A presentation concern - Writers Forum

PrettyPistol · 10-01-2008, 02:38 PM

So I'm doing a presentation in one of my English classes tonight, and I'm a little worried. Partly because I was assigned the first one (just two weeks ago), but also because I'm worried about plagiarism.

The presentation is on Rebecca West, and we basically have to give a biographical overview, and then present a critical article on the text we're doing.

PowerPoint was optional but I made one. Now I was wondering, since just about every bit of information I use comes from another source, do I actually have to cite every piece of information throughout my PowerPoint? We had to submit an annotated bibliography (which I already screwed up because I found out we were only allowed to use one 'resource' source and I used two...Not sure how bad that will screw me) and I have a list of my sources on the final slide.

I've cited all of the direct quotes, and some other things, but a lot of stuff is uncited. For example I have a slide on her education and the bullets list her first school, some accomplishments she had there, and then go on to her acting school career and what she did there.

I don't cite that stuff. Should I? Do I have to cite page numbers then too? Because there is no way I can track down every fact and cite them exactly before my presentation (which is in 3.5 hours).

What do you think? About 70% of my information comes from a single source (a biography on West) so I just thought it would look bad to cite the same thing for just about every other line of information in my presentation.

This is totally going to suck. This is worth 20% of my grade, and it's an upper level class, so I'm kind of scared about the expectations (and the fact that I violated a requirement already). GRR.

Malone · 10-01-2008, 05:06 PM

When I did that kind of stuff, I just made sure to "" the direct quotations, and cite the sources at the end. That was about it. Since you only have one source, the most you could really do was just put the specific page number, but that would still kind of be over kill. I think you'll be fine. I found time and time again that professors didn't get too hung up on it if they felt that you learned the material and presented it well, even in graduate level classes.