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Sanli Sanli 3 April 2008

Repeating questions

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Posted in Speaking in public

In the presentation guide, repeating questions in order to involve the whole audience is said to be a golden rule for which there is no exception. I have no doubt in the importance of repeating questions, but speakers must be careful not to distress themselves and the audience.

In our department, consisting of 6 groups, we have a weekly colloquium. Once or twice a year, each member gets a chance to present a 45-minute talk for the whole department. During the talk the speaker gets as much comments on her presentation skills as she gets scientific questions. As a result, the presentation-skills of the members of our department improve much faster than the other institute-members who do not practice as much.

One of the major training items is of-course repeating the questions. A speaker can be interrupted more than 20 times during his 45 minutes if she intermittently forgets to repeat the questions. After the third or forth warning, sometimes a large banner will be raised by the chairman or another group leader. But, usually the comment is verbal:

-“Can you please repeat the question!”

, and the reaction of the speaker is (after swallowing the rest of his unfinished sentence):

“Oh! Sorry. I forgot to repeat the question, the question is …”

It is no surprise that in a national gathering, some researchers from other universities pointed to our department members as “those who always repeat the questions during their presentations”.

Our intense training, however, has not been immune against side-effects. I remember a conference in which one of my colleagues had to give a talk for ~100 people. At the end of the talk, he was asked some questions by the audience. He forgot to repeat just one of the questions. While he was answering that question, in the middle of his third sentence, he suddenly interrupted himself and said with an alarming tone:

“Oh! Sorry. I forgot to repeat the question, the question is …”

To me his reflex act was familiar, but it was surprising for members of another institute, as I heard them talking about it the next morning during the breakfast.

It is good to repeat all the questions, but doing so should not sound contrived. It helps if the speakers deploy more ways of repeating the questions other than starting always with “the question is…”

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  1. ad lagendijk

    3 Apr 2008 22:00, ad lagendijk

    Sanli is right in stating that repeating the question should not be a dogma. Any different way of saying it is fine. But there is an additional reason why speakers have to repeat the question. Very often the question is asked by an important guy sitting in the front row. Without repeating the question for the whole audience the answer will be given by the speaker by directly facing this chief scientist/director. The rest of the audience doesnot feel involved and often cannot even hear the answer. A clear proof of this is that people in the back start discussions with their neighbors and the whole talk ends in chaos

  2. onno makor

    8 Apr 2008 13:36, onno makor

    Repeating the question is indeed essential for the reasons mentioned above. Also consider that in some cases the presentation might be audiotaped for educational purposes or to be broadcast online, in which case listeners can’t even ask to repeat a question when it is not clearly understood. In the Stanford’s Online Seminar series of podcasts all questions are always repeated, which greatly helps a podcast geek like myself to fully understand the issues discussed 🙂 http://edcorner.stanford.edu/podcasts.html

  3. Unregistered

    16 Apr 2008 23:21, paoloseba

    Indeed repeating the questions is very good for many reasons, one being that, by doing so, the speaker gives off the impression that he/she is confident and professional. On the other hand I have noticed that in many occasions the chairman is rather passive over the talks that he/she chairs. In my opinion he/she should make use of his/her experience to somehow properly channel the scientific discussion that stems out of the comments and questions. Neglecting to do so may
    have the unfortunate consequence that the speaker gets showered with
    many technical and non pertinent questions ( such questions can be best dealt with privately after the presentation): a dreadful situation that doesn’t help the speaker to get his/her message across.

  4. Unregistered

    20 Apr 2008 21:06, AHartsuiker

    In my opinion Paoloseba is right in saying that the chairman should lead the discussion in case the speaker is not able to do so. Especially in case of an unexperienced speaker the discussion easily takes a turn for the worst (too much detail) as described by Paoloseba.

    The benefit of a good chairman is valuable to the audience since they get the relevant information. A good chairman is valuable to the speaker since he can focus completely on answering questions and on the physics instead of leading a discussion. Only the chairman himself has to sacrifice his right to participate in the scientific discussion (since he has to focus on leading the discussion), but this sacrifice is small compared to the gain for the whole audience.