PRESENTATIONS IN ENGLISH

How to Give a presentation

(Business English)
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzIxD1jXn44

Useful Phrases and Techniques to introduce yourself and your topics, keep your ideas organized,
deal with problems, and responds to questions from the audience member.

Part One: How to Introduce Yourself and your topic

Formal Introduction
 Good morning, everyone. For those who don’t know me, my name’s Sabrina and I work
in the marketing department.
 Hello everybody. Before we begin, let me introduce myself briefly: I’m Reese and I’m
the head of HR.

Informal Introductions
 Hi guys: if you don’t know me, I’m Sylvia and I work in digital marketing.
 Hello! I see some new faces, so I’ll introduce myself first: I’m Julia and I’m one of our
customer service team.

Introducing your simple Topic

 Today, I’m going to be talking about our new HR Policies and how they affect you.
 I’d like to talk to you today about quality control and why we’re all responsible for
quality control, whichever department you work on it.

Introducing Your topics that needs details (breaking into some stages)
 Today, I’m going to be talking about our new HR Policies and how they affect you. I’ll
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.

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

Part Two: How to make Strong Start

Good Speaker: grab your attention and don’t let go, you want to hear what they have to say. You
feel interested and energized by listening to them.
Bad Speaker: is the opposite of good speaker, even if you try to listen, your attention drift away.
Your eyelid felt heavy and you’re struggle to stay awake
Getting people attention starts from beginning. You have to make it clear what people should
expect from you presentation and why they should care about you have to say.
There are 3 techniques can be used to make strong start in your presentation
One – Problem  Solution
Establish problem that your audience have, and you, the one, have the solution.
Example:
Have you ever felt unfairly treated at work, or felt that 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.
Case: if your topic kind of boring one you have to find a way to relate the topic with the audience
experience/feeling.

Two – Interesting facts or statistics (to get people attention)

Example: did you know that the average office worker spends eight hours a day at work, but only
does for 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.

Three – telling Short Stories

Stories can be powerful way to draw people attention.
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 signed 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.

Part Three: Using Signposting Language

Important Quote “Tell the audience what you’re going to say: say it, and then tell them what
you’ve said” – Dale Carnegie
Meaning Your presentation shouldn’t just give information, you also need to show people, that
your presentation is organized. For this you need signposting language. It means using words or
phrases to show your audience from the point it begins and ends. It shows what coming next and
remind them about what you’ve talked before.
Example:
 Okay, that the new policies. Next, I’d like to move on and discuss what these policies
mean for you.
 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 and close more of your leads.

Signposting Language
 Next, I’d like to talk about …
 Let’s move on and discuss …
 At this point, I’d like to turn to …
Signposting language to give detail
 Let me go into some more detail about…
 Let’s examine … in more depth
 I’d like to elaborate on …

Signposting language to show that you finish your main point and reach your 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 conclusion can you take away from this.

Signposting language are used to move between points to show when you’re giving summary or
going to more details or to signal you reach your conclusion

Part Four: Dealing with Problems.

There are many common problems:

 You might forget what where you were, or forget an important word.
 You might realize that you said something wrong, or you didn’t explain something
clearly.
 You might forget to mention something important
 Someone might ask you an awkward question, which you have no idea how to answer

What can you do/ what can you say in these situations?
First of all, make a cue card with key points as well as any important vocab you need. If
you lose your place or you forget a word, it could help (however, you can’t prepare everything,
it’s useful to learn some phrases to deal with problems smoothly). If you lose your place, and
can’t remember what to say next, you can use a filler phrases.

Filler Phrases
 Where was I
 So, what was I saying
 What’s the word in English again?

If you still can’t remember, look at your cue card with your main points. Of course, forgetting
something isn’t ideal. But if you do, it’s better to keep talking rather than just standing there in
silence.

What if you make a mistake, or you realize that you didn’t explain something well?
You can say:
 Mistakes and clarifications
 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 that you forgot something important?
Adding something you forgot:
 Let me just add one more thing …
 I’d like to add something to appoint we discussed earlier.
 Let me return to an earlier point briefly.

These phrases allow you to correct your mistake in confident way, so you look like you’re in
control

What do you do if someone asks you a difficult question? There are 3 Ds (Delay, Deflect,
Dismiss)

1. Delay Answering
 I’ve allocated time for questions at the end of this session, so we’ll address your idea later
 I’m not in a position to answer that right now. but I’ll get back to you later this week.

This gives you time to think of an answer and do some research if you have to

2. Deflect the question (by asking a question back, or by asking other what they think)
 That’s an interesting question. Before I answer, I’d like to know: what’s your take on
this?
 You’ve raised an important point there. What does everyone else think about this?

3. Dismiss the questions (If the question is irrelevant, you can dismiss the question and
move on)
 Thanks for the input, but I don’t see how that’s connected to what I’m saying
 I don’t mean to be blunt, but I don’t think that’s relevant to today’s discussion

The blacken phrases make your language more indirect and polite