Online Placement Test
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Presentations In English Without The FearImagine this: your boss informs you that you must make a presentation at an international sales meeting. What’s more, as there will be key staff present from many European countries as well as the USA, it really must be in English! How do you feel as you imagine this situation? Are the palms of your hands sweating as you think about it? Do you feel slightly sick as you start to visualise yourself standing in front of 100 people with 20 minutes of time to fill? Well stop now. It doesn’t have to be this way. By following our simple step by step guide below, we can remove the fear and help you to make any presentation in English both successful and pleasant! 1 It’s All In The Mind Take two people; one is confident and experienced when it comes to giving presentations, the other is frightened to death. If we were to get inside each of these two person’s minds as they prepare to and start to deliver a formal presentation in front of a crowd of people we would observe two totally different scenarios. We play videos to ourselves in our minds when we imagine and anticipate what a future event will be like. The frightened person will be playing a very negative video: they will see themselves sweating, tense, stiff and with a dry throat and mouth, struggling to speak as they stand paralysed with fear in front of the hostile audience. There will be clear images of them failing to communicate their message as the audience look totally bored or confused. People will whisper and laugh to each other as they sit and watch you bomb out live. Can’t you just feel your red and hot face as you play this scene in your mind? Contrast this with the confident guy who looks physically relaxed, smiling, at ease and in control. He makes a clever joke at the beginning of the talk and everybody laughs and relaxes as they anticipate a well-delivered and fun presentation ahead of them. This guy’s video contains strong positive feelings, the buzz of hearing a large crowd of people laugh, the look of interest, enjoyment and respect for you is written on their smiling faces. You feel good! You are good at this and everybody knows it! Let me tell you a secret. YOU have the power to choose which of these two videos you play in your mind. But, the more you play the negative one, the easier it becomes to let you brain run down this destructive path. By allowing your brain to develop a well worn video, this becomes the easiest pathway of thought to follow. What you need to do is not allow your brain to follow the negative route, but develop the positive internal video instead. Remember, it’s your choice which video you choose to play. Your choice whether you make a success of your presentation or not! 2 Who Are Your Audience? You must always start by asking yourself: exactly who will be at my presentation? What do they want to learn? What do they already know? Will there be anyone there that you know already? Why not contact them directly before you start top prepare and ask them. Contact the organiser, too, and ask them all the same questions. This way you will be able to plan a presentation that is in line with the expectations, needs and wants of your audience. Otherwise you risk pitching the level of information either too low, and so most people are bored, or too high when nobody would be able to follow. Once you have discovered exactly who will attend and what are their personal and professional concerns, fears, worries, needs and desires, you must keep this information clearly in your mind as you plan. Think about a real person who you know is typical of someone attending the presentation. Clearly visualise yourself talking directly to them as you plan what you are going to say. 3 Plan A Summary Before I started to really write anything today, I simply wrote down the different titles of the different parts of this article. The headings of each section that I knew I wanted to tell you were the easiest things to decide. This was just a list of titles at first, then I remembered that I wanted to tell you about the powerful effect of positive visualisation, so I added that to the list. The next step was to think of the order or sequence was best to present them in. I decided that the first thing that we had to think about, before we did anything else, was to deal with the positive thinking issue, so that had to come first. I then planned the order of each of the other parts of my article. Once I was happy with this, it allowed me to simply complete each section in more detail. You will need to do the very same thing when you start to plan your presentation. Then you can also map out on a piece of paper exactly what different PowerPoint slides you will need to create under each of these headings. 4 Let PowerPoint Help You! A lot of people have a terrible fear that with the stress and anxiety of giving a presentation, their brain will stop and freeze. You will be unable to remember what you had planned to say! You must deal with this by using the positive visualisation technique I outlined in the first section, but with PowerPoint you can remove this worry immediately, by using brief sub-titles on each slide to prompt your memory as to what is coming next and to guide you effortlessly through the talk that you have planned. But remember! Be ready for every eventuality! All your mental preparation and careful planning would be immediately wasted if you arrived at the presentation room to find that nobody had prepared the projector for your laptop pc! Or, that the laptop pc was there, but it didn’t work, or broke halfway through or that quite simply you couldn’t work out how to connect it! Rather than be left in a sweaty mess of panic and ruining your presentation, be prepared. simply print paper hard copies of each of your PowerPoint slides so that you have some back-up if the worst case scenario happens! 5 A Clear Introduction – Tell Them What You Are Going To Say Make sure that you begin by introducing yourself, who you work for or represent and some information regarding your personal experience in this area. If you are sure that it will come naturally to you, make a little joke. Believe me, your audience will be feeling nervous for you and so any excuse for them to laugh out loud will provide THEM with some very welcome relief! But a presentation is no place to try out new jokes! Always make sure that you run any joke past a trusted colleague or your line manager. You wouldn’t want to discover that your joke was not suitable just as you deliver it… Also, do you want your audience to interrupt you with any questions they want to put to you, or would you prefer to deal with questions at the end. It’s probably best to do the latter: “If you do have any questions about anything that I talk about today, I would be very happy to answer them at the end of my presentation.” You then need to help your audience to follow your talk by summarising briefly exactly what you are going to be telling them. Like any road journey, help the listener follow the route that you will be following by using “signposting” language to indicate how one section will follow another in a logical sequence: “First of all, I will tell you about….” “Next, I want to explain….” “After that, I will show you…” “Then, we will see how….” “Finally, I will tell you about…” Remember, always plan what you are going to say by asking constantly asking yourself: “If I were in the audience, could I easily understand and follow that point?” 6 Say It This is the part of the presentation when you actually give the details behind each section. Again you can help everybody follow where you are leading them by “signposting” the end of one section and the beginning of another: “OK, so we have looked at the effects of the economy on sales, now I want to move on to tell you about discounting.” “That’s all I want to say about the 2008 figures, let’s now take a look at what happened in 2009.” “I’ve told you all about what happens in our head office, but now I want to turn to examining what happens in the transport depot.” 7 Tell Them What You’ve Said You want the audience to remember the contents of your presentation so it never hurts to summarise one last time what you have just said: “So, let me summarise for you: First of all, we saw how the department deals with enquiries, then we looked at how orders are processed, after that….etc” Then always try to conclude by reminding your audience again who you are and what you can help them with: “So, thank you for your kind attention everybody. My name’s Peter Hayes of inlingua Manchester, helping you to do your job in English!” 8 Practise It All On A Friend Or Colleague In Advance Of The Big Day Once you have written your slides and planned exactly what you are going to say, you now need to find a trusted friend or colleague on which to practise on. Ask them to help you by making notes as you present to them under the following headings: - Was the presentation easy to follow? Did I “signpost” the sequence of the different parts of the presentation clearly enough? - Did the presentation give you clear information that you found useful and easy to understand? - Did you feel comfortable watching and listening me talk? - How could I improve the presentation? - Questions to ask after the presentation - Finally, how long does this presentation last? Finally, remember this. You are in control here. How successful and pleasant the experience of giving a presentation actually is really just depends upon you. Positive visualisation and careful planning and practice will simply lead to a winning presentation. Do you want to be a presentation winner? It’s a choice that only you can make! So what are you waiting for? Go win if you want to! Take control and surprise yourself with what you can achieve! |
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Business & Professional English Language Training for Adults in England
