PREPARING AN ORAL PRESENTATION PREPARATION AND PLANNING 1. 2. 3. What is the aim (=intention)? What is my title?

What are the main points I want to make? (=the most important things I want to say)

STRUCTURE 1. INTRODUCTION

a. Greet the audience, introduce yourselves b. Give a title and introduce the subject What exactly are you going to talk about? Give a rough (=approximate) idea or a brief summary of the topic. I plan to speak about... Today I'm going to talk about... The subject of my presentation is... Over the next five minutes I am going to talk about You may also say the reasons why you chose that topic: I have chosen to speak about this because... c. Give your objectives (purpose, aim, goals) My purpose / My intention in this presentation is to What I would like to do today is to explain to illustrate... to give you the essential information on... to have a look at... d. Tell your audience about your structure: I have divided my presentation into (1, 2,3 ) parts. In the first part I give a few basic definitions. In the next section I will explain In part three, I am going to show... In the last part I would like to give a practical example... 2. BODY OF THE PRESENTATION (THE LONGEST PART OF YOUR PRESENTATION)

Make a transition between the introduction and the body. Now let us turn to point one. Let us now move on to the second part, which is, as I said earlier. Quantity How much information should you give? Its enough to clearly develop your ideas. Dont forget to give examples. Sequencing your ideas: Signposting (signalling) where you are. If you mark clearly the points and structure of your talk as you speak, your audience will be able to follow you better. Its as if you were giving instructions to someone who is driving through a road they dont know (you must give indications). Moving from one aspect to another: Now, the first thing to know is So, what can I say about ? Now then, I want you to look at this picture.
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 List information (but avoid reading directly) First / Firstly / First of all, we must consider... Next, it is important to remember that Finally / Lastly, we should look at In summary, we can say that In conclusion, I would like to say that... Link ideas, sections/making transitions -Indicate the end of one section and the beginning of the next. Now let us turn to .... I'll move on now to Turning now to To be clear and specific. Use examples, rephrasing, summaries etc.: To give an example: For example, For instance, There are many xxxxx, such as (name examples)
To rephrase: In other words, ...., that is,..... , that is to say,... To summarize: To summarize, To sum up, In conclusion, In short, To emphasize The most important thing / factor / aspect is What is important to remember... I'd like to emphasize (the fact) that... Id like to stress the importance of... To refer to what you have said previously: As I have said before... To repeat what I've said already To refer to what you will say: We will see this a little later on. I will talk about that a bit later. To refer to what an expert says: According to... In the words of To refer to common knowledge: As you may know... As you are probably aware, Rhetorical questions They are questions that you ask without expecting an answer, as if you were having a conversation with your listeners. They are used to catch their attention, and keep them interested. Have you ever seen/heard/experienced...? How can we explain this? What does that mean? What is the importance of? What are the consequences of?
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3.

THE END OR CONCLUSION

The end of a talk should never come as a surprise to an audience. At the end you should briefly summarize your speech in a few lines to make sure that the audience has understood the main points (=ideas). Then you should give some kind of conclusion. That is to say, you should give a message that logically comes out of the ideas you talked about in your speech. In conclusion I would like to say that... To sum up, in my view To sum up, in my opinion, Very important: when you conclude, do not do it suddenly, or be 'surprised' to get to the end of your talk. You should never say '...and, erm...that's all', as if you suddenly had nothing else to say. Thirdly, thank the audience for listening to you / for their attention. Finally, ask for questions and comments or invite a discussion. I'd be happy to answer any questions. If there are any questions please feel free to ask. Thank you very much for your attention and if there are any suggestions or comments GENERAL ADVICE Do NOT read from your notes for any extended length of time. It is acceptable to look at your notes from time to time though. Remember you have to show that you can SPEAK English, not read English.

Rehearse your presentation - to yourself at first and then, if you want, in front of your friends. Try to be clear, and use an appropriate tone of voice. The audience must hear you and understand you. You can use visual aids (PowerPoint, pictures, posters...)- they help you to express your message. BUT THEY ARE NOT THE OBJECTIVE of the presentation.

USING VISUALS (e.g. power point)

Try to limit words per slide to a maximum of 10. Use a reasonable size font and a typeface which will enlarge well. Use colour on your slides but try not to use orange and yellow which do not show up very well when projected. For text only, white or yellow on blue is pleasant to look at and easy to read. In any case, try to avoid very dark images or backgrounds. These can be hard to see in lighter settings, and with light text may be difficult to read.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST: NEVER, EVER, COPY AND PASTE YOUR INFORMATION FROM THE INTERNET (for ex. Wikipedia), and then just read it. That's not a presentation. What do you or your classmates learn from that?

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