Understanding & Developing Presentation Skills II: Language & Delivery

Intended Learning Outcomes Students should be able to:

Identify the content and structure of an oral presentation
Identify and evaluate effective presentation skills

Preparing and Evaluating Presentations

A good presentation exhibits the following characteristics:

Familiarity	well-founded subject knowledge of the author
Coherence	logical organisation of contents
Unity	clear links between sections
Purpose	clearly defined aims
Fluency	well-rehearsed delivery

There are three key areas of knowledge:

Your subject/topic.
Your context/situation
Your audience.

Preparation Procedures

While preparing your presentation, you should roughly follow the steps listed below:

Try to understand your audience.
Determine your purpose.
Select your information.
Determine your logical structure.
Prepare your outline based on the logical structure.
Write your notes.
Produce your visual aids overhead/PowerPoint slides, diagrams, graphs.
Prepare your introduction and summary.
Practise with a (video-)recording/a mirror
Rehearse with your group (in goup presentations only)

A Real-life Example

Testing your expectations/prior knowledge. Read the title of the video and try to predict what the content of this presentation may be about. Discuss the following questions with your groupmates and report to the class.

Listening for general meaning. Watch the video on the Gecko’s tail and take notes. Then answer the following questions by matching columns A with B.

Column A		Column B
1. How did the speaker open his presentation?		A. Engineering
2. What does the speaker mean by biomutualism?		B. Since there were no reports of geckos gliding, Robert’s team went to the forests of Singapore and Southeast Asia and taped a research video.
3. What particular discipline the speaker mentioned can be inspired by biology?		C. The need to build biomutualisms which will increase the pace of basic discovery in their application.
4. What did the woman do in the experiment?		D. He shared with the audience a story about beyond biomimetics. He also talked about the definition of the term and introduced the relationship between nature and human technologies.
5. How can a gecko climb up the wall rapidly without falling down?		E. A robot
6. How many different kinds of tails did Robert mention?		F. An association between biology and another discipline
7. What did Robert‘s team build?		G.Climbed up a wall 60 feet high
8. What is the gap in the knowledge about the gecko’s tail and what did Robert’s team do to fill the gap of knowledge?		H. Two
9. What was the speaker concerned about in closing his talk?		I. They have leaf-like structures on their toes, with millions of tiny hairs that stick by intermolecular forces alone

Paying Attention to Structure. Watch the entire video and take notes. Then fill in the details of the structure of the video presentation in the following table. Compare your answers with your partners in your group and report to the class. If absolutely necessary, you can also activate the subtitles or the interactive transcript on the right hand side of the video, but try to avoid this in the first place.

Structure of the presentation – Learning from the gecko’s tail
Attention getter
Body
1st Point
2nd point
3rd point
Conclusion
Memorable statement

Reflect on the video and discuss with your partners. Then answer the following questions:

Question	Yes/No	Comments
1. Is the speaker’s style appealing? Why? Why not?
2. Are the visuals he used appealing? Why? Why not?
3. Did the speaker use notes/cue cards? Is this good or bad?
4. Did the speaker prepare well for the presentation? How can you tell?

Language in Presentations

Strategies

You can develop various strategies to keep the attention of your audience and to make your presentation clear and easy to follow. In this section you will learn strategies to spice up the opening of your presentation. You will also learn some techniques in organising the body of your presentation as well as some expressions for ending it.

Spicing up your opening

Read the opening remark of a speech about a plant called purple loosestrife and answer the questions which follow:

¹You may have seen a tall, bright purple plant growing along some of the rivers and lakes in this area of the United States. ²This attractive plant is called purple loosestrife. ³Purpose loosestrife is a wetland species from Europe and Asia that was brought to the United States in the 1800s. ⁴It spread naturally near water but was also spread by gardeners who noticed how beautiful it was and put it in the wet areas of their gardens. ⁵Now purple loosestrife covers some four hundred thousand acres in the United States and Canada. ⁶Unfortunately, its extensive spread has had a serious impact on public wetlands in the U.S. ⁷What can we do to tackle the problem?
⁸Today I’m going to explain why purple loosestrife has become a problem and what is being done to solve the problem.

Adapted from Reinhart, S. M. (2002). Giving Academic Presentations, p.133. U.S.: Michigan University Press.

1. What does the speaker try to do through Sentence 1?

2. Why is a brief description of loosestrife needed (see Sentences 2-5)?

3. What problem of loosestrife is highlighted? Why is the problem needed in the opening remark?

Try to capture your audience’s attention through the opening remark of your presentation. You can spice up your opening using any of the following strategies:

asking an interesting/stimulating question
describing part of the phenomenon/problem that your audience may already be familiar with (see Sentence 1 in the example above)
presenting a hypothetical case related to the phenomenon/problem
telling a true story related to the phenomenon/problem
referring to a representative story recently reported in the media
pointing out striking statistics about the phenomenon/problem
inviting the audience to imagine themselves in a situation that represents the phenomenon/problem
showing a short video clip

Remember while spicing up your presentation may help you get started, you need to keep it short and sweet in order to make it effective.

