How to give a presentation

In this article you learn how to make presentation in English.

Do you have to make presentation in English in your job?

Imagine you have to give an important presentation in English tomorrow. How would you feel about it? This Lesson will help you learn useful phrases and techniques to introduce yourself and your topic, keep your ideals organized, deal with questions and respond to your audience member.

Imagine you’re standing in front of your colleagues. You need to introduce and what you’re presentation is about. What are some words and phrases you could use?

PART ONE.

How to Introduce Yourself and Your Topic

If some people in your audience don’t know who you are, you should introduce yourself and your position.

In more formal setting you can say something like this.

-          Good morning everyone. For those who don’t know me, my name’s Njohole, and I work in the IT department.

Or

-          Hello everybody. Before we begin, let me introduce myself briefly: I’m Njohole and I’m the head of HR.

If you work in more informal company, you can say:

-          Hi, guys,; if you don’t know me, I’m Njohole and I work in digital marketing department.

Or

-          Hello! I see some new faces, so I’ll introduce myself first: I’m Saleh and I’m one of our customer service team.

Next you need to introduce your topic. If your presentation topic is simpler, you can just say one sentence like this.

-          Today, I’m going to be talking about our new HR polices and how they affect you.

 Or

-          I like to talk to you today about quality control and why we’re all responsible for quality control, whichever department you work in.

If your topic is more complex, you might add more detail to break your ideal into stages. For example:

-          Today, I’m going to be talking about our new HR polices and how they affect you. I’ll be begin by outlining the policies, and then I’ll go on to highlight what they mean for you and your working habits. Finally I’ll briefly discuss why we feel these new policies are necessary and beneficial for us all.

Here is another example.

-          I’d like to talk to you today about quality control and why we’re all responsible for quality control, whichever department you work in. First of I’ll explain why quality control’ has a broader meaning than you might expect. I’ll continue by giving examples of real quality control, and why this matters for all of us. To finish, I’ll asking you to think of ways you can incorporate quality control into you working habits.

Here you saw two examples. You can use these as template to begin you presentation.

-          I’ll begin by… and then I’ll… Finally, I’ll…

Or

-          First of all, I’ll…  I’ll continue by… To finish, I’ll…

PART TWO

How to Make a Strong Start

Am sure in your life you heard good speakers and bad speakers. Good speaker grab your attention and don’t let go. You want to hear what they have to say. You fill interesting and energize by listing to them. Bad speakers are the opposite. Even if you try to make yourself listing your attention drift away, your eye-lips feel heave, and you have to struggle to stay awake.

So here is the question.

What the different between good speakers and bad speakers. And how can you make sure you speak effectively when you make your presentation in English.

Here is the one way to think about it. Bad speaker don’t thing they have to earn you attention. Good speaker understand   no has to listen to them. So they work hard to make you want to pay attention. What does mean for you and you presentation?

            Getting people attention start from the beginning. You need to make it clear what people should expect from you presentation. And why they should care about what you have to say? It sound like a nice ideal, but would you do this?

There are three techniques you can use.

The first technique.

Problem->solution.

Establish a problem that many people in your audience have. Then establish that you have a solution to that problem.

For example,

-          Have you ever felt unfairly treated at work, or felt that the work you do isn’t appreciated? We’ve been working to design new HR policies that will make sure all staff get fair recognition for their contribution to the company.

In this you a boring sound topic like HR policies and make more relevant to you audience. How? By connecting it with their experiences and feelings.

The second technique

Mention an interesting facts or a surprising statistics to get people attention.

For example,

-          Did you know that the average office worker spends eight hours a day at work, but only does four hours of productive, useful work? I’m here to tell you about ‘quality control’, and how you can use this idea to make better use of your time.

Finally, you can engage people by telling a short and connecting it to you topic. Story are powerful and they can add emotion dimensional to your topic if you do it well.

For example,

-          I once met a young salesman – I won’t mention his name. He spent several weeks building a relationship with a potential client. He worked overtime, and he was working so hard that he was under severe stress, which started to affect his personal life. In the end, he didn’t close the deal – the clients, sighed with another firm. Today, I’m going to talk about confidence as a sales tool, and how you can avoid the traps that this young man fell into.

 Use these above techniques to connect to your audiences.

PART THREE

Using Signposting Language

There is a famous quote about make presentations

“Tell the audience what you’re going to say; say it; and then tell them what you’ve said.”

-Dale Carnegie

Here is the question what does the quote mean. Okay, it mean your shouldn’t just giving information. You are should show people how you information is organized. To do this you need signposting language.

Let me give you an example to explain this image you go to a website is filled with a really useful interesting information but information is all in one page. There is no organization and you have to scroll up and down the huge page trying to find what you need. Would stay on that website? Probably no, you will find a make easier for you to find information you needed. What the point here?

The point is that having interesting and relevant information is not enough. How you structure and organize your information is equal important. If you don’t structure your presentation clearly. People won’t pay attention. Just like you can’t stay on a website which you can’t find information you want.

So how can you do this? You use signposting language. This means using words and phrases to show audience where you points begin and end. To show what coming next and to remind those things you talked about before.

For example.

