Gathering and organizing material

1. Organizing Your Thoughts

When you have chosen the topic of your presentation and narrowed it down to suit the audience and fit the time limit, you are ready to start organizing your thoughts and materials. One of the most popular ways of doing this is by creating a mind map, which is a diagram that presents your thoughts and ideas visually. You start by putting a central idea in the middle of the page and then continue adding ideas to it, based on your associations.

Then you can proceed to organizing your ideas according to the order you have decided upon (topical or chronological). Decide which ideas or arguments are the most important ones and which can be used as clarification points or further arguments. Is there one idea that you should start with and place it in the introduction of your speech?

There are several options possible:

• Organize your material starting with the most important, then follow with the less important ideas.
• Within the problem/solution speech, the best idea is to start with the description of a problem and then suggest solutions. ou may propose several different ways of solving a particular problem and then decide on the best one. You may also include a description of the cause of the problem and ecide what should be done to avoid such situations in the future.

2. Types of Sources

In most cases, you will need to decide which pieces of information are truly relevant to your topic, and which ones to discard. The most important strategy should be to simplify, so that from a large quantity of data you obtain good quality materials.

The success of your presentation depends, to a large degree, on the quality of your information. Sometimes it is enough to rely on your own knowledge about the topic, but most often you will need to examine information from other sources. You may also want to illustrate certain points of your presentation and include personal anecdotes, real-life situations or hypothetical situations.

In general we divide our sources into primary and secondary. Primary sources supply you with first-hand information; they may be interviews with experts in the field or surveys done for different purposes. Secondary sources are parts of basic reference found in the library (books, encyclopedias, dictionaries, newspapers, magazines, etc.) or parts of the internet (news archives, government information, expert blogs, etc.)

3. Evaluation of the Materials

The main task at this stage of preparation should be evaluating your sources and recording them. In order to gather meaningful data we need to assume a critical approach to all sources, but especially the internet.

You will be able to find many resources helping you with material evaluation, especially online, so here we will only look at the most important issues.

1. Author and his/her credentials
   First of all, let us consider if the author is knowledgeable about the subject in which we are interested. Has he/she written anything about the topic before? Where did he/she get information? Look for the author’s occupation, education, and other publications (documentation). Books usually contain the author’s credentials just inside the cover, either at the front or back. Articles and web pages may not display any credentials. If web pages do show credentials, they will be placed at the top or bottom of the page.
   
   
2. Objectivity
   Is the author truly objective in his/her writing or is he/she biased? Is there an agenda? Does the author discuss opposite or different points of view or does he/she limit his/her writing to only one? Sometimes it is very difficult to tell if the author is truly objective unless you read his/her other work. On websites there is often an “About Us” section where you can find out if the author or group has any particular agenda.
   
   
3. Accuracy and coverage
   Is the information free from error? Has the work been reviewed for publication and fact-checked? By whom? Does it cover all the angles of the topic?
   
   
4. Time of publication
   When was the information produced or published? Is it still relevant? Sometimes your instructor will require you to use sources with a specific date range, while other times you may have to make a decision yourself. Remember that different subject areas may call for different date ranges. For instance, when you talk about computer science, an article written a year ago may be too old. In humanities, however, sometimes a source from 30 or 40 years ago may still be relevant.

4. Note Taking

Throughout the process of gathering information it is important to take notes and take them in a way that is going to help you later on in your presentation. Some people take notes on separate pieces of paper for each entry, others prefer to make lists using their word processor. Whatever your method is, remember to take notes in the same format, so that you can compare them later. Make sure direct quotations are just that and you can always name the source. Your notes will help you write the outline of your speech, which we will discuss in the next unit.