PRESENTATION SKILLS How to Perform Like a Professional

PRESENTATION SKILLS How to Perform Like a Professional If you need to do a presentation in my class, you need to understand one thing from the start: I m preparing you for authentic, professional presentations I m not going to let you do a middle school presentation. Here s the second thing you need to understand: I m not teaching you how to do English-language presentations. I m teaching you how to do presentations in any language. Doing professional presentations includes three important areas: preparation, performance, and participation. Preparation means you are aware of your purpose and your audience, you have the right information, and you have arranged the information to fit your audience and purpose. If you don t prepare correctly, your presentation will fail. Performance includes choosing the right delivery style. The most common style is extemporaneous, or natural, but some situations call for spontaneous, or reading, or memorization. If you re in middle school, you can memorize or read. My class is not middle school. Performance also includes your voice delivery (loudness, speed and enunciation), your physical delivery (body language includes movement, posture, gestures and facial expressions) and your delivery of visual aids. Participation means you are connecting with your audience. Your not just standing in front of people saying something, you actually see these people as your audience and part of your purpose, and you re trying to help them understand your information. This includes participating in question-andanswer exchanges with your audience. If you want to get a good grade on your presentations in my class (and, later, your presentations in other classes or in your job) start developing presentation skills. If you want to get a C grade, continue giving presentations like a middle school student. PART ONE PREPARATION: PURPOSE & AUDIENCE PURPOSE Why do singers perform? Why do TV reporters give news reports? Why do teachers teach? Why do politicians and business people give presentations? There are various reasons purposes behind presentations. Let s divide them into four simple areas. Neither area is easier or harder than the other, but if you re going to perform in front of an audience, it s really important to understand why you re going to do it. To entertain. A singer, dancer, comedian or actor understands that their audience should enjoy their performance. It sounds simple, but it requires

skill. If you get in front of a group of people and start singing, but you can t sing well, your presentation will fail. You must have the skill and those people who do have skill also practice endlessly, because practice is how you improve skill. To give information. For some people, the reason for their performance/presentation is simply to deliver information. They re not trying to make people happy or trying to persuade people; they re just giving information. This isn t as simple as it sounds. To be effective at giving information, you must have good information, and it must be arranged and delivered so that your audience can understand it. To teach. The difference between giving information and teaching is this: what do you want your audience to do with this information? If your purpose is to give information, you only need to know that your audience understands what your said. However, if you are trying to teach the information, your purpose includes helping your audience keep the information so they can use it later. To persuade. This is, perhaps, the most difficult purpose, because it is a blend of entertainment and information, but the overall purpose is to make your audience do something you want them to do. If it s buying something or voting for someone, persuasion requires very careful attention to ALL areas of a presentation. Persuasion is the most common purpose of business presentations. Middle School Purpose: Because I have to. Yeah, this doesn t work for you any more. Sure, you have to give this presentation, but so does everyone else. You can take the easy way but other people won t. You are trying to develop skills and perform well because you want to be successful. Or, you just want a C grade. AUDIENCE Singers, reporters, teachers and business people understand their audience because they won t be successful if they don t. Understanding your audience includes knowing who your audience is, why they are listening to you, and also understanding factors that affect your audience. Audiences can be divided by their motivation. Why are they listening to you? They already like you. This is the easiest audience to please. Your parents will give you an A+ on every performance, and your friends will applaud you at a noraebong even if you can t sing well. You re lucky if you have this audience. They re interested in your topic. Maybe they don t know you at all, but they want the information that you are giving. They are your audience by accident or circumstance. It s rare, but it does happen. You re teaching a class, and one student brought her friend, or people just happened to be at the bar without knowing you were going to sing there. They have to be there. The captive audience is the hardest to please Factors that affect your audience include time, place, and time. Time. Do you want to know the worst time to teach a conversation class? Monday morning at 9 a.m. The worst time to teach a writing class?

