A frequent task Bachelor’s degree-seeking students can expect to giving during their four-year college tenure are oral presentations. Much effort is typically put into how to verbally communicate the message to the audience. However, equally important is the inclusion of nonverbal communication to the audience. Students can deliver interesting and well-rounded presentations when both verbal and nonverbal cues are added to a presentation.

When a person expresses meaning without using words, he or she is exhibiting nonverbal communication. Nonverbal communication is used to convey meaning and exchange ideas. For example, if a person stands at attention when delivering a speech or is shaking his or her head, he or she is nonverbally communicating something to a person or audience. There are several elements of nonverbal communication that can be help with delivering outstanding oral presentations.

Eye contact is extremely important when delivering oral presentations. Looking audience members in the eye reflects confidence and authority. Your audience is apt to believe and take heed to what you are communicating if there is direct eye contact. Try to make eye contact throughout your presentation, and try to include all audience members or at least all sections. Try not to stay focused on one area.

Show your emotions when giving an oral presentation through facial expressions. This may sound like drama, but a little drama can be good. Facial expressions are compelling for emphasizing your message. It keeps the audience engaged and appreciative of your enthusiasm. Use expressions such as raising your eyebrow for a question, pursed lips for concentration, or lowering eyebrows to convey anger.

The use of your hands and arms, when used properly, can be very powerful gestures. Use gestures to emphasize points, details, or even an argument. The use of arms and hands should be subtle, yet meaningful. Be mindful not to overuse gestures, as that can be distracting and take away from your message. Meaningless gestures can leave your audience questioning what is being said.

Posture can reveal a lot about the presenter and set the tone of the presentation. The posture refers to the position of the body. You want to be relaxed yet command authority. Keep your spine straight and your head high. When standing, legs should be slightly open, and arms should be open (inviting), except when using them to express an emotion or emphasize a point as discussed in “gestures.”

Maintain the right amount of proximity from the audience. Maintaining the right distance can be tricky. You want to be close enough to the audience so that they can hear you and feel you are within reach. Yet, at the same time, you should be a comfortable distance away that you are not just talking to the front row but rather the entire audience.

Nonverbal communication is essential for the audience’s understanding of the overall oral presentation. Just like words, they can convey what you think or how you feel about what you are saying. Keep in mind that nonverbal cues may show feelings that you may not want to share, or that are not necessarily true. Therefore, be aware of the nonverbal messages that you are sending. Students enrolled in online colleges may have less oral presentations to give, but they still will learn the importance of the different kinds of communication while earning an online Bachelor’s.

Finally, the writing, typing and reading is over and I bet you are truly exhausted from the whole ordeal – and if you’re not then you need to look and see if you actually worked hard enough on the sources, late nights and reading material. You want to go out and party at this point, but I bet you are thinking ‘oh dear, I only have a few days before my dissertation is due in – I need to proofread and bind it!’ Well, at this stage you should be going out and partying and not thinking about your dissertation at all, you should have someone else look over it, most probably a professional as you will be too close to your work, and you’ll also probably be sick of reading your own writing by now!
There are a few reasons you should consider at this point on why you should get someone else to proofread your dissertation:

1. A dissertation is very important – your dissertation is the most important piece of writing in your degree, and may even be of your life – you’ve actually finished and need it to be quality work.

2. Your mind is full of information – no doubt you’ve just had a writing marathon to finish all the chapters in your work and you’re still thinking over theories and concepts. Your mind will pass over your work thinking what you know in your head is illustrated clearly to a reader – 9 times out of 10 it is not.

3. Your Lecturer/Professor advises proofreading – Academics know how confused a writer can become when they are re-reading over their own work and many recommend sourcing a proofreader to check your work for logical flow and meaning. After all, they don’t want to be confused when reading your paper now do they?

4. Two eyes are better than one – you’ve been reading your work over and over again, you’re brilliant at spotting your mistakes, but, have you ever had a friend read over your work and point out the errors that you didn’t catch? A second pair of eyes will always help.

