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At some time in your business career, you are likely to have to give a presentation. This may be a formal presentation at a conference, a more informal talk to staff or a short presentation as part of a meeting.
Often, this is a chance to improve your career prospects, or conversely to damage your chances of future promotion. In the next few columns, I will look at the language of presentations. Like much of business English, presentations have a fairly set structure and it helps to learn a few phrases.
At the beginning, you should introduce yourself and state the purpose of your presentation. For example, look at the two openings below. The first is informal and the second more formal.
1) Right then, let’s get started. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Ali Ahmad, Head of PR. Today, I’m going to be showing you ...
2) Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Let me first introduce myself, my name is Ali Ahmad and my role in Jarndice and Jarndice is Head of Public Relations. This morning, my objective is to ?
Both the above are fairly traditional openings and should be used if you are new to presenting in public or are not a confident speaker.
More skilled speakers might start with a joke. However, be careful with starting with a joke since it relies on personality. Nothing is more likely to cause a poor presentation than an opening joke that falls flat.
You could start with a series of rhetorical questions such as:
Nothing is worse than your computer freezing after typing an important document for several hours, is it? Do you know the feeling?
Will the document disappear for ever or will I manage to recover it? Would you prefer a 100% guarantee that all your work is safe? Well ...
This style of presentation opening is perhaps more suited to a sales presentation, although there is no doubt that using questions at the start can grab the attention of your audience from the beginning.
Once you have greeted the audience and introduced yourself, you must then explain the content of your presentation. You can do this in a variety of ways, but the most common method is to outline briefly the structure.
To do this, you should use some connectors or signposting language. For example, look at the presentation introduction below and note the language highlighted.
My presentation will look at three key areas.
Firstly/I’ll begin by introducing the ... After that, I’ll talk about the need to ... Finally, I will explore possible solutions to ...
Unlike writing, a presentation has no paragraphing to help an audience know when the speaker is changing subject, summarising or concluding his remarks. So this signposting language is crucial in the main part of the presentation too and will help the audience understand and appreciate your presentation better.
We will look at more signposting language next time, and also in the next few weeks explore the role of visuals, how to use your voice effectively and how to respond to difficult questions.
Guy Perring is Director, Professional Development Unit (PDU), at the British Council Malaysia. The PDU offers a wide range of learning opportunities from management and communications skills training to developing English skills. Contact the British Council in Kuala Lumpur at 03-2723 7900 or Penang at 04-2630 330 or visit www.britishcouncil.org.my.
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