A Few Notes on Teaching
A few notes that I’ve gathered for myself on how to be interesting when teaching or presenting on a topic:
(1) Luther said that every preacher should preach as though to a 12-year-old milkmaid sitting in the audience. This is a helpful principle. If you can’t hold the hypothetical milkmaid’s attention, you probably can’t hold the attention of others.
(2) Scatter ornamentation and sparkle into your words—intriguing quotations, anecdotes, interesting ideas, sparkling wit—little gems that can hold attention. This will make even the most educated listener pay attention, but be sure to give enough explanation that even the neophyte will benefit.
(3) Use lots of illustrations. Good illustrations require thought, so don’t use the first one to come to mind. And good illustrations should be developed enough to actually captivate the audience’s mind. Illustrations are especially useful if they are emotional, and make your audience feel a certain way. They are unlikely to forget these illustrations.
(4) Summarize and restate anything that isn’t clear. If giving a long quotation, summarize it. The more technical or complicated your presentation, the more you need to simplify it. The bulk of the cookies should be on the bottom shelf, so your audience can reach them.
(5) Have a clear direction. Every talk will benefit from a roadmap—a place you are going. Our minds constantly wander off the path, so provide frequent signposts along the way, so that if our attention wanders, we can readily get back on the road.
(6) Be engaged. Look around, vary your tone and cadence, use gestures, let the topic animate you.
(7) In general, prefer specific and concrete illustrations and words to what is vague and theoretical. Good, old-fashioned Saxon words hold attention more than Latin words.
(8) However, do not always stay in the concrete. Go up and down the ladder of abstraction, from the concrete to the theoretical, and back again. While you should focus on what is specific, it is good to zoom out and get a birds-eye view of things. Latin words create more elegant and polished speech.
(9) You must be earnest and really care about the topic of which you speak. This alone will hold interest more than any number of artificial devices.
(10) Continually seek to improve your vocabulary, and find more beautiful and poetic ways to say things.
(11) Observe your audience and notice when they are losing interest. If you pay close attention, you can pick up on these easily. If they lose interest, you must do something different. If you can’t regain their attention, then it’s time to conclude and be seated!
(12) Slow things down. Don’t speak too fast. Even an average idea can sometimes come across as brilliant if it is slowly developed and then presented clearly and gradually.
(13) The more familiar an audience is with a topic, the more likely they are to tune out. Knowing this, you must always help the audience to see what they already know in a new light—to recapture the wonder, or surprise, or strangeness, that they once knew, but have since lost. Beware of illustrations that everyone is familiar with—they will do little to enhance your talk, and may only make it feel more stale.
(14) People love the lightbulb moment, the sense of discovery. How can you help them to discover for themselves? Sometimes you must not lay out all the implications. Allow them to figure out on their own. Other times you must wait until the very end to give the final puzzle piece, which puts the whole puzzle in perspective.
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