5. You want a final check – you want to make sure the work you are submitting is quality and you will want it to be free from errors and silly mistakes. Having a professional take a look over your work means that your work will be crystal clear and say what you want it to.

You can submit your dissertation without it being checked by a professional, but should you take the risk as this paper could change your dissertation grade and your life.

By: Nick Sanders

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com
Nick Sanders is the owner and founder of Supaproofread.com, a proofreading and editing services company, specialising in dissertation proofreading and editing services. You should visit them if you are looking for editing proofreading

Abstract
This is a synopsis of the whole document, which should allow your reader to gain an understanding of the objectives and outcome of the actual dissertation. You are looking to keep this part brief and to the point, looking to write no more than 130 words.

Contents Page

Here you should list the major parts to the dissertation, with subsections, and the page numbers that they are on. Having more than one page for your contents page isn’t advisable and making a really rough draft before you begin any part of your dissertation will allow you to plan your research and writing more effectively.

Introduction

Your introduction should provide a detailed and focus overview of the background on the dissertation topic and the structure the paper will follow. Your main findings are provided and you should also summaries the conclusions that you have gained from analysis of your results. You should base your introduction around a journey of the reader – it explains to them where they are, where they are going, and what other things they will find when they pass by.

Literature Review

Your literature review will simply outline all previous research that has been undertaken on the topic for which you are investigating. You should concentrate on the most important points that are relevant to your chosen topic and angle to gain maximum effect.

Methodology

Your methodology should identify an understanding of methods of data collection, and here you should outline the ways in which you will collect empirical data (i.e. questionnaires, interviews, etc). You will need to substantiate your argument for using these methods and allow the reader to understand that these were the best possible methods to choose for this particular research project.

Data Analysis

Here you present your empirical data collected and highlight the main issues which have emerged from your research. You will most probably use graphs, charts and diagrams to illustrate trends and analysis – you should not, however, draw any conclusions at this point. The way to write this section and structure weak is to show data gathered and set it out so that the data collected could be used independently of your conclusions.

Discussion

This section is for a researcher to identify the data they have collected and analyze it against one another to develop an analysis of gathered data and present your main findings.

Conclusion

Your conclusion is a summary of what you have already said in the paper. If you can clearly draw a conclusion from what you have said in earlier parts, then this needs to be stated here clearly. You could also include an assessment of how appropriate (firm or tenuous) that particular conclusion is, with indication of further research or analysis to overcome this issue.

Bibliography

All reference should be listed alphabetically, this doesn’t matter whether you have quoted from them or not. You should include the author’s name, title, place of publication, publisher and date when including any material in your bibliography.

Appendices

The appendices are a place where you can place extra information so that your dissertation does not become cluttered. It is a place to provide the reader a fuller picture of the information you are writing about, for example, a blank questionnaire that you used.

Overall, you should allow your structure to flow between your dissertation seamlessly. You do not want your reader to be structured in reading your dissertation in a way that will regiment their reading, but you also do not want them to be lost for where to go next, or be reading the data analysis before the literature review. You should also have your work checked by a professional before you submit.

By: Nick Sanders

Nick Sanders is the owner and founder of Supaproofread.com, a proofreading and editing services company, specialising in dissertation proofreading and editing services. You should visit them if you are looking for dissertation editing proofreading

Lectures are one of the most important tools that you can have whilst at university. Professors and lecturers have learnt all of the information that they are teaching you and have picked out the most helpful and useful resources that will aid you in the completion of your course – and ultimately your degree/graduation. Therefore, they are a real starting block to allow you to gain instant knowledge of theories and subject areas that will help you later in writing papers and studying for exams.
The key point in any academic lecture is to listen to all information given to you and to be organised, and this comes in 3 stages:

Pre-Lecture

You will need to plan what you want to get out of the lecture – maybe you haven’t a clue what this Maslow hierarchy of Needs is, but have read a lot of authors referring to it and this lecture is focussed exactly on that.

See how the lecture fits into your course and how you can use the information to help you progress in different papers and exams.

Look into what you already know about the topic of the lecture – can you bring some opinions or question a lecture on their understanding of different theories and concepts?

