Learning is treasure a thief cannot touch

A Chinese Proverb

Although you are young, you have already gathered wisdom. For the last thirteen or fourteen years, you have been making inferences, drawing conclusions, noticing what works for you and observing all the tricky, perilous and delightful aspects of life. The time has come to draw all the threads together and show others what you have gleaned from the journey so far.

Your presentation should provide an insight into your philosophy of life.This means that you will be giving the rest of us your advice on how to live. You will be summarising the rules you live by and trying to convince us that your ideas make sense. Therefore your speech should both explain your point of view and persuade your audience.

Your speech should be structured like this:

Opening/Introduction
Don’t forget to catch your audience’s attention with a creative idea, a touching story or a revealing anecdote about a mistake you made that taught you something crucial…
Main Idea 1
Support your first main idea with an example, a quotation or an anecdote – or all three!
Main Idea 2
Same
Main Idea 3
Same
Close/Conclusion
Draw all your points together and finish with a couple of strong, memorable sentences that will help your hearers remember your words.

Follow these steps to begin preparing your presentation:

1Research your topic. Read about the philosophy of life of others. Consider how others’ experiences match or relate to your own.

2Use theone-page version of the table above provided on the back of this handout. Fill it in with ideas, suggestions, picture and symbol possibilities, anecdotes, one-liners, quotations and the like.

3 Take each main idea and strengthen it by using rhetorical questions or repetition or adding a certain poetic power and drama to what you say. For instance, if you wanted to say: “Learning is very important to me”, you might choose to say something like the Chinese proverb at the top of this sheet – or make up something pithy of your own.

4 Begin to create a powerpoint presentation. Each slide should have a large picture or symbol on it – and no more than 20 words, all 48 points high!

Opening/Introduction
Catch attention! | Creative idea? | Touching story? | Revealing anecdote? | Embarrassing but ultimately enlightening error?
Main Idea 1
Support your first main idea with an example, a quotation or an anecdote – or all three!
Main Idea 2
Same. Add a touch of rhetoric, hyberbole or alliteration too.
Main Idea 3
Same. What about a rhetorical question, a dramatic example or a pithy proverb?
Close/Conclusion
Draw all your points together and finish with a couple of strong, memorable sentences that will help your hearers remember your words.