The Seminar

Reactivate the Unit 5 toolkit (thesis-forward opening, reporting stance, hedging, disagreement discipline) before the seminar starts.

Output: You name the missing move in each line and fix it in one sentence.

Teacher reads three lines, each with one Unit 5 move missing or broken (a topic-tour opening, a flat 'states' instead of a stance verb, an unhedged overclaim). For each, you name what's missing and repair it in one sentence.

• · 'I'm going to talk today about some interesting things I found.' — what's missing, and fix it.
• · 'Smith (2021) states that screen time reduces attention.' — what's missing, and fix it.
• · 'These results show that the programme works.' — what's missing, and fix it.

If you're in a group: Pairs swap lines; small group votes on the cleanest repair.

Deliver the prepared 10-minute talk from homework, opening thesis-forward and closing with a bracketed limit, live at the seminar table.

Output: A delivered talk (aim for 6–8 minutes live, tighter than the homework draft) plus your one-paragraph abstract handed to teacher.

You deliver your prepared talk. Teacher plays conference chair: no interruptions during delivery. You MUST open thesis-forward, include at least one positioned citation and one disciplinary hedge, and name one bracketed question before you finish. Hand teacher your abstract at the end.

Rehearse calibrated live defence under real pressure, immediately after the talk.

Output: Four answers, each 60 seconds, each receiving, sorting and either conceding-with-precision or disagreeing-with-shared-ground.

Teacher asks four questions about your talk: one clarifying, one sceptical, one hostile, one bad-faith. 60 seconds each. Every answer must receive the question fairly and either accept a point with precision or disagree while naming shared ground. Name the bad-faith question as such, calmly.

If you're in a group: In groups of 3, a silent observer rates each answer 1–3 on calibration and reports back.

Practise positioned, stance-marked reading by refereeing a short literature paragraph as if for a journal.

Output: A spoken referee report: two things you'd accept as strong, one strand you'd want added, one thing you'd lean on the writer to hedge.

Teacher hands you a 150–200-word literature paragraph (invented or drawn from your field). Read it for 3 minutes, marking reporting verbs and hedges. Then speak your referee report aloud: name the strand(s) the paragraph belongs to, one citation that's doing real work, one claim you'd ask the writer to hedge, and one gap you'd want named.

• · Where does the paragraph lean on a source too heavily?
• · Is the gap actually a gap, or something the literature has already answered badly?
• · Which citation could be cut without loss?

If you're in a group: In pairs, swap referee reports before reporting to teacher; note where you disagreed with your partner's read.

Compress the whole seminar into a single written document: a real reviewer response to your own talk.

Output: A 400-word reviewer response handed in, addressing the three concerns you sketched for homework.

Using the three plausible reviewer concerns you prepared for homework, write a 400-word reviewer response to your own talk. You MUST: (a) receive the concerns fairly in one opening sentence, (b) sort them explicitly (accept in full / accept in part / disagree), (c) accept at least one with precision (say exactly what you changed and where), (d) disagree with at least one on shared ground, (e) name at least one scope condition on your own claim, (f) use at least six Review Lab 5 vocabulary items naturally.

Turn the seminar into named, repeatable moves before you leave the table.

Output: A 4-line summary: strongest hedge · strongest disagreement · weakest citation move · one line for next time.

Together, name the strongest hedge you produced today, the strongest disagreement, the weakest citation moment, and one concrete change you'll make the next time you present real work.

If you're in a group: In groups, each member states one move they'd steal from someone else's talk.