Immediately after lunch. The worst time for a job interview? Right before lunch, or right before quitting time. Often, we can t control our presentation time, but we can anticipate how our audience will feel, and we can do things that will help to keep their attention. Place. I d rather have a large audience in a small room than a small audience in a large room. Why do we put desks in classrooms? Because the audience is better if they re comfortable. Why don t we put beds in classrooms? Because we don t want the audience to be too comfortable. If possible, scout the location of your presentation before you have to give it, and consider ways to make your audience more comfortable and, if you have a large space, consider ways to make sure your audience can hear you and see your visual aids easily. Time. Yeah, it wasn t a mistake to say time twice. The second sense of time is the length of your presentation. If you are giving a long presentation, understand that your audience will naturally become bored in the middle so give the key ideas early and repeat them, and try to do something different in the middle to revive your audience. Also, realize that your audience is aware of how long your presentation is supposed to be. If you re supposed to give a 30- minute business presentation, but your presentation runs to 45 minutes, you are stealing your audience s time. If your presentation is only 15 minutes, you are wasting your audience s time. PART TWO PREPARATION: INFORMATION AND ARRANGEMENT INFORMATION Your audience is not stupid. Your audience is not stupid. Repeat that: your audience is not stupid. They will know if you took the time to give them the best information you could find and if you are not giving them good information, why should they listen to you? Your information should fit your purpose, and of course it should fit the time of your presentation. If you re trying to put 15 minutes of information into a 5- minute presentation, you are a fat person wearing skinny jeans. Don t b a fat person who wears skinny jeans. Here s a good tip: have good information, and have more information than you need. Make sure you can give the most important information during your presentation then tell your audience you have more information in case they want to ask questions. ARRANGEMENT How you arrange your information is important (see the good tip just above). You need to consider your purpose, your audience, and your time. You need to understand the three levels of development: you need a main idea, your need key points to support that main idea, and you need details to support your key points. Even the TOEIC Speaking and TOEFL speaking assignments ask you to do this. Introductions vary according to how long your presentation is supposed to be. If you re going to speak to the audience for an hour, and if they don t already know you or your topic, perhaps you need a long introduction. But if you have a short presentation, and you start by saying Hello, my name is blah blah blah, and I m a major in blah blah blah, and I m blah year, and your audience is already thinking shut up and sit down.

Introduction tips: Give the main idea of your presentation early, and tell the audience how you are qualified to talk about this. If the audience thinks you know about the topic or are interested in the topic, they re more likely to listen to you. DON T start by apologizing. I don t really know much about this topic Really? Then why are we listening to you? I didn t have time to prepare a good presentation Really? Then why are we listening to you? My English is not very good So what? As long as we can understand you, we don t care. Some presentations are language evaluations, sure, but most of the time, the audience doesn t care about your language skills as long as they can understand your ideas. Conclusions. like introductions, also must fit the length of your presentation. If you have given a long presentation, with a lot of information, you need to take some time to repeat your main ideas make sure your audience understands your overall purpose. But if you have given a short presentation, you don t need a summary your audience is not stupid! Conclusion tips: Give a signal of conclusion, of course, and tell the audience how your information can help them (or what you want them to do with the information). DON T say In conclusion, and then go on and on and on and on and on. Don t bring up new ideas in your conclusion. Don t suddenly stop. As I said before, let the audience know you have more information (but you have run out time) and, if possible, ask for questions. PRACTICE Students often ask, How can I practice for an extemporaneous presentation? The most important rule is very simple and very, very important do not write a script! If you write a script, then you will want to practice reading that script over and over and over and eventually it will be at least partially memorized. It won t sound natural because it isn t natural. (And, you have wasted too much time by writing the script in the first place and you are memorizing your grammar mistakes! I repeat: DO NOT WRITE A SCRIPT. Instead, write an outline of your key ideas (NOT SENTENCES) in the order you want to deliver them. Practice by using a clock and trying to deliver the most important ideas within the time limit. Each time you practice, say the same ideas in a different way use different vocabulary, different sentences, to express the same ideas. You should even consider rearranging the order of the ideas. And remember this for our class presentations, more than one or two practices is not necessary for a 5- minute presentation. An outline, however, is absolutely necessary. DO NOT WRITE A SCRIPT. PART THREE PERFORMANCE: DELIVERY STYLES Understanding your purpose and your audience can help you choose the proper style of delivery. There are four basic delivery styles. Spontaneous (no preparation). This is not common, but it does happen. Often this happens during language tests (TOEIC Speaking or TOEFL). Sometimes it happens in business situations, where your boss comes up to you and says, Bob broke his leg, so I need you to give his presentation today or Oh, I

