Open Course English for Careers

Presentation Skills

Presentations are ideas, concepts or issues that are talked about or spoken to a group of people or an audience.

4 Types
Unplanned presentations are the impromptu or extempore presentations. Planned presentations are those in which you have prior knowledge and have had time to do research and conceptualize ideas. Informative presentation is one in which facts are detailed. Persuasive presentation is an attempt to influence the audience to a similar pattern of thinking

Unplanned Presentations
the impromptu or extempore presentations. All those presentations in which you are summoned without advance notice and you need to talk on any issue on the spur of the moment. Capitalize on thought speed. Utilize the time you take to reach from your chair to centre-stage to quickly strategize and chalk out the course of the impromptu speech. Additionally, always have a couple of well-rehearsed humorous stories or anecdotes and quotes

Planned Presentations
There are multiple types of planned presentations including informative persuasive direct reporting face-to-face or one-to-one presentations small group and large group presentations

 An informative presentation is one in which details and facts are provided and a persuasive attempt is made to influence the audience to a similar pattern of thinking. Informative presentations educate or inform the audience. Persuasive presentations allow you to sell an idea or make a sales pitch to the audience. Both presentations are different in terms of objective, design, and structure. The difference in objective guides the design and structure of the presentation.

Planned Presentations
An informative presentation is fairly simple to plan and execute. Collate and compile the data, give it a structure and it is ready to be delivered. persuasive presentations are complex and need research, planning and structuring. Persuasive presentations are a plea to the audience to change their pattern of thinking, and focus on the new manner of approach. Trying to figure out what will help the audience overcome its objections is the first step in the process of planning a persuasive presentation. The audience will have a fixed notion of what they want to know and what they know.

Direct Reporting
Presentations can also be in the form of direct reporting to the superior, which is a one-to-one or face-to-face communication. the presentation will be made to only one person seated in front of you. The strategies adopted in this case are different and intense. cannot take recluse to slides. face-to-face talk with minimum frills. Accuracy and completeness of data, and clarity of thought are important.

Small/Large Groups
More variety in the style and nature of presentation is required in a large group. You have to keep all the members wake, asking for more while listening. However, it is simple as your attention is diverted by and to a number of people. Small group presentation - high in intensity. There are fewer people to divert your attention to and the focus of the audience members is constantly on you. Questions and interaction are limited. Content has to be dense, of course in line with the expectations of the audience members. You have to be extremely alert and sharp to the responses of the audience.

The first commandment for planning a presentation

Have a Positive Attitude to Pesentations.

The Six Helpers

Who What Why Where When How Who is your audience? What do you want to present (content)? Why do you want to present (purpose)? Where do you want to present (place)? When do you want to present (time)? How do you want to present (words used or avoided, slides used or avoided)?

Who
Who refers to the target audience for whom the presentation is prepared. Knowledge about the audience, including their needs, expectations, likes and dislikes, helps in structuring the presentation in an effective manner. Answers to the following questions will help in developing a presentation ideally suited to the needs of your audience.
Who is my audience? What does the audience already know? What does the audience need to know? What is the experience of the audience? What are their needs, expectations from this presentation? How will the audience benefit from this presentation?

What
What or the content of the presentation. A specific content list should be chalked out by both the audience and the presenter. Ideally, the members of the audience must inform the presenter of their expectations from the presentation. In instances when this information is not available the presenter has a double task ahead: To gauge/find out the needs of the audience To structure the content keeping the needs of the audience in mind Jot down on a piece of paper the answers to the following questions:
What do you want to tell your audience? What is your objective?

Why
While the what to tell in a presentation can be outlined in a single sentence, the purpose or Why of the presentation requires much thought. The individual or collective motive of the presenter is an answer to the following questions:
Why am I making this presentation? What is the purpose of making the presentation? Is the purpose to educate, inform, convince or train?

