Following the instruction and Secondary Source Integration to write the Process Post 3
Process Post #3 - The Book Review Presentation Outline
(I will post this as a Word Doc that you can complete and submit.)
As you know, your task is to convince the Ohio State University to require all incoming students to read the book you chose from our course booklist.
A compelling and persuasive college-level presentation will likely include (but is not limited to) the following elements:
An explanation of the purpose of the book and how it achieves that purpose.
A description of the book's claims and the evidence on which those claims are based.
An explanation of the context (what's going on in the world) that makes this book so important.
An argument for how this book could impact incoming Ohio State students and perhaps even how it might affect the University community as a whole.
An admission of the reasons people might oppose requiring students to read this book as well as your arguments to counter that critique.
You can achieve the above in different ways, for example, you might use your personal experience of reading the book as evidence of how other Ohio State students would respond to it, or you might look at demographic data about Ohio State students and make an argument that relates to the racial and ethnic make-up of the student body. Either (and, for sure, a host of other ideas) could lead to a strong argument.
Your job now is to think about the arc (the logical connection of one idea to the next) that you will use to lead your audience through your presentation and ultimately to persuade them to agree with you.
1. Start by answering the following in a sentence or two each:
What do I want the audience to believe/do at the end of my presentation?
What will they need to know about the world in order to believe/do the above?
What will they need to know about the book in order to believe/do the above?
What reasons (assumptions, values, perspectives) might they have for disagreeing with me?
What tactics can I use to overcome those assumptions, values, and perspectives?
What reasons (assumptions, values, perspectives) might they have for agreeing with me?
What tactics can I use to appeal to those assumptions, values, and perspectives?
How can I "hook" the audience's attention at the beginning of the presentation?
Thinking about your answers to these questions as well as the list of likely elements in a successful presentation (see above), create an outline for your presentation.
2. Divide your presentation into sections that build logically from one to the next and then write a sentence or two about the specifics of how that section relates to your book and your arguments. (You decide how many sections you need but there should be at least five given the list of suggested "elements" above.)
3. Once you have created your sections, consider how much time/space you will need to devote to each section. Your presentation will be 15 slides long. Go back to your outline and indicate the number of slides you plan to devote to each section.
4. Your Book Review Presentations are not simply a book review, because they should also serve the purpose of persuading your audience that your book is *the* book that OSU first-year students should read. That being said, you will benefit from reading a book review and thinking about what aspects of a typical book review will be necessary to include in your presentation.