forgot to tell you, but This delivery style is very stressful, but remember: your audience will know that you did not have time to properly prepare. Anything you do will be appreciated. Reading. Again, this is not common, but it does happen. Perhaps a teacher will ask you to read something from the textbook. Maybe you are a TV news reporter, and you re reading the news from a teleprompter, or maybe you are a politician giving an important speech from the teleprompter. What s bad about reading? Unless you are specially trained, reading is BORING. And it is a waste of time for the performer, because he or she must find the information, organize it, and then write a script. Memorizing. This is too common in classroom presentations, but it should not be common or acceptable. I teach a literature class where I ask students to memorize a poem okay, memorizing is important. Do you know who else memorizes their presentations? Actors. What s bad about memorizing? Unless you are specially trained, memorized presentations are BORING. And they are a terrible waste of time for the performer. Extemporaneous (natural delivery). This is, by far, the most common type of presentation. Even TV news reporters, who are reading, act like they re not reading. Even actors, who have memorized, act like their performance is not memorized. Think of your teachers who always read to you and your teachers who always talk to you. Which one is better? People who give natural presentations should be prepared, should have good information, should have that information properly organized but they are naturally more interesting because the audience is more connected. Your audience is not stupid most people can tell the difference (and I ve been trained to be able to tell the difference). Remember, the natural presentation does not mean it is not prepared it means the performer has not wasted time writing out a script and then memorizing it. That means the performer has more time to spend on finding and organizing good information. PERFORMANCE: VOICE Your voice performance depends upon three skills: loudness, speed, and enunciation. Loudness. Obviously, your voice must be loud enough for your audience to hear you easily. However, there s no need to shout! In some situations (a large audience or a large room) you may need to use a microphone but you should not use a microphone unless it is absolutely necessary. Here s a general tip to consider about loudness: for most presentations, when you are listening to your own voice, it should sound slightly louder than your normal conversation voice. Professional tip: experienced performers know how to raise or lower the loudness of their voices in order to signal the audience at important points Speed. Just like loudness, the speed of your voice should be neither too fast nor too slow. If you are speaking too fast, your audience will not be comfortable, and if you are speaking too slowly, the audience will think something is wrong. General tip: you should speak slightly slower than your normal conversation voice. Professional tip: similar to loudness, people who have experience in giving presentations know that the audience will respond to small changes in speed.

Enunciation. Also known as articulation, which is slightly different from pronunciation. Enunciation is speaking very clearly, very carefully, making sure to pronounce each syllable of each word. In common speech (in any language) people drop sounds from words or let two sounds mix together. Enunciation is crisp, precise speech, and it requires practice but it is very necessary. If you are enunciating clearly, your audience will feel that you (a) are intelligent and (b) want them to understand you. PERFORMANCE: PHYSICAL Your physical performance also affects your audience. Physical performance includes six areas: posture, movement, eye contact, facial expressions, gestures and nervous habits. Posture. Standing is better than sitting, except for very small audiences or very informal presentations. Standing also helps the quality of your voice. Don t slump over, but don t be stiff. Try not to hide behind the computer or the lectern. Movement. Just like the loudness of your voice, your audience should see some movement, but not too much. Walking around casually helps keep your audience interested and it helps them to believe that you are relaxed. Eye contact. This is extremely important. This helps you to control your audience and helps you to understand if your audience is understanding your information. It also provides the feeling of personal contact with your listeners. With a normal audience of 15-30 people, each member of the audience should feel that you are talking to them (not at them or past them). Again, be reasonable too much eye contact sends the wrong message, so just establish eye contact and then move on. (Exception: if you are answering someone s question, it is normal to give more direct eye contact however, even when answering questions, look at other people to show you hope they also understand what you are saying.) Facial expressions. Be normal, but understand that your audience reacts to what they see as well as what they hear. Experienced presenters know how to control their facial expressions to support their overall performance. Gestures. Again, try to be normal. Some gestures are natural and show the audience that you are relaxed. Used properly, gestures help signal important parts of your presentation but using too many gestures, or the same gesture too often, distracts your audience. Nervous habits. Swaying back and forth, clapping your hands together slowly, tapping your feet, etc. this things are hard to control, but they distract your audience and weaken your overall performance. Try to be aware of your nervous habits, and try to control them. PERFORMANCE: VISUAL AIDS The term visual aids includes anything your audience is looking at as you perform your presentation. We usually think of Powerpoint or Prezi slides, but visual aids can also include using the whiteboard, showing photographs or diagrams, or even a physical demonstration. There are three common problems with visual aids.