-          Okay, that covers, the new policies. Next, I’d like to move on and discuss what these polities mean for you.

Or

-          Now that you’ve heard a bit about what not to do, let’s focus on positive advice to help you be more effective salespeople close more of your leads.

 When you say something about this, aren’t giving people information about the topic of you presentation. Instead you’re showing people where you are and where you going next. It’s kind of signpost you don’t need signpost to travel from one place to another but they can make it easier. What else can you use signposting for?

You can use signposting language to move from one point to the next. For example

-Next, I’d like to talk about....

-Let’s move on and discuss…

-At this point, I’d like to turn to…

You can use signposting to add detail to an idea. For example,

-Let me go into some more detail about...

-Let examine … in more depth.

-I’d like to elaborate on…

Also you can use signposting to show that you have finish your main point and you reached you conclusion.

-          To wrap up, let’s remind ourselves of why this should matter to everyone here.

-          Let’s review the key points from this session.

-          So, you’ve heard what I have to say. What conclusions can you take away from this?

If you have an important presentation in English, practice using signposting language. Use signposting language move between points, to show when you’re giving summary or going into more detail and to signal you reached your conclusion.

Okay, but things don’t always go so smoothly in real life. We know that. Let look at some advice and language for dealing with problems during your presentations.

CHAPTER FOUR

Dealing with Problem

Image you’re making presentation in English. What could go wrong? What problems could you have? There are many common problems.  

1.      You might forget where you are, or forget an   important word.

2.      You might realize that you said something wrong.

3.      You didn’t explain something clearly.

4.      You might forget to mention something important or

5.      Someone might ask you a silly question which you have no idea how to answer.

Of course there are other possibilities.

Let’s thing about this problems, what can you do and more importantly what can you say in this situations?

First of all, it’s is a good idea to make a q-card with key points as well as any important vocabulary you need. If you lose you place or you forget a word it can help. However you can’t prepare for everything. So it’s used to learn some phrases to deal with problems smoothly.

If you lose you place, and you can’t remember what to say next you can use a “filler phrase” like

-          Where was I?

-          So, what was I saying?

-          What’s the word in English again?

If you still can’t remember, look at your q-card with your main points.

Of course, forgetting something isn’t ideal, but if you do it’s better to keep talking rather just standing there in silent.

What if you make mistake? Or you realize that you didn’t explain something well, you can say:

-          Let me rephrase that.

-          Actually, what I meant to say is…

-          To clarify, I wanted to say that…

In this way you can correct yourself without admitting that you made a mistake.

What if you realize you forget to mention something important? Use phrases like this:-

-          Let me just add one more thing…

-          I’d like to add something to a point we discussed earlier.

-          Let me return to an earlier point briefly.

Again this allows you to correct your mistake in confident way so you look like you’re in control.

Finally, what do you do if someone ask you a difficult question which you can answer?

You have a few options,

First you can delay giving an answer, for example.

-          I’ve allocated time for questions at the end of this session, so we’ll address your idea later.

Or

-          I’m not in a position to answer that right now, but I’ll get back to you later this week.

This gives a time to think for an answer and do some research if you have to.

Next, you can deflect the question by asking the question back. Or maybe by asking other audience members what they think, for example:-

-          That’s an interesting question. Before I answer, I’d like to know: what’s your take on this? Or

-          You’ve raised an important point there. What does everyone else think about this?

Finally, if the question is irrelevant you can dismiss question and move on, for example.

-          Thanks for your input, but I don’t see how that’s connected to what I’m saying.

Or

-          I don’t mean to be blunt, but I don’t think that’s relevant to today’s discussion.

Notice how you can use phrase like, Thanks for your input, but... Or I don’t mean to be blunt, but… To make your language more indirect and polite. So, for dealing with difficult question always remember 3D’s (delay, deflect, dismiss).

In addition you can use this phrase to close you’re presentation:

-          To summarize, I'd like to finish by recapping these important topics, I discussed about topic 1, topic 2 and topic 3, and that brings me to the end of the presentation, please, if you have any questions I'll be glad to answer them now.

Thank you for reading this article, if you have any question please don’t hesitate to contact: njoholes@gmail.com or phone: 0787 510 898.

Example

-          Good morning everyone. For those who don’t know me, my name’s Njohole, and I work in the IT department.

-          Today, I’m going to be talking about our new HR polices and how they affect you. I’ll be begin by outlining the policies, and then I’ll go on to highlight what they mean for you and your working habits. Finally I’ll briefly discuss why we feel these new policies are necessary and beneficial for us all.

-          Did you know that the average office worker spends eight hours a day at work, but only does four hours of productive, useful work? I’m here to tell you about ‘quality control’, and how you can use this idea to make better use of your time.

-          Next, I’d like to talk about....

-          -Let’s move on and discuss…

-          -At this point, I’d like to turn to…

-Let me go into some more detail about...

-          Let’s review the key points from this session.

-          Actually, what I meant to say is…

-          You’ve raised an important point there. What does everyone else think about this?

-          To summarize, I'd like to finish by recapping these important topics, I discussed about topic 1, topic 2 and topic 3, and that brings me to the end of the presentation, please, if you have any questions I'll be glad to answer them now.