I learned from this presentation that preparation is key, as well as extensive knowledge of what you are discussing. Without both, you will be out of control when the slides come up. You need lots and lots of preparation to ensure your argument lines up with each given 20 seconds, as well as your overall narrative is clear. I think ensuring the overall narrative and not losing track of it is an important thing to keep in mind. I was very happy with how my presentation turned out. However, from noticing other’s presentation, perhaps I could have also shared some slides that had no book related visuals on it, to further describe an idea present in the book. However, I found that showcasing the visuals from the novel made it much more easy to follow than simply clipart images others had shown. Perhaps I could have touched up on the seamless flow between each slide.