The language of presentations

The language of presentations Non-native speakers of English have to consider not only the content of their presentations but also the language to use.

Let’s look at how to make reference.

Referring to visuals

Look at these phrases for referring to visuals:

I'd like you to look at this ...
As you can see from this ...
As this ... shows, ...
Let's look at this ...

Making reference

Non-native speakers of English have to consider not only the content of their presentations but also the language to use. In this issue of POSTSCRIPTwe look at how to make reference.

Look at these presentation phrases and decide whether they:
refer backwards, refer forwards, refer to visuals or deal with interruptions.

1. This graph indicates...
2. As I said earlier, ...
3. This leads me to my next point.
4. Taking this into consideration, ...
5. As this bar chart shows, ...
6. If you don't mind, I'll deal with questions later on.
7. Going back to a point I made earlier, ...
8. Sorry, could I finish first?
9. I'll deal with this point again later.
10. I'll give you some more information on this in a moment.

• Let us look now at the video below and listen to some useful language for meetings.

Starting a presentation

Get people's attention

• If I could have everybody's attention.
• If we can start.
• Perhaps we should begin?
• Let's get started.

Welcome them

• Welcome to Microsoft.
• Thank you for coming today.
• Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
• On behalf of Intel, I'd like to welcome you.

Introduce yourself

• My name's Jane Shaw. I'm responsible for travel arrangements.
• For those of you who don't know me, my name's Tom Stotter.
• As you know, I'm in charge of public relations.
• I'm the new Marketing Manager.

State the purpose of your presentation

• This morning I'd like to present our new processor.
• Today I'd like to discuss our failures in the Japanese market and suggest a new approach.
• This afternoon, I'd like to report on my study into the German market.
• What I want to do this morning is to talk to you about our new mobile telephone system.
• What I want to do is to tell you about our successes and failures in introducing new working patterns.
• What I want to do is to show you how we've made our first successful steps in the potentially huge Chinese market.

State how you want to deal with questions.

• If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them as we go along.
• Feel free to ask any questions.
• Perhaps we can leave any questions you have until the end?
• There will be plenty of time for questions at the end.

Of course, these are only suggestions and other language is possible. Even within this limited group of phrases, just choose a few you feel comfortable with and learn and use those.

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Signposting

When you want to make your next point, you ‘move on’.

• Moving on to the next point.
• I’d like to move on to the next point if there are no further questions

When you want to change to a completely different topic, you ‘turn to’.

• I’d like to turn to something completely different.
• Let’s turn now to our plans for next year.

When you want to give more details about a topic you ‘expand’ or ‘elaborate’.

• I’d like to expand more on this problem we have had in Chicago.
• Would you like me to expand a little more on that or have you understood enough?
• I don’t want to elaborate any more on that as I’m short of time.

When you want to talk about something which is off the topic of your presentation, you ‘digress’.

• I’d like to digress here for a moment and just say a word of thanks to Bob for organizing this meeting.
• Digressing for a moment, I’d like to say a few words about our problems in Chicago.

When you want to refer back to an earlier point, you ‘go back’.

• Going back to something I said earlier, the situation in Chicago is serious.
• I’d like to go back to something Jenny said in her presentation.

To just give the outline of a point, you ’summarize’.

• If I could just summarize a few points from John’s report.
• I don’t have a lot of time left so I’m going to summarize the next few points.

To repeat the main points of what you have said, you ‘recap’.

• I’d like to quickly recap the main points of my presentation.
• Recapping quickly on what was said before lunch,……

For your final remarks, you ‘conclude’.

• I’d like to conclude by leaving you with this thought ……
• If I may conclude by quoting Karl Marx

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Describing change

When we are giving a presentation, we often talk about changes. Usually we illustrate these changes with visual aids to show these changes. We need, however, to explain these changes. To do this, we need special verbs.

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Describing Change- Adjectives

When talk about changes, we often need to point out how big or rapid these changes have been. To do this, we need to use adjectives.

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How to present like Steve Jobs key features