Stories in conversations and presentations – a comparative study

Abstract

Students receive little guidance on how to give the oral presentations that increasingly feature in third level modules. It has been observed that several communication tools employed effectively in conversation – in particular stories – are not used in presentations. The aim of this study was to demonstrate this effect and explore possible reasons for the omission of stories in student presentations. Postgraduate students (sample size 17) attended a three-hour presentation skills training session where they prepared and delivered group presentations. The conversations during preparation and the presentations were all recorded. The difference between story use in the two settings was marked. Three of the four presentations contained no stories, whereas the conversations were characterised by frequent story use, sometimes clustering with a frequency of four or five a minute. It seemed that stories perform a dual role in conversations – ‘social interactive’ and ‘meaning building’ – that does not naturally occur in a presentation.