Presenting the Rest of the Opening

Study the second paragraph of the loosestrife speech. What does the presenter tell the audience?

⁷Today I’m going to explain why purple loosestrife has become a problem and what is being done to solve the problem. ⁸First I’ll discuss the reasons that loosestrife has had a serious impact on public wetlands in the United States. ⁹Then I’ll outline some of the methods that have been successfully used to control loosestrife. ¹⁰And finally, I’ll introduce a unique way to control loosestrife that appears to be both safe and effective. ...

Sentence 7:

Sentences 8-10:

The rest of your opening should briefly

state the overall goal of your presentation
outline the major parts of your presentation

Note that if you are allowed only 5 to 10 minutes for your presentation, you may need to skip its outline.

Presenting the Body

Choose the most important and interesting ideas to present.
Be succinct and avoid overwhelming your audience with too much information.
Rehearse the presentation to check your time management. If you overrun or if you need to rush through your ideas (or your slides), that means you have prepared too much. Remember, roughly 2 minutes per slide!
Remove excessive detail.
Make sure your ideas are well-connected.
Explain terminology and abbreviations if needed (depending on your audience’s knowledge).
Provide enough examples and evidence to support your claims.

Concluding Your Presentation

Pair up with a colleague and comment on the concluding remarks provided below. Then on a scale of 1 to 3 – with 1 meaning the least effective and 3 the most effective –, rate the effectiveness of each of the remarks. Be prepared to justify your rating.

That’s all I have to say about loosestrife.
That’s the end of my presentation on loosestrife. Thanks for listening. I know it was hard to understand.
Here comes the end of the presentation. I’d like to summarise what I have presented. I have briefly described the existing problem caused by loosestrife, and evaluated different approaches to solve the problem. I’ve suggested that option X will be the best. Are there any questions that you’d like to raise?
Now, I hope that you can see how solution X might be the best way of tackling the problem. Good bye.
Right, that’s my brief discussion of loosestrife. Obviously, there are a number of points I couldn’t possibly present due to limitations of time. So, I expect to hear some questions from the audience for clarification.
So, what might then be the solution to the loosestrife problem? The answer is quite clear. As I’ve elaborated just now, X is the best approach to the problem because of A, B, C. Thank you for listening. Any comments?

You can conclude your presentation by:

briefly re-emphasising the importance of the topic/problem
re-emphasising the value and contribution of your research results (e.g. extending existing knowledge or solving a significant problem)
tying your conclusion to a question you asked or statement made at the start of your talk
giving recommendations for how your product/research can be applied in real world situations or how it should be further developed or improved
making a humorous (but not cheeky) remark about your work
inviting questions

The Question and Answer (Q&A) Session

Questions asked in the Q&A time tend to fall into two groups: information-seeking and critiquing.

Information seeking questions are questions that prompt the presenter to provide further details. They mostly concern details that the presenter has not supplied or has not explained clearly enough during the presentation. Critique questions, on the other hand, are usually prompted by flaws that show up in the presentation. Such flaws can be presenter’s misconceptions or mis-representation of ideas; wrong information provided in the presentation; misjudgement about an application, results, a situation; or wrong/illogical conclusions drawn. The following table shows some examples of both types of questions:

Information seeking questions	Critique questions
You’ve talked about X, but what about Y?	You’ve chosen X, but do you know that X is ... (flawed). How did you explain your choice of X?
How do you determine X?	The results you presented in slide X do not seem to match those presented in Y. How would you account for that discrepancy?

To prepare for the Q&A Session, you may want to come up with a list of questions your audience could ask. You can also record your presentation and view it from the audience’s point of view. See if any parts might be likely to prompt questions of the above two types. Improve the contents of your presentation, so that you can reduce the chances of being critiqued. Also try to think of how you will handle questions that you might not have answers to.

During the Q&A Session, make sure you listen to your audience’s feedback carefully. You can use some of the expressions shown in the next section to show that you are paying close attention to their feedback. Don’t be too defensive when you are challenged, and admit genuiene flaws if they have been pointed out to you. If you’re asked a question concerning a point that you didn’t have time to present, admit to the time constraint. Show your appreciation of the question and answer it briefly. If you don’t agree with the person asking the question for a good reason, by all means show your disagreement, but do this tactfully and politely.

