Is it good for the speaker to read notes during a presentation?

Question

I am wondering whether it looks odd if a speaker reads notes during a presentation? I am asking this because, I noticed that a few presenters can’t present their work or research well due to nervousness and other factors such as language, pronunciation etc.

So if a speaker makes notes and just reads them properly along with the slides, how will it look? Will audiences accept or criticize such presentations?

How will it be if the speaker speaks by themself, but they will look into the notes if necessary?

Answer 1

Twenty years ago it was not at all uncommon at international conferences in physics and electrical engineering to attend at "read" presentations, especially from old researchers from Asian countries who were not used to speak English.

How was it? Boring, utterly boring, and audiences drifted away. Please don't do or suggest it: if you feel uncomfortable speaking, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.

Answer 2

So if a speaker makes notes and just reads them properly along with the slides, how will it look? Will audiences accept or criticise such presentations?

It will not leave the best impression, but you will survive it.

The biggest problem, however, is the word properly: Reading a talk or speech in a manner that is equivalent to ad-libbing is an art of its own and if you have mastered it, you usually do not need it anymore (unless you are a politician, actor or similar). If you have no experience in this manner and are nervous on top, you will almost certainly make frequent mistakes with respect to emphasis, tone and rhythm, usually by losing them altogether. This will make it difficult for the audience to follow your talk and very likely be worse than trying to give a regular talk.

Another problem is that writing a talk is not as simple as it may seem, as spoken language crucially differs from written one: Sentences are shorter and simpler; certain grammatical constructions only work well in written language; other aspects are exclusive to spoken language and essential for a good talk. A simple example for the latter is using the word here and pointing at the proper part of the projection.

Here is roughly what I recommend:

• Learn the first one or two sentence of your talk by heart and memorise important aspects of the next few ones. This should give you a safe start and way to cope with your nervousness. What is important is that you have a smooth transition from fully memorised sentences to ad-libbing. If you don’t, you may get stuck at the transition point.

• Rehearse early and often. This way you can spot difficult passages and prepare ways to master them, e.g., make mental notes on how to do a transition, look up vocabulary that you lack, and so on.

  After a few runs, rehearse in front of an audience that can give you some feedback – even if it’s your ten-year old brother who does not understand a word you are saying and can only comment on the impression you are leaving (an audience that can give you feedback on the content is better though). This also forces you to rehearse the actual talk situation and makes you avoid starting all over on a regular basis. Most importantly, rehearsing is one of the best wards against nervousness.

  Mind you: rehearse not memorise entirely. A talk that is entirely recited from memory is as bad as a talk that is entirely read from notes.

• Learn to use your slides as a memory aid. Avoid putting full sentences on slides, because you may read them out during your talk (and your audience does not want to read full sentences either).

I am talking about the field of Atmosphere, where many proper wordings are necessary to address the originality of one's work.

I am not in your field, but I am skeptical that this extends beyond using the proper vocabulary and keywords – which you can put on your slides as a memory aid and to tell your audience about them in case you forget to mention them.

Answer 3

At least in my field, mathematics, in the U.S. (and probably western Europe) it is stylistically quite undesirable to read from slides, because it makes a person look as though they haven't really assimilated the material. For that matter, I've occasionally wondered who actually wrote those slides that the speaker treats as mysterious, surprising, or baffling.

On the other hand, there are indeed possibly even-worse failures, such as becoming completely tongue-tied, incoherent, panic-attacked, etc. But this scenario won't make a good impression on anyone, in any case.

If one's command of the relevant language is so minimal that one can do no better than to read the slides... it still may be better to not read all the slides, but just emphasize the high points, rather than look a bit silly. After all, people can/will read the slides themselves.

In particular, ideally, the audio portion complements the video. They are different mediums. Formulas are best displayed, not spoken. Complicated English (or other) sentences are best spoken, not filling up a slide with small print that makes people squint to read it... Graphics go on slides...

Answer 4

I'm in mathematics and I don't think I've ever seen a speaker in a math lecture read directly from prepared notes. I have seen many speakers read from their slides, and like Paul Garrett (and for precisely the reasons he explained) I think this is a bad practice and should be avoided at all costs.

As for reading from paper notes you prepare in advance, while highly unusual for technical talks, if anything this would be less bad than reading from your slides, but whether this is a reasonable idea or not really depends on the execution. Some orators can deliver an amazing speech when reading from a teleprompter or written notes, but most of us who don't have extensive training in this particular artform will probably end up giving a rather dry, boring presentation if we try reading from notes.

My thinking on this can be summarized with the saying you can't beat the system. Giving an effective and engaging presentation, whatever your chosen mode of delivery, requires a combination of several skills:

1. A good level of fluency in, and mastery of, the language you are presenting in.

2. Good pronunciation, articulation, and voice projection.

3. A high level of mastery of the specific skills pertaining to your chosen mode of presentation (e.g., good blackboard technique for a blackboard talk; good knowledge of PowerPoint if that's what you're using; good ability to read effectively from written notes if that's what you're doing; etc.).

