Because people are talking about conference presentations. Recently, Dr. Free-Ride/Janet Stemwedel of Adventures in Ethics and Science wrote a post asking philosophers to stop reading papers at conferences, and Collin Brooke of Collin vs. Blog defended reading in about Reading v. Talking. Before I go any further, I should make it clear that I am an inveterate reader of papers, and in this I am representative of my tribe. While I have seen people speak papers, only once (that I can remember) was that person a historian. Occasionally a non-historian at a medieval studies conference will speak a paper, but reading is pretty much the norm. (This is leaving aside the very interesting occasion on which I saw someone present their paper in the form of a dramatic dialogue. I kid you not. I think they kind of pulled it off, but it's not a format I'd recommend.)
In any case, Dr. Free-Ride had some detailed criticisms of the practice of reading papers, and I wanted to respond to them in turn. While what she says definitely makes sense, I don't think she's really criticizing the practice of reading papers as much as the problem of reading bad papers, or reading good papers badly.
1. Reading a paper robs your audience of a visual focus.
Not everyone absorbs ideas easily just by hearing them. Some people are
more visual learners. Unless you're prepared to lose the visual
learners in your audience from the word go, simply reading your paper
is a suboptimal strategy for conveying the ideas in it. At the very
least, you'll want a handout or some slides that highlight the crucial
points.*
It's definitely true that some people are more likely to learn through visuals. But not all ideas in all fields lend themselves equally well to visual representation. I've never given a conference presentation using visuals, because my subject matter doesn't really work that way. I'm not showing charts or graphs; I'm not using equations; I don't study art or other visual representations. The best way I could visually represent my argument is...with a bunch of words. And since I really really dislike reading PowerPoint slides to people, I prefer not to use them.
Beyond this, though, I'm not quite sure that it works to equate speaking a paper with visuals. I've certainly seen people use visuals while reading a paper (although the visuals are usually the subject of the analysis at hand, rather than representing the paper's argument per se). And there doesn't seem to me to be any inherent contradiction between presenting one's argument in a visual way, and reading a paper.
2. Reading a paper cuts you off from audience feedback.
When you read a paper, your eyes track the words on the page. This means you aren't
making eye contact with the people listening to the paper -- you can't
see whether they're nodding, or looking puzzled, or sneaking out of the
room. Nor, for that matter, can you see whether they are straining to
hear, which means you may end up reading your paper so softly that most
of the people in your audience fail to hear the most important parts.
This is often true. But if you're a good reader, and you've practiced your presentation, you can keep your place and look up at your audience regularly, the same way that you do when you lecture to students. I also find that it's often the case that people who use PowerPoint either stare at the screen (from which they read), or futz with the computer controls. I'm not saying that therefore reading is always better; just that it's very possible to give a bad talk using either speaking or reading - and a good one, too.
3. Reading a paper often makes it harder for your audience to distinguish important points from less important ones.
I suspect some of the philosophers who read their papers do so because they have labored to find just the right words to express their ideas precisely. The problem is, unless the paper is written to flag these (e.g., "Here is the crucial formulation ..." or "Here is my main argument against Smith ..."),
the most carefully chosen words can float by and sound, to the
audience, scarcely different from the 200 words that came before them
or the 800 words that will follow. If you're too precious about your
words and that is what's motivating you to read your paper rather than
to "talk" it, it's worth considering whether this is the best strategy
for having your precisely chosen words stick.
Or, you simply do what Dr. Free-Ride points out here, and write your paper to flag your main points. Collin Bro0ke calls this sign-posting, and it's exactly what you need to do to read a paper. It's the kind of thing you'd never do in a formal journal article ("Now that I've discussed the point X, let me turn to point Y"), but it's perfectly feasible in a conference presentation. I can't emphasize this enough - you need to write your paper so that all your turning points are made explicit and absolutely impossible to miss. So this is not really a problem with reading a paper, as much as with writing for your audience to begin with.
4. Reading formulae with Ps and Qs, or any claims with Greek letters, is inviting your audience to tune out.
Seriously, for equations, definitions, necessary and sufficient
conditions, either put them on the screen or in a handout, or just shut
up about them. If they're part of your paper that is important, they
will require visual transmission and explanation -- it won't be enough just to read them to your audience.
Actually, despite having no experience in such matters, I agree with this. ;-)
5. Reading your paper makes your timing less flexible.
It's easy to try to cram in more than you really have time to
communicate by just reading more quickly, although this almost always
makes it harder for your audience to absorb it. Sure, it's possible to
skip pages or sections as you are reading, but the transitions tend to
be more jarring than they might be if you had your main points on
slides that could be explained in more or less detail depending on what
your time allowed.
Again, I think this is more about execution than principle. In theory, reading a paper allows you to know EXACTLY how long it will take. Yes, people do read too quickly, and they do commit the cardinal sin of saying, "In the interests of time, I'm going to skip ahead" (do NOT do this! all it does it tell your audience that you weren't organized enough to get your timing right ahead of time! and that you're so enamored of your own words that it's only with the greatest reluctance that you can bring yourself to cut any! and my feeling is that if you have to cut two pages because you misjudged your time, you're either going to end up with a paper that no longer makes sense, or you're going to make it clear that you never needed those two pages to begin with). But I've also seen people run out of time when speaking papers, and I've seen plenty of people cram way too much information on a PowerPoint slide (though, I have to admit, not at science conferences, as I've never been to one).
