Presentation Techniques

Presentation Techniques

In this article, I will share the lessons I learned from YouTube and from my experience in training with the British Council. I’ll discuss a few techniques and examples of how to make a presentation in English, useful phrases and techniques for introducing yourself and the topic, keeping ideas organized, dealing with issues, and responding to questions from the audience.

1. How to Introduce Yourself and the Topic

If some people in the audience don’t know who we are, then we should introduce ourselves.

In a more formal setting, we can say something like this:

“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Let me introduce myself, my name is Nani, I work in marketing.”

“Distinguished Ladies and gentlemen. Before I begin the presentation, allow me to introduce myself briefly. My name is Nani and I am the head of HR.”

If we work in a more informal company, we can say:

“Hello my dear friends, maybe some of you don’t know me, let me introduce myself. My name is Nani and I work in digital marketing.”

” Hello everyone! I saw some new faces here. I will introduce myself first. My name is Nani. I am part of the customer service team.

Introducing our topic.

If the topic of our presentation is simpler, then we can say one sentence, such as the following:

“Today, I will be talking about the company’s new HR policy and how it will affect you.”

“I want to talk to you, about quality control and why we are all responsible for that quality control in whichever department we work in.”

If the topic is more complex, we can add more detail to break the idea down into stages. As an example:

“Today, I will be talking about the company’s new HR policy and how it will affect us. I’ll start by outlining the policies, then I’ll highlight what they mean for us and our work habits. Finally, I will briefly discuss why this new policy is necessary and beneficial for all of us.

Here’s another example:

“I want to talk to you today about quality control and why we are all responsible for quality control, whichever department you work in. First, I will explain why ‘quality control’ has a broader meaning than we might expect. I’ll continue with an example of real quality control, and why it’s important to all of us. In closing, I’d like to ask you to think about ways you can incorporate quality control into your work habits.

Here, we look at two examples. We can use the following template to start a presentation:

“I will begin by… , and then I will… Finally, I will…”

“First of all, I will… I will continue by… To finish, I will…

However, we can use other templates that we think are safe and suitable for our presentation.

Okay, now please practice! We want you to do two things.

First, practice introducing yourself informally, and explaining your topic in a simple, one-sentence way.

Then, practice introducing yourself formally, and explaining your topic in more detail.

2. How to make an interesting start

We’ve heard good speakers and bad speakers. A good speaker if the audience feels interested and excited to listen to what is being presented to the end. Meanwhile, bad speakers if the audience seems to be present but their minds are elsewhere, or even they seem restless, sleepy and have time to fall asleep.

So how to deal with it?

As a presenter, you must know what the audience wants. Bring them involved in the presentation that is being presented. The way to make an interesting presentation start is ​​to throw a problem to the audience and then the presenter has a solution to the problem.

For example:

“Have you ever felt unfairly treated at work, or felt that the work you were doing was not appreciated? We have worked to design a new HR policy that will ensure all staff gets fair recognition for their contributions to the company. ”

In this way, the presenter takes a seemingly boring topic such as HR policy, but the presenter makes it more relevant to his audience into something interesting. How? By connecting our experiences and their feelings.

Second technique? Mention interesting facts, or surprising statistics to grab the attention of the audience.

For example:

“Did you know that the average office worker spends eight hours a day at work, but only does four hours of productive and 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.

In the third technique, the presenter can engage people by telling a short story and connecting it to the topic. A very powerful story with added emotional dimension to the topic and is well delivered.

For example:

“I once met a young salesman. I will not mention his name. He spent several weeks building relationships with potential clients. He worked late, and he worked so hard that he was under a lot of stress, which then affected his personal life. In the end, he didn’t get a deal with the client and even the client signed a contract with another firm. Today, I will talk about self-confidence as a selling tool, and how we can avoid the pitfalls this young man is falling into.”

Use one of these three techniques in your introduction to connect with your audience and show them why they should be interested in what you have to say.

 3. Using Signposting Language

There is a famous quote about presentation:

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

This quote is from Dale Carnegie, a very successful American salesman and writer. Although this advice was delivered a long time ago, it is still relevant today.

What does that quote mean?

That is, our presentation should not only provide information. We also need to show people how information is organized.

To do this, we need signposting language.

We use signposting language by using words and phrases that direct the audience where the point of the presentation begins and ends, to indicate what will happen next, and to remind them of things we talked about earlier.

Example of signposting language

“Next, I would like to talk about…”

“Let’s move on and discuss…”

“At this point, I would like to turn to…”

We can use the signposting language to add detail to an idea:

“Let me go into some more detail about…”

“Let’s examine… in more depth.”

“I’d like to elaborate on…”

We can use signposting language to show that we have completed the main points of the presentation, and have reached a conclusion:

“To wrap up, let’s remind ourselves why this is important to everyone here.”

“Let’s review the key points of this session.”

“So, you have heard what I have to say. What conclusion can you take away from this?”

Use signposting language to move between points, to indicate when we are summarizing or going into more detail, and to signal that we have reached a conclusion.

4. Dealing with problems

Imagine we are making a presentation in English. What could go wrong? What problems might we have?

There are many common problems:

We may forget where we are, or forget to mention something important.

We may realize that we said something wrong, or that we didn’t explain something clearly.

Or, someone may ask us a strange question, which we don’t know how to answer.

What can we do, and what can we say in this situation?

First of all, it’s a good idea to make cue cards with the important points, as well as the important vocabulary we need. If we forget where our presentation is, cue cards can help.

Cue cards, useful for writing down some important phrases and for handling problems smoothly.

Of course, forgetting something is not ideal. However, if that is the case, then it is better to keep talking than to just stand and be silent.

What if we make a mistake, or we realize that we didn’t explain something well?

We can say:

“Let me rephrase that…”

“Actually, what I meant to say is…”

“To clarify, I would like to say that…”

In this way, we can correct ourselves without admitting that we made a mistake!

What if we realize that we forgot to mention something important?

Use phrases like these:

“Let me add one more thing:…”

“I would like to add something to a point we discussed earlier.”

“Let me return to my earlier point briefly.”

Again, this allows us to correct mistakes and appear confident so that we are seen as in control.

Finally, what do we do if someone asks us a tough question and we can’t answer it?

Some options that we can implement, first, we can delay giving an answer.

As an example:

“I have allocated time for questions at the end of this session, so I will address your ideas later.”

“I am not in a position to answer it right now, but I’ll get back to you via email as soon as I can.”

This gives you time to think about your answers and do your research if necessary!

We can also divert questions, by asking questions to other audiences. As an example:

“This is a very interesting question. But before I answer, I want to know: what do the other audience think about this?”

If the question is irrelevant, then we can ignore the question and move on. As an example:

“Thanks for your input, but I don’t see your question still related to what I was presenting.”

“I apologize for not answering your question due to irrelevant one to today’s discussion.“

Notice how we can use phrases like thank you for your input, but… or I don’t mean to be rude, however… to make our language more polite and not seem like outright refusing to answer.

So, to answer the tough questions, remember the three things above.

Nani Kusmiyati

Jonggol, 9 September 2021.

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Ref: Video, “Presentation in English.”