4. Engaging personality and ability to relate well to your audience, calm nerves, sense of humor, etc.

5. Last but certainly not least: knowing the material well!

None of these skills are easy or trivial, and all of them require extensive training and practice to get good at. So if you're thinking of reading from notes as a shortcut that will enable you to give a good talk despite having serious language deficiencies or suffering from terrible stage fright, think again - there are no shortcuts (which is what I mean by saying you can't beat the system). The bottom line is: reading from notes may be the approach that works best for you, and I wouldn't advise you to rule the idea out, but the point is you'd still have to put in a lot of work to do it well and successfully. Good luck!

Answer 5

Just reading aloud your notes is something that is typically not seen as good in many fields (e.g., computer science). There are many reasons for that, one of which being that it is often the bad presenters who do this.

However, I feel compelled to point out that there is nothing wrong with doing that if it actually improves the presentation. Two examples are:

• I've once witnessed a super-big-shot doing this for the introduction of his talk at a premier conference. The introduction was ultra-carefully crafted to set the work into a very precise context, in a well-understandable way, in very short time, while speaking clearly and slowly at the same time. After that, he continued with freely talking about the actual novel results in his talk. The introduction was actually great and helped researchers from related disciplines a lot to grasp the main ideas.
• Speakers with a native language that is quite "far" away from English do this sometimes to avoid grammatical errors during the talk. If the errors that they make during free speech makes it almost impossible to understand the talk, then reading from cards improves the talk.

Answer 6

I agree with avoiding reading notes for the reasons already suggested (Death By Powerpoint being one of them).

When presenting (no matter how small or large is the audience) I use slides with one or two words (or a picture) to help me to keep track of the presentation rather than to entertain the audience.

I then use a technique used by Romans speakers (it has its own graceful name which I forgot Method of loci, thanks @MassimoOrtolano) to mentally walk though a house from room to room and attach "things I must say" to elements in that room. It also helps me to time the presentation (I am usually within 2-3 minutes for an hour presentation)

Answer 7

I took speech class a couple of years back and my teacher taught us that we should not read our notes when doing presentations.

It is very boring and you will lose credibility in what you were talking about. It is better to have a speaker who is engaged and knows what they are talking about in order for the audience to listen. This would require plenty of hours to practice. I believe a good example who has done this is Martin Luther King. He used to spend hours and hours preparing for his Sunday sermon.

Answer 8

Did anyone mention 'rehearse'? Watch TED talks, or any good speaker, whether or not you admire their viewpoint. Pay attention to the presentation, rather than the subject. And rehearse. A colleague can help you get your points down, but a manager (or professor) can help you get your points across. Criticism from these sources is welcome, while criticism from your target audience is not. So, rehearse.

Answer 9

What I recommend you is to present as best as you can and %10 percent of the each slide you can read or just skim realy quick while you are speaking. As @Massimo said listening a presentation that a presenter read from the slides is not nice at al.

Answer 10

During Speech classes I took in college, I had notecards with notes on them just in case I forgot or needed to add something related to that situation. So I believe it's good to read notes, but best not to read it word for word. You should keep your eyes on your audience and not distract them with sudden movements or bore them as you read your notes.

Answer 11

Two relatively extreme examples.

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Digression from notes

Consider Bryan Cantrill on Jails and Solaris Zones | Papers We Love (2016-02-11) – 105 minutes of excitable, fast-talking discussion around a 44-slide presentation.

How fast? Commentary under https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgN8pCMLI2U includes a wish for the speaker slow down a bit; the speaker jokes that "To slow down is to admit defeat". There are neither subtitles nor a transcript (I might joke that the pace of discussion defeats the will of most potential transcribers); if spoken at a more 'traditional' pace, I reckon that the discussion could have spanned three hours or more.

Is it good to read notes during a presentation?

At one point, Cantrill appears to rein himself him – one of the digressions (from FreeBSD jails) ends with a salutory mention of Robben Island and whilst presenter's notes are at the rostrum, the reining involved no visible use of those notes. Instead, there's:

• visible presenter focus on the audience's view of the presentation.

At all other times, the audience enjoys presenter focus on the audience; on his maintaining their engagement with what's discussed.

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Attention to notes

DCTLib observed:

… at a premier conference. The introduction was ultra-carefully crafted to set the work into a very precise context, in a well-understandable way, in very short time, while speaking clearly and slowly at the same time. After that, he continued with freely talking about the actual novel results in his talk. The introduction was actually great and helped researchers from related disciplines a lot to grasp the main ideas.

Back to the opening question:

Is it good to read notes during a presentation?

For an introduction of the type described by DCTLib: yes – it can be very good to do so.