In his comments on the "best practices" of reading papers, Collin sums up exactly what I try to do:
I try really hard to restrict myself to 1 major claim support by 2-3
points in my talks. I generally don't spend time delivering evidence in
presentations (saving it for followups). And I find real value in
narrating the presentation as part of the presentation (aka signposting).
I've already commented on signposting; I firmly believe that making the infrastructure of your paper into an exoskeleton is crucial in reading a paper. I also completely agree that less is more in the average conference presentation, and try to limit my own goals as Collin describes. I remember what was, I think, my second conference presentation, which was in a session sponsored by a rather swishy and snooty academic society. The presider e-mailed me right before the conference to tell me that she thought my paper was "far too long." Thankfully, I didn't get the message till after I'd presented (or I'd have probably freaked out, since presenting in this session as a relatively junior grad student was pretty intimidating as it was). And I will point out for the record that I came in precisely on time (and while I tend towards speaking quickly, I don't think I was especially bad). But after the fact, I think she was probably right, in spirit if not literally. Because I remember presenting that paper, and I remember as I got near the end, that while I had plenty of time left, there was a moment when the energy and focus just drained out of the audience - it was like I could feel the moment that their brains had all filled up and couldn't absorb any more information. I had just crammed too many points into my paper.
I'm not sure if I go as far as Collin regarding evidence - I think I do include evidence, but if my evidence depends on, say, specific language found in a document, I'll make up a handout with the important passages, so the burden isn't entirely on people instantly to absorb any quotes I'm throwing out there.
Obligatory defense of my own mode of presentation aside, I do actually have a lot of sympathy with Dr. Free-Ride's points, and I enjoy listening to someone speak a paper (even though presentations with PowerPoint visuals are still pretty rare in my field, unless someone's looking at art). But it's funny, because the last time I saw someone speak a paper at a medieval studies conference, I really enjoyed it, while a close friend of mine, who trained in the same program as I did and is part of the same academic generation as I, disliked it and thought it was a disorganized mess.
I think really what it boils down to is the cultural difference between disciplines. I'll admit that I had to train myself to be able to listen to and absorb academic talks (though this was really in response to the longer lectures that were part of a series held at my grad school, where I was regularly sitting through 45-60 minute talks. When I first started going to these lectures, you could ask half an hour later what one had said and I would scarcely have been able to tell you). Listening is a skill to be developed, like any other. And I have no objection to people speaking papers - it's just not what my culture does. I realize to outsiders, that looks strange. But from what I've heard about science conferences (again, all second hand), elements of that culture look strange to me. A few years ago I was at a junior faculty meeting thing at Rural Utopia, and when we were talking about conferences, it became clear that to the scientists, the idea of the typical humanities panel, where there are papers are on a related theme and there's discussion of broader issues, was very odd. But for me, it's the whole point of attending conferences - that broader discussion (again, if I'm misrepresenting science conferences, let me know!). Either way, I don't think someone from one culture is going to be able to convince the other culture that their way is better.
Again, I have to agree with Collin Brooke on this one - I don't think the issue with conference presentations is problems inherent to reading or speaking papers. Instead, it's just that there are an awful lot of BAD conference presentations.
I think the biggest cause of bad presentations has nothing to do with
rhetorical skill or inexperience, and isn't addressed by advice like
this. I think that there's very little space in our academic priorities
for presentation zen, and so we tend to prepare at the last minute, and
underprepare. Then, when we're mediocre (and believe me, that's more
often than not for me), we engage in the kinds of distancing practices
that our students do (like waiting until the last minute, so that we
can "excuse" our mediocrity). It's a cycle, and I think it stems in
large part from the disposability of conference presentation
scholarship, from the way that "getting on" the program is more
important than what one does once one is there, etc. [my emphasis]
My last related anecdote: a few years ago, before Kalamazoo (big huge medieval conference held in Kalamazoo each May), there was discussion of the conference on a medievalist listserv, and there was a lot of complaint about the people who write their papers at the last minute, who are finishing them on the plane, who are finishing them while the previous person on the panel is still speaking... you get the picture. These practices are a problem, it's true. But I don't blame the individual presenters - or at least, not completely. One year I was one of those late slackers, and when I went into the Western Michigan computer lab to type up a few last editorial changes and print out my paper (in the morning of my afternoon presentation), the lab was FILLED with people wearing the conference badge - primarily, from their looks, grad students and junior faculty (in fact, I was able to reconnect with someone I knew from grad school who was now, like me, junior faculty, and happened to be seated at the computer across from mine). And I have to admit that I get a little peeved with senior faculty (who did happen to be those criticizing the conference presentations) who were able to sit back and say, "Isn't it terrible, how late these people leave writing their papers!", without once acknowledging the increased pressure to present, to publish, to get know, in order that you can even have a chance at getting a job, let alone get tenure. If you, senior faculty, have problems with the way conferences look, don't think that you're not part of the problem.
Hmmm, this post seems to have taken an unexpected turn - I thought I was only going to talk about how to do a good job reading a paper, and now I'm ranting. Senior faculty out there, don't take this a blanket complaint about your generation. (Although I'll also add that I have seen far more poor senior faculty conference presentations than grad student/junior faculty ones - perhaps because the latter have far more to lose? Or maybe I just notice the bad senior faculty presentations more because I have higher expectations for them?) But then, I'm not sure I have to worry about offending anyone, because chances are good that you're all going to give up before getting to the end of this long post! If you've made it this far, let me borrow one last thing from Collin, his standard closing: That is all.
ETA: It really is conference season! I just found this post over at Dr. Mom, My Adventures as a Mommy-Scientist.
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