• It is not a good idea to overwhelm your audience with lengthy paragraphs on the screen.  If you do so they will be reading rather than listening to you.  And remember:
• A presentation is about you, about what you have to say and not about what is on the screen.
• The screen is there to back what you have to say
• Information – in note form- should be introduced by bullet points
• There shouldn´t be too many bullet points on a page
• Too much animation/photos/ videos can distract the audience
• Background colour and patterns should not hide your notes

Here is some useful vocabulary to introduce, develop and conclude a presentation. It will help you structure your talk and make it more professional.

Emmerson, Paul (2007) Business English Handbook. Advanced, Oxford, MacMillan

 OPENING

Introduction

• On behalf of …, may I welcome you to …
• For those of you who don´t know me already, my name is …
• Before I begin, I´d like to thank (Sue) for inviting me to speak to you.
• Purpose and structure
• I´m here today to talk to you about …
• I´ve divided my talk into three parts.
• My talk will take around forty minutes.
• First, I´ll look at … , then I´ll show you …, and finally I´ll say a little about …
• Please feel free to interrupt me during the talk if you have any questions.
• I´ll be happy to answer your questions at the end.

MAIN BODY

First point

• Okay, let´s start with the first point which is …
• Right, that´s all I want to say about …  . Any questions so far?

New Points

• Moving on now to my next point …
• Let´s turn now to …

Referring forwards

• I´ll go into this in more detail in a moment.
• I´ll come back to this later.

Referring back

• In the first part of my talk I mentioned …
• Going back for a moment to what I said earlier …

Digressing

• Before going on, I´d just like to say a little about …
• If I can just digress (=side-track) for a moment, …
• So, getting back to my original point, you can see that …

Visual aids

• As you can see from this next slide, …
• Have a look at the diagram on the left …

Handling interruptions

• That´s an interesting question. I´ll come back to that at the end
• Yes, thank you, I was just coming to that.

CLOSING

Summarizing

• So, just before I finish, let me summarize the main pints again, …
• So, to sum up, I have talked about three main areas. First, … second … and third …

Concluding

• Right, let´s stop there. Thank you very much for your attention.

Inviting questions

• And now, if you have any questions, I´ll be pleased to answer them.

DEALING WITH QUESTIIONS

Good question

• That´s a very good question.
• I´m glad you asked that.

Clarification needed

• Let me check that I understand. Are you asking …?
• Could you be a little more specific?

Difficult question

• Well, it´s a very complex issue. What are your own views?
• Would anyone like to comment on that?
• (Beatrix), can you help me to answer that?

You lack information

• I don´t have information with me, but I can find out.
• If you leave me your contact details at the end, I´ll send it to you.

Control the timing

• Okay, I think we have time for one last question.