Lecture delivery

This is the most important aspect of the whole lecture learning process.

You will need to understand the main points of the lecture, whether this is relating to scholars, theorists and/or theories.

Is the lecturer providing any clues about the topic, idea generation and why this particular lecture is important to yourself and your classmates.

Is the lecture informative and does it follow a set structure, could it be said to to analytical of facts and opinions and summarise the concepts as a whole.

Are there any many practical applications or theories or paradigms that you should remember from the lecture – generally a lecturer will focus on these a little more than other parts of the lecture.

Post Lecture

You should quickly draw a mind-map or spider diagram of what you remember about the lecture, just let your memory fill the paper with ideas and understanding.

You will also want to write a list of further questions that you will want to answer from the information that has been covered in the lecture.

If you don’t understand any parts of the lecture that were delivered (and there should be at least some), then write these down. You can, at a later stage, take a look at a chapter from the recommended text to read or ask your lecturer for further explanation on these areas.

Organise yourself

Being organised whilst at university means being in possession of the right equipment, and although this sound quite obvious, many students forget to bring a pen, paper, high-lighters, a pencil and stapler/hole punch. You want to organise any material that is given to you (as there will probably be a lot) and losing any part of the material – or not knowing which was with what lecture can be very frustrating and time consuming to sort.

The main principal behind taking notes id that you will look over them in the future and refine them in order to learn, otherwise why in the hell would you take notes in class?

You could develop your own way of certain highlighted parts of a document with a different colour to emphasize importance of keys points. You could also type your notes up after a lecture is this will increase the intake and learning of the information you have listened to.

The main point here is to prepare, organise and finalize your lecture notes.

By: Nick Sanders

Nick Sanders is the owner and founder of Supaproofread.com, a proofreading and editing services company, specialising in dissertation proofreading and editing. You should visit them if you are looking for editing proofreading.

Tip 1 – Keep it Simple
There is no point confusing your reader in your introduction with what you will be talking about in your conclusion and listing nearly every point that you want to discuss in your paper. This will just cause more confusion. You will want to direct your reader through the essay allowing them to become aware of your train of thought and direction.

Tip 2 – Introduce each area

Introducing what you are going to be talking about in each key area of your work is crucial, as you will need to acknowledge to the reader that it is something that they will want to read in that particular section. It also ‘sets the scene’ for what the reader is about to learn and read during the next section of your work.

Tip 3 – Evaluate sections

Reviewing what you have just written about allows your reader to understand the information you have just put before them. It also allows you to get the reader ready for the next step of your argument in the paper which is vital – linking your paper together is what makes a great and well structured argumentative essay.

Tip 4 – Piece together theories you have previously mentioned

Referring to a previously mentioned theory in your paper is a clear sign to the reader that you have concentrated heavily on the research and writing of your paper. It shows that you understand not only the research topic, but your paper as a whole and bring cohesion and understanding.

Tip 5 – Always remind and guide your reader

Readers forget things as quickly as they have read them, unless you actually point something of importance out to them. You will need to remind a reader throughout your paper about a certain theory or train of though by referring back to instances, or examples that extrapolate your meaning and aids reader understanding.

The main things to remember when making sure your work is leading from one area/section to the next is that your reader is prepare for what they are about to read. Of course, you should always get an experienced person or peer to check over your work too.

By: Nick Sanders

Nick Sanders is the owner and founder of Supaproofread.com, a proofreading and editing services company, specialising in dissertation proofreading and editing. You should visit them if you are looking for editing proofreading.

Tip 1 – Know what Plagiarism is
You should become accustomed to what plagiarism actually is – essentially it is passing of someone else’s work as your own. Doing so in academic writing means that you are not acknowledging where you have gained the information and understanding of the topic on which you are writing, and after all you are not expected to know everything!

Tip 2 – Don’t copy any work verbatim

Copying work verbatim means copying someone else’s work word for word with no acknowledgment to who or where the work has come from. This is different from a direct citation, as with a citation you are acknowledging where exactly the words have come from as well as evidence of your reading.

