Advice about giving effective presentations in English from Business English Hong Kong. Article written by Business English Hong Kong's Academic Director Stephen Maule
You may need to give presentations at work in English in order to:
- inform
- train
- persuade
- sell
A successful presentation is one of the most effective ways of communicating your message. English is so widely used in international business that a working knowledge of the vocabulary and techniques used in an English language presentation is a valuable asset.
First Steps?
With good preparation and planning you will be totally confident and less nervous. Your audience, too, will be confident. They will be confident in you. And this will give you control of your audience and of your presentation. With control, you will be ‘in charge’ and your audience will listen positively to your message.
Have a clear objective
Before you start to prepare a presentation, you should ask yourself: “Why am I making this presentation?” Do you need to inform, to persuade, to train or to sell? Your objective should be clear in your mind. If it is not clear in your mind, it cannot possibly be clear to your audience.
Audience
“Who am I making this presentation to?” Sometimes this will be obvious, but not always. You should try to inform yourself.
How many people? Who are they? Business people? Professional people? Political people? Experts or non-experts? Will it be a small group of 4 colleagues or a large gathering of 400 competitors? How much do they know already and what will they expect from you?
Time and length
“When am I making this presentation and how long will it be?” Will it be 5 minutes or 1 hour? Just before lunch, when your audience will be hungry, or just after lunch, when your audience will be sleepy?
Content
“What should I say?” Now you must decide exactly what you want to say. First, you should brainstorm your ideas. You should include only information that is relevant to your audience and your objective. You should exclude all other ideas. You also need to create a title for your presentation (if you have not already been given a title). The title will help you to focus on the subject. And you will prepare your visual aids, if you have decided to use them. But remember, in general, less is better than more (a little is better than a lot). You can always give additional information during the questions after the presentation.
Notes
When you give your presentation, you should be – or appear to be – as spontaneous as possible. You should not read your presentation. You should be so familiar with your subject and with the information that you want to deliver that you do not need to read a text. Reading a text is boring! Reading a text will make your audience go to sleep! So if you don’t have a text to read, how can you remember to say everything you need to say? With notes. You can create your own system of notes. Some people make notes on small, A6 cards. Some people write down just the title of each section of their talk. Some people write down keywords to remind them. The notes will give you confidence, but because you will have prepared your presentation fully, you may not even need them! So prepare, prepare, prepare!
Prepare everything: Words, visual aids, timing, equipment. Rehearse your presentation several times and time it. Is it the right length? Are you completely familiar with all your illustrations? Are they in the right order? Do you know who the audience is? How many people? How will you answer difficult questions? Do you know the room? Are you confident about the equipment?
When you have answered all these questions, you will be confident to carry out your presentation.
For more advice on making effective presentations in English visit https://businesenglish.com.hk. For more great advice about learning English please visit https:/businessenglish,com.hk.
Subscribe to our mailing list and receive a free set of ebooks to help you improve your English. If you have any questions, feedback or suggestions for future articles please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.