Where
The venue where the presentation is to be made is equally important. Care must be exercised specifically with respect to the following two issues:
The seating arrangement, and The lighting arrangement

The room must be well-lit so that the audience can see you clearly. All wires and chords must be safely taped to the floor. Arrive at the venue much in advance. Test your slides, go to the back of the room and see if the screen and the content on the screen is clearly visible. If there is too much light and you feel that the audience will have to crane its neck to catch a glimpse of the written content, the impact of the presentation will be lost. The seating arrangement must also be organized so that there is enough elbow space for the participants. The best seating arrangement for easy viewing is a gently sloping U-shape. The Ushape allows both the presenter and the audience to observe one another and establish eye contact.

When
The time, or when are you making a presentation is an additional dimension to be considered at the planning stage. The three components that are essential to understand the when factor are:
The market condition The analysis of the situation The time when the presentation is to be delivered

Ask yourself the following questions:

When will the presentation be made? Has there been a recent fluctuation in the market? Is the analysis accurate, current and to the point at the time of the presentation?

How
What is the role of the presenter in the course of the presentation? A facilitator, a technician or a lecturer? Facilitator - merely putting thought-provoking statements across to the audience is required. Technician - the presenter merely operates the multimedia presentation and lets the audience decide for itself the true import of the message. Lecturer - the presenter stands behind the podium and delivers the well-prepared speech. Ask the following questions:
Will the presentation be technical or non-technical? Will the presentation be formal or informal? What strategies will impress the audience? What should be presented and how?

Learning Points
A. How to Start and Make an Immediate Impact on Your Audience B. How to Use Visual Aids to Maximum Effect C. How to Develop Your Public Speaking Style to Impress and Influence Your Audience D. How to Deal with Questions from the Audience

How to Start and Make an Immediate Impact on Your Audience (1)

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. (On behalf of, may I welcome you to) My names Im responsible for/Im from This afternoon Id like to discuss report and present If you have any questions youd like to ask, Ill be happy to answer them. or Perhaps we can leave any questions you may have until the end of the presentation.

How to Start and Make an Immediate Impact on Your Audience (2)

Use hooks simple techniques for getting the immediate attention of the audience: (1) give them a problem to think about Imagine Do you think thats possible? (2) give them some amazing facts Statistics show that (3) give them a story or personal anecdote I remember when

Look at the presentation openings below and identify them as Problems, Amazing Facts or Stories
1. Did you know how much do Japanese companies spend on entertaining clients in a year? Its 40 billion dollars. Thats four times than the entire GDP of Bulgaria. You could buy General Motors for the same money. Suppose your advertising budget was cut by 99% tomorrow. How would you promote your product? According to the latest study, by 2050 only one in every four people in Western Europe will be going to work. And two will be old age pensioners. I read in the newspaper that the worlds highest paid executive works for Disney and gets $230 million a year. Now thats about $2000 a minute! When I think about creativity, Im reminded of the man who invented the microwave oven. He spent years messing around with radar transmitters, then notived the chocolate in his pocket was starting to melt.

2.

3.
4. 5.

B. How to Use Visual Aids

Expressions to introduce and explain your visuals Take a look at this Lets have a look at this Id like you to look at this. Here we can see . The.. represents .. . And the . represents . . Lets look at . in more detail. As you can see,. Id also like to draw your attention to .... .

Write out the following sentence fragments in the correct order to make a complete presentation extract.
1) see, its a fairly typical growth Have a look at this graph. As you can stages of its development. The vertical axis and the horizontal shows turnover in millions of dollars curve for a young company in the early axis represents the years 2001 to 2005 Have a look at this graph. As you can see, its a fairly typical growth curve for a young company in the early stages of its development. The vertical axis shows turnover in millions of dollars and the Horizontal axis represents the years 2001 to 2005

2)
3) 4) 5) 6)

7)

What verbs do you use to talk about the change and development?

