Post-Reading

1. Explain the following.

1. a team player

2. work ethics

3. collaboration

4. teaming

5. a process of awareness building

6. technique of brainstorming

2. Which of these characteristics describe you? (Yes/ No/ Sometimes)

Friendly Cooperative

Rude Jealous

Well-liked Busy

Lonely Successful

Ambitious A team player

3. Answer the questions below.

• What distinguishes a team in business from an ordinary group of people?

• What’s ‘collaboration’? What’s its power?

• Have you ever taken part in brainstorming? Was it fruitful?

4. Speak about your teamwork experience.

Language Work (2)

1. How to introduce and discuss ideas.

• Introducing an idea:

My personal feeling is that …

Have you ever thought of …?

We should consider …

It would be a good idea if …

In my view …

I would argue that …

It’s obvious to me/ us that …

• Insisting on a point:

I don’t think we should dismiss this …

I think this deserves careful consideration …

There is a lot to be said for …

I still think our first idea was the best.

• Suggesting an alternative:

There is another option …

What about … instead of …?

Let’s look at something else.

Of course we could always …

2. You are a member of the team which is expected to decide which location of the building project to sponsor. Use the expressions above to argue in favour of your point.

• in the center of the town

• in the suburbs

• in the country

Unit 3

Public Speaking and Presentation Skills 

• Participating in a Conference

• Effective Presentations

• Presentation Skills

Reading and Speaking (1)

1. Have you ever taken part in a conference?

2. Do you know what an academic conference is?

An Academic Conference

The best way to exchange ideas, learn new things and expand your network is to become involved in groups relevant to your craft. This can be through user groups for a particular software environment you work with, or professional associations. There are plenty of websites and forums that enable professionals to engage with one another online, but nothing seals a bond like face-to-face activities.

The ability to communicate your ideas to audiences will raise your profile to new levels.

The Academic Conference presents a challenge to interaction with other scientists. They regularly take part in conferences and discussions around the world. A researcher receives an email about the opportunity to submit a proposal to be a presenter at the conference.

An academic conference or symposium is a conference for scholars and scientists to present and discuss their work. Together with academic or scientific journals, conferences provide an important channel for exchange of information among researchers.

Conferences are usually composed of various presentations. They tend to be short and concise, with a time span of about 10 to 30 minutes. The work may be bundled in written form as academic papers and published as the conference proceedings. They are published to inform a wider audience of the material presented at the conference.

A conference usually includes a keynote speaker (основной докладчик). The keynote lecture is longer, lasting up to an hour and a half. Conferences also feature panel discussions, round tables on various issues and workshops.

Prospective presenters are usually asked to submit a short abstract of their presentation. Nowadays, presenters usually base their talk around a visual presentation that displays key figures and research results.

At some conferences, social or entertainment activities such as tours and receptions can be part of the programme. Business meetings for learned societies (научное общество) or interest groups can also be part of the conference activities. Academic publishing houses may set up displays at large conferences.

Academic conferences fall into three categories:

1. the themed conference, a small conference organised around a particular topic;

2. the general conference, a conference with sessions on a wide variety of topics, often organised by regional, national, or international learned societies, and held annually or on some other regular basis;

3. the professional conference, large conferences not limited to academics (научные работники) but with academically related issues.

Traditional conferences mean participants have to travel and stay in a particular place. This takes time. And an online conference uses the Internet, and participants can access the conference from anywhere in the world and can do this at any time, using browser software. Participants are given a password to access the conference and seminar groups.

The conference is announced by way of a Call for Abstracts, which lists the topics of the meeting and tells prospective presenters how to submit their abstracts. Submissions take place online. An abstract is a brief summary of a research article, and is often used to help the reader quickly ascertain the purpose of the paper.

An academic abstract typically outlines four elements of the work:

1. the research focus (statement of the problem) – an opening sentence placing the work in context, and one or two sentences giving the purpose of the work ;

2. the research methods used – one or two sentences explaining what was (or will) be done;

3. the results of the research – one or two sentences indicating the main findings;

4. the main conclusions – one sentence giving the most important consequence of the work.

The typical abstract length ranges from 100 to 500 words.