They dominate the performance. Some people actually try to hide behind their visual aids they slump behind the computer, and their entire presentation is on the screen. Remember the red pepper powder principle: too much is not good! Visual aids are supposed to help your audience understand your key points, but not replace you as the performer. (And don t simply read from your slides that s reading, not performing, and it s boring!) They ve not visual enough. Your visual aids don t have to be brilliant explosions and dancing titles but they do have to be big enough and simple enough for the audience to see them and understand them. Follow three simple rules: (1) Be sure that whatever you are showing is big enough for EACH audience member to see easily; (2) don t show too much information the audience is there to watch your performance, not to read your essay; and (3) connect the visual aids to your key ideas by explaining what the photograph or chart or graph means. (Key tip: remember that what you see on your personal computer often looks different when projected upon a large screen! This especially concerns font sizes and color combinations.) They re not proper. Visual aids can be improper for two reasons: they don t fit the audience, or they don t fit the tone or purpose of your presentation. For example, showing photos of children who have died from starvation might be very powerful for adults, but too disturbing for children and putting those photos on slides with a Hello Kitty theme is just foolish (one of my students actually did that, several years ago). PARTICIPATION: CONNECTIONS We ve already talked about arranging your information (and visual aids) to help your audience connect with your main ideas, and how your delivery style (especially eye contact) helps you establish and maintain a personal connection with your audience. This is not important in a middle school presentation, but it is incredibly important in real presentations, if you are trying to inform, teach, and/or persuade your audience. Everything I m telling you about presentation skills is to help you improve this ability. PARTICIPATION: QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS In our presentations (as in most real presentations) there will be a short interview with the audience. Remember that you have gone from one- way communication to two- way, but your performance is not yet over! Here are a few suggestions for you to think about. Don t be aggressive. You should maintain control (it s your performance) without intimidating the audience. You can ask questions, but don t expect answers and be sure your questions are proper. (One of my students several years ago presented about changes in sexual attitudes, and directly asking students Are you a virgin? and other very personal questions. It ruined an otherwise good performance.) Don t over-react to bad questions. If someone asks a question you have already answered, don t be shocked or upset. Don t yell, I ALREADY TOLD YOU! or stare at them, just answer their question politely. If someone asks a stupid question for example, you gave a presentation

about K- Pop s influence in American music and someone asks, Do you like pizza? don t overreact. Just say something like I m not sure how that is related to what we re talking about now. Remember, if you embarrass one member of the audience, you re making ALL of the audience less willing to ask you anything. Be sure to actively seek questions. Some people say Any questions? and then look down or away. Maintain your connection! Let the audience know you really want to answer their questions. Know your limits. No one can answer every question. If someone asks a question that you can t answer, just say you don t know. If it s important information, say you ll look for the answer. It s question-and-answer, not debate. If someone is disagreeing with you, don t let it turn into an argument. Make your point, and if he or she wants to argue, simply say, Well, obviously we disagree and maybe we can discuss it later, but for now let s move on. In other words, maintain control of your presentation.