Reflection on the Pecha Kucha experience

Reflection on the Pecha Kucha experience

Similarities between Austria and the Czech Republic

• Making of
• Actual presentation
• Conclusion

Having chosen a topic, which turned out to be rather difficult to implement into a "language themed bloc" of presentations Fabio and I did our best to create something worth presenting. In the beginning it seemed quite easy to find information to talk about but it was incredibly difficult to think of a connection to language. At first, we were planning to prioritize cultural differences with "language" as one of the points mentioned. Frank, however, pointed out, in a honest but spirit crushing way that he wanted something with language as its main focus. So, on the eve of our presentation, we had to completely restructure our presentation. Finally, as morning had broken, we finished our "masterpiece". 

As we were one of the last groups had to endure a seemingly endless number of great presentations showed us that our "masterpiece" was still far from perfect. Sitting in the audience only to give feedback is a really great feeling. But as we had yet to present our work I was really and I mean really grateful for the possibility of written feedback. Nothing would have been more embarrassing than telling other people how to improve their skills and then mess it up completely ourselves. Our presentation would, eventually, be completely messed up by wrong timing, insufficient preparation, a poorly chosen topic and nervousness. Only 12 hours after the completion of our work we had to present it in front of well-meaning, friendly and interested listeners, which to us, standing in front of them, seemed like a group of rabid, vicious wolverines ready to tear us apart. Miraculously, we are still alive, despite our bad pronunciation and our messed-up timing. 

To prevent any future wolverine attacks, and I was positive that there would be some, eventually, I decided to never do a “last minute” presentation ever again and if possible choose a my topic in a more intelligent way than to just pick the first newspaper headline that I can think of. As a listener, it was definitely an interesting experience. Listening to some French and some Eastern European students’ accents, trying to sound as “English” as possible, was as enjoyable as it was instructional.