Tips on Giving a Practice Talk

Prepare copies of handouts and slides for everyone in your audience. This is especially important if you will be using slides during your real talk, but you are practicing your talk without using an overhead projector. Encourage your audience to mark anything on the slides or handouts that they don't like.
Treat the practice talk as if it were a real talk. Never say things like "In my real talk, I'll actually say it this way" or "I'm not quite finished with this slide yet". Do your best to pretend it's the real thing. Otherwise, you won't get the feedback you need to improve your real talk.
Appoint someone to time you as you talk. If you are using slides, ask them to write down how much time you spend on each slide.
Consider inviting a few people not working on your project to your practice talk. These people can help identify confusing parts of your presentation that are hard for you to realize.
During the practice talk, everyone in the audience should write down comments. The intent of these comments is to critique the talk. Some people like to write comments directly on the copy of the slides they were given.
Ask members of the audience to consider the following questions when making comments:
- Did you understand the talk? What was confusing?
- Did we go into too much depth on any subtopic? Not enough depth?
- How do the slides and/or handouts look? Are they easy to read? Is the font size large enough? Do slides help as opposed to distract?
- Does the talk sound organized? Does it flow smoothly?
- Are we speaking too softly? Too loudly? Are we giving good eye contact? Are we doing anything distracting while we speak?
- Do you have comments about specific slides or subtopics?
- Do you have comments about the talk as a whole?
After the talk, discuss all of these questions as a group. Be sure to mention both good and bad things about the talk. If you are over your time limit, discuss what you should cut from the talk.
Consider bringing snacks to the practice talk.