Tip 3 – Copying and Pasting is a no, no

You should resist the temptation of copying and pasting any material from someone else’s work and changing a few verbs around, and replacing a few other words just isn’t right. Even if you put a reference to where you got this information in reference list as you are still copying most of the words from the original writing.

Tip 4 – Keep track of your sources

You may do all of your research on a note pad, and at the back write down all of the full references of the sources you are using. I used to do this and found it to be of great help – it is so frustrating when you have a great quotation, but can’t use it as you can not remember where in the hell you actually jotted it down from. Keeping track of and organising your sources is key to keeping on top of preventing plagiarism.

Tip 5 – Practise expressing some else’s ideas

You will be writing about many different author’s notions and ideas throughout your work, so practicing doing so will lead to you increasingly understanding how to do this process. You want to be able to express other people’s opinions and processes fluently and not being able to do so can lead you to copy and plagiarism other individual’s work.

Tip 6 – Believe in your own writing and conclusions

You wouldn’t have be able to get into your current course if people didn’t think you would be able to complete the work set out without committing plagiarism. You want to be able to prove to yourself how much you want your qualification and you should be able to write in your won words an understanding of certain theories and understanding within a chosen topic. You will need to conclude your writing too, so you will need to know in-depth about what you have written in your paper.

Tip 7 – Check your work

Sometimes, and even without noticing, you could be plagiarising someone else’s work in your essay or paper. This isn’t because you have done it knowingly, but it could be that the 2am mad writing session was pretty tiring and you actually added a part of a paragraph that now doesn’t look like your actual writing. Checking through your own work will mean that you should spot some areas that you may have approached the plagiarism boundary and need to steer yourself away from it.

You could also additionally have a professional proofreader look over your document for you and bring a different view to your writing, this increases your chances of making sure your work doesn’t contain any plagiarism.

By: Nick Sanders

Nick Sanders is the owner and founder of Supaproofread.com, a proofreading and editing services company, specialising in dissertation proofreading and editing. You should visit them if you are looking for editing proofreading.

The tips below will allow you to prepare and get the most out of your trip to a different country as an international student.

1. Get Great Living Space

It really does depend where your program places you in your destination country, but living with like minded students is a positive thing for you. Some programs tend to place international students with families in the local area, but, whilst this is good to get some interaction with ‘the locals’ you will be able to meet more people if you are sharing a place with other international students from many different countries. You are all in the same position and can start some good conversations this way – its always easier to talk to people outside of class time too, when you can really socialize.

2. Learn the Language

Many students do go to another country to study knowing very little about the language of the host nation – and to be honest most Americans and British people assume people will speak English to them – and surprisingly most people will. But, when you are in lecturers you will need to understand what exactly the lecturer is actually talking about and having a clear grasp of the language and vocabulary will mean that you will be able to enjoy your classes more and increase your understanding.

3. Remain Flexible

Living in another culture will mean that there are huge changes in the way they run their academic system. You will need to remain flexible to anything that is ‘thrown’ at you and look at the funny side of everything – having a sense of humor is a must. Remember that it isn’t home and you need to adjust and adapt to the way that people do things and interact where you are going, if you don’t then you will not enjoy it as much.

4. Go sightseeing

There are many different places to see in a host of different countries and actually getting out there, looking at some heritage and speaking to the locals will men that you are enriching in your experience. Use the time at the weekends to enjoy time in the country where you are studying and you will be thankful at a later date for doing this. Plus you’ll probably get some great photos to put up on Facebook.

5. Keep a Journal

Keeping a record of what you have done and writing down your thoughts and feelings everyday will allow you to learn even more from the experiences you are gaining. This is also a great way to relive your experiences in later years and have to opportunity to reflect on how the whole experience changed you and the way you think, feel and interact with other people.

You should of course have all of your work checked by a professional proofreader whilst you are in the host nation and look forward to gaining the best marks you can for your effort.

By: Nick Sanders
Nick Sanders is the owner and founder of Supaproofread.com, an online proofreading and editing services company, specialising in dissertation proofreading and editing. You should visit them if you are looking for professional proofreading service.