There is a nice post on Matt Might’s blog enti­tled “10 tips on how to give an aca­d­e­mic talk”. Check it out. He rec­om­mends the fol­low­ing two books by Joey Asher. See also my arti­cle on “Giv­ing an aca­d­e­mic talk”.

Most research stu­dents don’t seem to attend sem­i­nars. When asked, they usu­ally say the sem­i­nars are not on their topic, or they don’t under­stand them, or they find them bor­ing, or some other sim­i­lar rea­son. I think this is because stu­dents don’t under­stand the pur­pose of research sem­i­nars, and have not learned how to lis­ten to them. Admit­tedly, many research sem­i­nars are badly pre­sented, and sem­i­nar speak­ers also fre­quently mis­un­der­stand the pur­pose of the sem­i­nar, which makes the prob­lem worse. In a pos­si­bly vain attempt to improve the sit­u­a­tion, here are some thoughts on attend­ing research sem­i­nars. First, some advice to speak­ers: under­stand that sem­i­nars are intended to pro­vide brief and infor­mal tasters of a wide range of research. Peo­ple will get the detailed and for­mal ver­sion of research in the pub­lished papers. But often an infor­mal expla­na­tion with­out the details is more acces­si­ble. Also, a speaker can pro­vide the back­ground overview that is often miss­ing in the pub­lished papers. Speak­ers need to realise that there is no need to present detailed proofs, tables, and tech­ni­cal­i­ties — a sem­i­nar is a very poor medium for pro­vid­ing details about sta­tis­ti­cal and econo­met­ric research. You have given a suc­cess­ful sem­i­nar if every­one in the audi­ence has some idea about what

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