Conjunctions, Discourse Markers & Hedges

Conjunctions, discourse markers, and hedges are words and phrases used in speaking and writing to ‘signpost’ discourse stages or interaction strategies or indicate a particular stance of the speaker/author. They do this by indicating turn/topic beginnings/ends, joining ideas together, showing attitude, and generally helping to control communication. Words like actually, so, OK, right and anyway may all function as conjunctions/discourse markers, as they help the speaker to manage the conversation and mark when there is a change in topic or attitude. For example:

Conjunctions/Discourse Markers	Function
so, therefore, thus, as a result	to show the relationship between the cause and effect.
however, nonetheless, but, though, yet, although	to highlight a contrast.
overall	to give a general summary.
and, as well as	to supply additional information.

Discourse markers also show the attitude/stance of the speaker in the discourse about what the speaker intends to express or react to.

Conjunctions/Discourse Markers/Hedges	Function
maybe, well, I think, perhaps	hedging
yes, yeah, okay, mmh, uh-huh	feedback: indicating or seeking agreement or attention
uh, um	backchannel: indicates that you are listening or understanding
ehm	filler/pause marker
well, uh, okay, yes	initiates dispreferred response
I mean	may initiate self-correction
anyway, as I was saying, now, regarding	marking potential topic shifts or returns to a topic

Presentation Structure. Work with your partners and suggest further relevant language expressions you can use for the presentation. List them below in the right-hand side column.

Presentation structure part	Sample expressions	Your expressions
Signal the beginning	Right Well Ok Let’s begin... Can we start?
Greet the audience	Hello. Good morning, ...
Introduce yourself	Hi everyone, I’m... from...
Introduce the title/topic	Today I’m going to talk about... The topic of my presentation is...
State your objectives, purpose, aims	My purpose in doing this paper is to give you a background understanding on... What I’d like to do today is to outline/explain/illustrate...
Announce your outline	I’ve broken my presentation into X parts. In the first part, I’ll... In the second part, I’m going to... In the last part, I’d like to …
Questions and feedback from the audience	There will be 5 minutes at the end of my presentation for a discussion. Please feel free to interrupt me at any point, though, to ask questions or make comments.
Make a transition between the introduction and the body	Now, let me turn to the first point… Let me move on to the second point, which is... As I said earlier...
Summarise your presentation	I’d like to summarise/sum up At this stage I would like to go through/over the main points...
Conclude the talk	In conclusion, I’d like to say that... My final comments concern... I’d like to finish by reminding everyone that...
Thank the audience for being there and/or ask for questions, invite a discussion	I’d be happy to answer any questions... If there are any questions, please feel free to ask them now. Thank you very much for your attention, and if there are any suggestions or comments...

Look at the transcript below taken from the Gecko presentation. Highlight the examples of conjunctions/discourse markers/hedges:

So of course, in reality, we were then panicked, being the biologists, and we should know this already. We said, “Well, what do tails do?” Well we know that tails store fat, for example. We know that you can grab onto things with them. And perhaps it is most well known that they provide static balance. It can also act as a counterbalance. So watch this kangaroo. See that tail? That’s incredible! Marc Raibert built a Uniroo hopping robot. And it was unstable without its tail. Now mostly tails limit maneuverability. Like this human inside this dinosaur suit. My colleagues actually went on to test this limitation, by increasing the moment of inertia of a student, so they had a tail, and running them through and obstacle course, and found a decrement in performance. Like you’d predict. But of course, this is a passive tail. And you can also have active tails.

Here is a list of other language expressions you can use in your presentation:

Purposes	Expressions
Giving examples	Now let’s take an example. An example of this can be found To illustrate this... Let’s see this through an example: For example,... For instance,... Let me rephrase that. In other words,... Another way of saying the same thing is... That is to say...
To summarize	To sum up,... Let me summarize by saying... So that concludes my overview. In conclusion,... Briefly said... In short,... What I’ve tried to show in this part... To recap what we’ve seen so far... What is very significant is... What is important to remember... I’d like to emphasize the fact that... I’d like to stress the importance of... to hightlight… to underline... What I tried to bring out... What we need to focus on...
Referring back	As I’ve already said earlier... As we saw in part one...
Pointing forward	We will see this a little later on. This will be the subject of part 3. We will go into more detail on that later. For now, suffice it to say...
Citing ‘authorities’	I quote the words of... In the words of... According to... Here I’d like to quote... As Mr. X says in his book... There is a famous quotation that goes...
Referring to common knowledge	As you all may well know... It is generally accepted that... As you’re probably (well) aware of)...

Adapted from: http://people.engr.ncsu.edu/txie/publications/oral_presentation_skills.pdf

Dos & Don’ts in a presentation

Brainstorm with your partners about the Dos and Don’ts of oral presentation.

What you should do:	What you shouldn’t do:

Essential preparation and checklist for your presentation

Fill in the following table with relevant information of your presentation.