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MODULE 3

VISUAL AIDS

The first rule of preparing effective visuals is that they should be clear and easy for the
audience to follow.

Tools used to present visual information: The content of visual aids:

 Whiteboard  Pie chart
 Flip chartProjector  Map
 Computer tools  Bar graph
 OHP  Table
 Diagram
 Picture
 Line graph
 Flow chart
 Plan

A. READING

Dinckel and Parnham (1985) say that “The great danger (in using visual aids) is that
presenters place the major emphasis on visual aids and relegate themselves to the minor role of
narrator or technician. You are central to the presentation. The visual aid needs you, your
interpretation, your explanation, your conviction and your justification.”

Visual aids can make information more memorable and they help the speaker. However,
they must literally support what the speaker says and not simply replace the spoken information.
It is also not enough to just read text from a visual aid.

There are many advantages to the correct use of visual aids. They can show information
which is not easily expressed in words or they can highlight information. They cause the
audience to employ another sense to receive information, they bring variety and therefore
increase the audience’s attention. They save time and they clarify complex information.

Adapted from Bernice Hurst in The Handbook of Communication Skills

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Having finished reading the text above, please find out:

a. Eight advantages of using visual aids

b. Three warnings about using visual aids

B. SPEAKING

Practice some expressions used to explain a visual and to highlight information

Explaining a visual:
Let’s now look at the next slide which shows ________
First, let me quickly explain the graph.
You can see that different colours have been used to indicate ________
The key in the bottom left-hand corner shows you _____

Highlighting information:
I’d like to start by drawing your attention to _________
What I’d like to point out here is ________
I think you’ll be surprised to see _______
I’d like you to focus your attention on ________
Let’s look more closely at ________

C. LISTENING

Listen to the three extracts from presentations and tick () the media used.

1 2 3
Flip chart
Whiteboard
PowerPoint slide

Now listen to the presentations again and complete the sentences.

Presentation 1

1. Take a look at _________

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MODULE 3

2. They clearly ________ how a combination of two significant external factors affected our
business in the first _______ of this year.
3. I’ll just write some ______ on the ______ and then we will go on to discuss the next
point.

Presentation 2

4. OK. Let’s now ________ at our new magnetic ski rack Matterhorn which was launched
in August.
5. On the ______ you will see an _____ of the Matterhorn X-15.

Presentation 3

6. These are the _______ for Europe for the _______ three quarters of this year.
7. As you _______ here, we’ve had a very successful year.
8. To highlight our success even further, let’s ________ to the 2003 figures on the previous
______
9. Let me just ______ to it.

Listen to excerpts from three presentations and say what visuals are used.

Presentation 1: ________

Presentation 2: ________

Presentation 3: ________

Now listen again and complete the sentences.

Presentation 1

1. The next _______ shows the ________ by age in our company.

2. You can see that the biggest _________(…) indicates the ________ of employees in the
age group 30 to 50.

Presentation 2
3. Let’s now ________ at the sales figures over the past five years.
4. The key in the bottom _______ corner shows you which colour _______ which area.
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5. OK, so I’d like to first _______ your attention to the sales figures for France – that’s the
blue line here.

Presentation 3

6. Now I’d like you to ________ at this next _______ which shows how the cost of living
developed in Europe between 2003 and 2007.
7. If you look at the ________ on the _________ , you will see that the highest increase was
in 2001 with a rise of 2 _________

D. GRAMMAR FOCUS

Adverb + adjective construction

It would be completely wrong to change our strategy at this point.
We compared the two offers and found the first one totally unacceptable.
I think this fact is extremely important.

Complete the sentences with the correct adverb-adjective construction

Extremely dangerous absolutely safe incredibly cheap highly interesting

absolutely necessary surprisingly good completely useless

1. What we should remember is that this chemical process is ________________

2. It’s ______________ to improve the quality of our products if we want to win new
customers.
3. This is a __________________ point.
4. You will be pleased to hear that our turnover last month was ________________
5. Unfortunately, we found that some of the test results are _______________
6. I’m pleased to say that the crash test shows that this system is __________________
7. Right now this item only costs $1.50 – I think that’s ___________