The "Pecha Kucha" Experience

When Mr. Newman first gave us the task to give a “Pecha Kucha” presentation, I was confused. I had never heard of such a thing before and I felt like this is going to be a really tough task.
Looking back now, I know I was right from the beginning, but still it was a great experience.

Preparation 

The first step, “finding a partner” was not difficult at all. I was sitting next to Maria and we did not even ask the other one to work together, we immediately started looking for a topic on the list. We are what others might call “a perfect match” when it comes to group work. We just get along so well and I love working with her.

Actually, “choosing the topic” was also fairly easy as I saw “Flemish in Brussels” on the list and wanted to talk about it right away. I fell in love with this city this summer. Maria was up for it too, so we had decided on it after two minutes.

I did a pretty good start as I started looking for some information the very day. I found some interesting facts on the internet and together with Maria, we opened a google.doc (I love google.docs by the way – so thank you so much for showing us this life-saving invention!) and paste in all the stuff we found.

Admittedly, for the next couple of weeks I had not had enough time to do some research. So I started to get nervous. The “Pecha Kucha” presentation really stuck in my gizzard. I started wondering why? It turned out that the time pressure is the hardest part to deal with. Normally, I do not have any problems with preparing a presentation. I even stopped being really nervous before I give one. But with “Pecha Kucha” anything was different.

Mr. Newman recommended finding a student on the ITAT coming from Brussels and ask them to give us some first-hand information. This was a great idea but the realization turned out to be difficult. After sending several emails, posting in Facebook and hoping for answers, we finally found Pauline with the help of three people. This girl was amazing! She comes from Brussels and one of the most charming people I know. She was up for helping us and was a real support for this presentation.

As the deadline for the presentation came closer, Maria and I finally managed to give our presentation a structure. I started to totally get into this topic and had a lot of fun browsing the Internet to find out more about this beautiful city and its relation to languages. It is SO interesting!

After we had enough information we decided to write the tape script and the interview on one day. We spend I think nearly ten hours continuously on this task. We wanted the timing to be absolutely perfect, so we took the time after every sentence and slide. Tell you what! That was a lot of work! By the end of the day, I knew my whole part just by repeating it so many times. 

For the slides of the presentation, we also spend one day. We really got creative and gave some of the slides a personal touch. We even created our one images. That was really fun and we had a good laugh while preparing them. 

Presenting

As I already mentioned above, I was so nervous before this presentation because of the time pressure. I am a perfectionist, so I wanted it to be absolutely perfect.

When I finally started speaking the nervousness seemed all gone. I enjoyed talking about this interesting topic and thought we put a really informative presentation together – at least I hope so.

Feedback of other students

A vast majority of students mentioned our timing was perfect and that they found our presentation informative and liked our slides and the interview a lot. I am more than happy about that!

Concerning my performance, they wrote that I spoke freely which they liked and that my pronunciation was really good. 

The criticism they voiced was the fact that I spoke so quickly. I have to admit, I know I do that but not because I am so nervous but simply because I always speak very fast. I have to work on that. But for this particular presentation I would like to defend myself a little bit. If I had spoken more slowly, the timing would have been a mess. We really tried to shorten down my part but it was not possible, we did our best. But if I would have left out some parts nobody would have been able to follow. And people mentioned that it was clearly explained and easy to follow.

Nevertheless, I promise to work on this point as I want to be able to give great presentations. :)

Personal Feedback on “Pecha Kucha”

I think this an experience everyone should have once in their life. You learn a lot about time management and how to sort out unnecessary information.

Although it put me under a lot of pressure, I would probably do it again because if you put a lot effort in it, it works out and you can be proud of yourself. I like that! :)