My partner, Carmen Loderer, and me chose the topic German (or Italian) in South Tyrol.
We decided on this topic because we thought it sounded particularly interesting and we were fascinated by the fact that there is an area so close to Austria where bilingualism is completely normal.
Considering the fact that the entire preparation was rather stressful due to all the other things we had to do and prepare for university I think we ended up doing a pretty well job.
As we got contact details from two people who grew up in Bozen and now study in Graz we decided that we wanted to interview them in order to give our presentation a personal touch. When we finally were able to set up a meeting we met them at Tribeka and just asked them the questions we prepared and recoreded them.
The questions were:
- Where exactly are you from?
- In what way did you experience the ambivalence of German and Italian?
- Do you speak both languages? Fluently?
- What about your parents?
- Are there any differences within South Tyrol?
- What do people think about their bilingualism? Do they prefer German or Italian?
- Do you use one or the other language for certain topics?
- Are they basically happy that they belong to Italy but are bilingual nonetheless?
- What is the general opinion in South Tyrol: Are people happy that they belong to Italy or would they rather be part of Austria?
- Since you are in Austria now, do people here talk to you about the nationality of South Tyrol? If yes, what do they say?
After having carried out our interview we finally were able to start the real work, namely writing our transcript and finding pictures for our presentation.
As neither of us had enough time to meet up very often we decided to make use of our dear friend, the Internet, and created two google docs. One for the transcript and one for the slides. When we knew what exactly we wanted to mention in our presentation we divided the presentation up in what we thought was a logical way. This lead to both of us twice presenting four slides and then two slides each in the end again. The google docs facilitated our work considerably as this way everyone could just work on the Pecha Kucha whenever he had time to do so. In addition to our interview we met up twice, once when we were done with our transcript to record the whole thing and the second time when we were done with everything and just worked our way through the whole presentation to get used to it.
As neither of us had enough time to meet up very often we decided to make use of our dear friend, the Internet, and created two google docs. One for the transcript and one for the slides. When we knew what exactly we wanted to mention in our presentation we divided the presentation up in what we thought was a logical way. This lead to both of us twice presenting four slides and then two slides each in the end again. The google docs facilitated our work considerably as this way everyone could just work on the Pecha Kucha whenever he had time to do so. In addition to our interview we met up twice, once when we were done with our transcript to record the whole thing and the second time when we were done with everything and just worked our way through the whole presentation to get used to it.
I have to admit that I actually don't particularly like the whole concept of a Pecha Kucha. Even though it was a challenge, I prefer it to be free with my timing and the question of how many slides I will use and what I will show in these slides. Nevertheless, it was an interesting experience and I think everybody should try this form of presentation at least once.
The feedback I got was mostly interesting and pleasant but sometimes surprising.
- One or two people said that I should have talked louder, but most said I spoke clearly and loud enough - so I guess this depended on where you were sitting in class.
- Most listeners commented me on my pronunciation and said that everything was easy and good to understand. Nevertheless, two of them mentioned that I mispronounced two specific words (unfortunately I don't remember them).
- Many, many listeners complimented us on our timer and said that it was really cool - one girl even asked me whether I could do it for their presentation as well. :)
- In general most people said that everything was well-explained and the pictures were nice and suitable - one person, however, said that the timing of our pictures and speech didn't fit, which actually really surprised me.
- A majority of the listeners said that I read too much, but I want to explain where this comes from: I did not actually read the sentences because I did not even have full sentences on my notes. The thing is that if I only have bullet points and certain phrases in my notes I have to actually look at them a lot in order to give a fluent speech. I might should have practiced this a little more often.
- All in all, I am pretty content with our Pecha Kucha and the feedback and I think that our presentation definitely was as good as the others.
Should anybody be interested in looking at our transcript and the slides again, here are the links to our google docs:
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