Increase/rise

Decrease/fall Shoot up/take off Plunge/slump Fluctuate/recover/pick up Remain steady

C. How to Develop Your Public Speaking Style to Impress and Influence Your Audience (1)
Clear articulation Pausing in the right places Pitch Control: a dramatic rise in your voice creates anticipation and suspense a sharp fall gives weight and finality to what you have just said. keeping your voice up tells the audience that you are in the middle of saying something and must not be interrupted. letting your voice drop lets them know you have completed what you wanted to say

Statements that work/dont work

1. The person who never made a mistakenever made anything 2. Big Companiesare small companiesthat succeed 3. Hardwork never killed anybodybut worrying about it did
Pratice your articulation, pausing, and pitch control by reading the following presentation extract.

The worlds most popular drink is water. You probably knew that already. After all, its a basic requirement of life on earth. But, did you know that the worlds second most popular drink is Coke? And that the human race drinks six hundred million Cokes a day? Now, lets just put that into some kind of perspective. It means that every week people drink enough Coke to fill the World Trade Center.

C. How to Develop Your Public Speaking Style to Impress and Influence Your Audience (2)
To get more attention from your audience, you can apply the following further techniques: (1) using rhetorical questions: you present your ideas as questions rather than direct statements The obvious disadvantage of setting up in Indonesia is its economic situation. But what are the advantages? The advantages are the low cost of land, an excellent exchange rate, and the low cost of labor. (2) using dramatic contrasts Ten years ago we had a reputation for excellence

Today were in danger of losing that reputation

(3) tripling: Whats needed now is time, effort, and money

D. How to Deal with Questions

Four Basic Types of Questions: 1. Good questions: Thank the people for asking them. They help you to get your message cross to the audience better. 2. Difficult questions: These are the ones you cant or prefer not to answer. Say you dont know, offer to find out or ask the questioners what they think. 3. Unnecessary questions: You have already given this information. Point this out, answer briefly again and move on. 4. Irrelevant questions: Try not to sound rude, but move on.

Put the following responses into four groups: responses to good questions, difficult questions, unnecessary questions, and irrelevant questions.

1. Good point. (Good Question) 2. Well, as I mentioned earlier, (Unnecessary Q) 3. Interesting. What do you think? (Difficult Q) 4. Im afraid I dont have that information with me.
(Same)

5. To be honest, I think that raises a different issue. (Irrelevant Q)

LIST TOPICS Make a list of the points youll talk about.

Firstly To start Secondly Initially Primarily

Then Next Last but not least Finally To end

INTRODUCE TOPIC ONE Open every topic with an introduction

Id like to review I want to go over We are going to analyse I plan to examine

EXPLAIN GRAPHS/PICTURES/ DIAGRAMS

Id like you to see this graph. It shows Please observe this matrix. Youll see that Have a look at this model. Whats wrong with it? Let me show you a chart that summarises

DESCRIBE TRENDS
Increase Accumulate Boost Escalate Hike Raise Rise Shoot up Swell Decline Diminish Dip Drop Plunge Shrink Sink Slip Descend

EXPRESS PROBABILITY
Surety: sure, definite, doubtless, inevitable, without question, unmistakable, certain. Likelihood: Probable probable, likely, seeming, expected. Possibility: possible, conceivable, feasible. Doubt: doubtful, improbable, unlikely, questionable, remote, dubious, unsure. Impossibility: impossible, unfeasible, unrealisable, unattainable, not viable.

COMPARE IDEAS
But However Nevertheless Nonetheless Although Though Despite Despite On the other hand Even though On the contrary By contrast Conversely Even if

REINFORCE IDEAS
Use these expressions to emphasize ideas. Furthermore in addition as well as Besides Too Moreover Additionally Likewise

EXPRESS OPINION
My opinion is I would say In my view It seems to me that From my angle I see it as

FINISH THE SPEECH

Use these expressions to close your presentation. Move to action: Nows the time to / Wed better move. Refer back to: Going back to our figures / As I said before Summarise: To sum up / To recapitulate

CLOSE THE SPEECH

Use these expressions to wrap up your speech
Asking for questions Have you got any query? / Would you like to ask? Thanking Thank you for / Its been a pleasure to Introduce the next speaker Now, Ill leave you with / Id like to introduce Say goodbye Goodbye / Good afternoon, everyone