The part you plan: Part 1 is the only part of the oral you prepare. In the preparation time, write brief notes, not a speech.
Five parts, in order
1
Place
Where the extract comes in the work, and what happens.
2
Focus
"I'm going to focus on two ideas: … and …"
3
Point 1
A claim, a short quotation, a comment.
4
Point 2
A second claim, quotation and comment.
5
Link and open
Connect to the whole work and a theme; end on an open question.
Place → Focus → Point 1 → Point 2 → Link
Your notes
- Cue words and three or four short quotations, never full sentences.
- Spend most of the time on the extract itself.
- Signpost each part: "First…", "My second point…", "Finally…".
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Read it twice: Once for what happens, once for words worth quoting. This extract comes from The Winter Kitchen, the invented practice novel.
Extract: the green notebook (shortened): On the shelf above the stove was a notebook with a cracked green cover. The writing leaned to the right, fast and certain, in a language I did not know. Here and there a word had been crossed out and written again, as if the recipe had changed its mind. The oldest date was from a year before my mother was born.
"You cannot read it," Rosa said behind me. It was not a question.
She took the notebook and read aloud. Her voice was different in that language: quicker, lighter, almost young. I understood that I had never really heard her speak before.
"Soup," she said. "The winter one. My mother's."
It did not feel like history. It felt like a door someone had left open.
"Will you teach me the words?" I said. "Not just the recipe. The words."
Rosa put the notebook down on the table between us, open, the way you leave a plate for someone who is late.
The student's notes
- PLACE: middle / a month in the city / finds notebook
- FOCUS: (1) language between generations (2) notebook = family memory
- P1: "cannot read it" / "quicker, lighter, almost young"
- P2: "changed its mind" / oldest date / "a door… left open"
- LINK: hides home at start, asks for "the words" here / identity
- OPEN: plate "for someone who is late" / lost languages
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The full presentation: Here is the presentation the student gave from those notes. It takes about three and a half minutes.
Model: the full presentation
The presentation, part by part
- Place and focus: "This extract comes from the middle of the novel, about a month after Mira moves in above her grandmother's restaurant. She finds Rosa's old recipe notebook and asks Rosa to teach her. I'm going to focus on two ideas: language between generations, and the notebook as family memory."
- Point 1: "First, language. Rosa says 'You cannot read it', and they both know there is a gap between them. But when Rosa reads aloud, her voice becomes 'quicker, lighter, almost young'. These adjectives suggest that in her first language Rosa is a different person, perhaps the young woman she was before she emigrated."
- Point 2: "Second, the notebook. Words are rewritten 'as if the recipe had changed its mind', so the notebook seems alive. Its oldest date is from before Mira's mother was born, so it connects four generations. For Mira it is 'a door someone had left open': the past is not closed."
- Link: "This is a turning point. At the start of the novel Mira hides where she lives; here she asks to learn 'the words', not just the recipe. So the extract is central to the theme of identity."
- Open ending: "Finally, Rosa leaves the notebook open 'the way you leave a plate for someone who is late', which shows she has been waiting. It makes me wonder whether it is ever too late to get a family language back."