Professional & Scholarly Communication
Effective communication is essential for your professional development, and the Bok Center can help you find your voice as both a teacher and scholar. We provide resources to help PhD students develop the most compelling ways to communicate their ideas.
Giving Effective Presentations
Planning Your Presentation
Audience
Your presentation should be planned with your audience in mind. Make sure that you use terminology accessible to your audience, and do not assume your audience will be familiar with or immediately understand all the names, concepts, and ideas you share, even when presenting to a highly specialized group. Clearly articulated ideas and short and direct sentences work well with most audiences.
Technology
Make sure you know in advance whether you'll be able to use PowerPoint or other visuals and plan accordingly. Visuals are a great way to supplement the ideas you share orally.
Time
Be aware of how much time you are allotted to present. Ensure that your content fits comfortably within the time given.
Content of Your Presentation
Narrative Structure
Frame your work within a story arc. In many cases this means moving from a challenge or question to a resolution. This helps your audience follow the logical progression of your ideas. A good introduction has a hook to get the audience's attention and sets the stage for the presentation as a whole. Throughout the talk, remind the audience of your main points and why they matter.
Focus Your Message
To maintain clarity and engagement, limit excessive details and unnecessary jargon, focusing instead on the key takeaways you want your audience to remember.
See this Checklist for Effectively Communicating Your Message.
Visual Communication
Design plays a crucial role in how your message is received. Intentionally crafted visuals enhance clarity and engagement, supporting your talk and making your ideas more accessible.
Design Principles for Impactful Visuals
Simplicity: Present one visual idea or element at a time. Too much visual information at once can be overwhelming and distracting to your audience.
Consistency: Establish a visual home base, or a consistent visual language, such as a repeated graphic or structured layout to provide continuity.
Contrast: Use larger text, typically at least size 18, and high contrast backgrounds to improve readability. Choose text and background colors based on the specific context of your presentation to ensure optimal clarity and accessibility.
Practice
Practice, practice, practice. As with any other skill, your public speaking will improve with regular practice and reflection on how you're doing.
Practice with a trusted friend or colleague and get their honest feedback.
Record your practice, whether alone or with others and then watch the video, either by yourself or with a trusted friend or colleague. We see our choices differently when watching the videos than we feel when presenting.
Make sure to time yourself and then adjust your talk if it does not fit into the allotted time.
Additionally, when you watch others give presentations, pay close attention not only to the content of their talk but also to their style of delivery. If their style is effective, you can adapt aspects of it for your own presentations.
How to Speak Effectively
Focus on posture and body placement
Stand with shoulders back, feet hip-width apart, and face your audience.
Keep your feet firmly on the ground, with weight evenly distributed.
Breathe fully; into your belly, not just into your chest.
Keep your arms by your side and gestures to a minimum.
Focus on eye contact and facial expressions
Look at the audience.
If possible, do not turn your back on your audience.
Move your eye contact slowly.
Relaxed, comfortable facial expressions.
For large groups, move eye contact in a W then M pattern.
Focus on voice
Use a microphone unless you’re in a small room.
Warm up your voice.
Slow down.
Use stress and pausing for emphasis.
Consider your tone.
Silence can be powerful.
Slowing Down and Pausing Affect Clarity
Slowing down is important to practice when speaking. A slower pace is easier for listeners to understand -- and it can help reduce information overload.
Practice speaking more slowly and pausing after each sentence. Fast talkers are harder to follow because their words often run together.
Pause after important words or ideas. When you pause, you’re helping listeners know when you have finished a thought, when you are making a list, and when you are highlighting important information.
Build in longer pauses when moving from one main idea to the next. This helps you draw attention to key ideas in your talk and gives listeners the chance to digest the information you have shared.
Increasing Emphatic Stress Helps You Communicate More Effectively
Emphatic Stress is a crucial speaking skillEmphatic stress is how listeners “hear” the meaning or the intentions of the speaker. Emphasized words are typically higher in pitch, longer on stressed syllables, and have more “energy.” Highlight key information using your voice.
For example, if you say “I’m a graduate student in the Math Department,” graduate student and Math Department are the key words. If that is all we hear, we still understand; if all the words sound the same pitch and length, it is harder for listeners to identify the main content. To use emphasis, pause in appropriate places, slow down on important terms, and change your pitch when speaking.
Changing Tone and Pitch Helps Listeners Follow More Easily
Tone and pitch can help you use your voice to indicate important information in your talk. Intonation, or the patterns that pitch follows when speaking, provides structure to what you are saying -- it creates the grammar of your speech. Speakers who use a broader pitch range are often perceived as more engaging or “ear-catching.”
Listeners hear when you are making a statement, asking a question, or adding new information based on how you use pitch. Intonation conveys your emotion around a topic, and broader pitch can help you show your passion and confidence on a topic. Intonation is used to indicate interest, disinterest, or questions. The tone and pitch you use can make the difference between sounding sincere or being sarcastic, even if your words do not change.
By using a variety of pitch, going up in pitch on important words, and clearly dropping your pitch at the end of your sentences, you will improve your clarity when speaking. As a feature of speech, intonation helps listeners process when you have finished an idea and when you are transitioning to a new one.
Further Resources for Communication Training
The Bok Center will continue to update this website with additional training tips and resources on communication and public speaking.
The Professional Communication Program for International Teachers & Scholars
We offer a range of resources focused on English language proficiency development, the culture of the classroom, and professional communication specific to the needs of international teachers and scholars. Our resources touch on differences in communication styles across cultures, building context for broad audiences, and developing pronunciation strategies to speak in linguistically diverse groups.
Professional Communication Program for International Teachers & Scholars
Bok Training
We offer training on issues related to professional communication, public speaking, teaching, leading discussions, and other key topics in teaching and learning. We can work with you to tailor a workshop for your department or a specific group on topics such as Public Speaking or Communicating your Research.
Seminars for International Teachers & Scholars
Learning Lab Support
The Learning Lab provides consultations to graduate students on communicating their research using media and modes that are appropriate given the data they analyze and the disciplinary conversations their work contributes to. The Learning Lab also offers workshops on alternative assignment design and multimodal pedagogy.
Three Minute Thesis
Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) is a competition for master's and doctoral students to develop and showcase their research communication skills in a language appropriate to a non-specialist audience. Students have three minutes to communicate their research with the visual aid of one static slide and win prize money or a lunch with the dean of Harvard Griffin GSAS. The winner will be entered into the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools 3MT competition in late April.
Learn more about Three Minute Thesis
Harvard Horizons
The Bok Center collaborated with the Harvard Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) to produce Harvard Horizons, annually highlighting the exceptional research of eight PhD students. Selected through a competitive process, these scholars receive training and mentorship from the Bok Center to refine their research presentations, culminating in a public symposium where they share their work in concise, compelling talks.
See previous examples of this support with the Harvard Horizon program through Spring 2025
