Presentation Skills

Presentation is a way of communicatingideas and information to a group.The purpose of presentation could be to:

InformConvinceInfluenceMotivate

Presentation involves interactionbetween the participants and the speaker.In addition to the content of thepresentation, the personality of the presenter and his/her communication skills play a key role in making it effective.

Presentation Skills

The commonly used types

of presentatio

n are:

Oral Presentatio

n

Visual / Power Point Presentatio

n

The speaker provides information, clarifies points and answers questions, by communicating directly with the audience.

The speaker makes use of visual aids to communicate information. Organization and presentation of slides is an important part of power point presentation.

Once you have mastered the required skills, you will be able to make a Presentation with clarity and confidence.

For successful presentation, one needs:

(ii) Planning your Presentation :

Planning your presentation

is very important step and

demands a lot of time. It involves:

Define the purpose of your presentation. Ask yourself what the objective of your presentation is – is it to give information, to sell a product or to motivate an audience? Once you are clear about this, structuring the presentation becomes easy.

Research the information you need and develop a good content. Collect relevant facts, data and images from different sources. Depending on the time available for the presentation, decide in what is most important and effective.

a key part of the planning is to know your audience well. The more you know the audience, the better you can reach them. It is always good to know the expectations/perceptions of the audience.keep the venue in mind while planning the presentation. A prior idea of the dimension of the hall, seating arrangement, acoustics, lighting and other amenities will help equip yourself better.

Organizing:

The matter collected by you during the planning phase needs to be arranged into smaller units, in sequence, emphasizingone point at a time. Structure what you are actually going to say and divide it into easily understandable chunks with a beginning(introduction), middle(explanation) and an end(conclusion). Give a title to your topic and provide appropriate headings/subheadings for each unit of the matter. If you are making a power point presentation, you need to consider what visuals, graphics etc you are going to use and prepare the slides accordingly.

Language & style of speech:

When preparing an oral presentation, make sure that your speech sounds naturaland is easily understood. Avoid jargons and complicated sentence structure.Let the sentences be short, correct, complete and clear.It is preferable to reduce the original written matte to bullet points and thenpractise filling in the gaps with additional information while speaking.Even if you know the matter very well. It will always help to have a few keypoints as notes.

Practice: Practice the presentation a number of times to get the pacing right and ensure that you keep to the time limit. If you exceed the time limit, the audience may get impatient and bored. Do not finish too early either, for it may seem that you have run out of the matter.

Revise and Recheck:

It is as important to revise your content as it is recheck the venue just ahead of the presentation. Make sure that basic facilities such as plug points, podium, projector etc are in order. Getting a feel of the place prior to the presentation adds to your level of comfort and confidence.

You must be aware how important non verbal communication is, for effective communication. Remember to maintain a healthy eye contact, modulate the voice, good posture and gesture.

(iv) Performing :

Everybody feels nervous at the same point when asked to make a presentation if you are feeling particularly nervous, take a few deep breaths and begin to speak slowly. Also try to focus clearlyon your messeage.

Dressing appropriately is an important part of your performance, Good grooming, neatness and smart appearance go a long way in gaining theacceptance of the audience.

Never say that you don’t know the answer- better to say you will find out and get back to them. Never try to evade questions or pretend to know the answer - honesty and frankness work best and prove your integrity.

Finally it is important that you have the confidence to interact with your audience and deal with any questions that your audience might ask you.

Sequence for making an effective presentation :

• My presentation will take about 20minutes of your time……

Questions

Effective presentation

requires good

speaking skills which

involve:

Good speaking skills

• Chunking• Sentence

stress and intonation

• Voice modulation

• Neutral accent

Chunking• Chunking is a grouping of words in a sentence in to short

meaningful phrases(usually three or five words). It is also assessed as the largest meaningful combination of units that can be placed in short term memory. This process prevents word by word reading which can cause lack of comprehension.

• Presentation of chunked material separated into meaningful and related groups of words improves comprehension. With practice, chunking improves speed and accuracy of reading.

• A pioneering scheme has been started recently/ in Southampton on England’s sourht coast/ to educate motorist/ who have been convicted for drunken driving. The penalty for drunken driving/ might be the loss of driving license/ and a heavy fine. But, under the new scheme/ convicted drivers do not pay fine. Instead, they have to attend eight training sessions/ once a week/ organized by the local authority probation service.

Sentence stress and intonation• Sentence stress is the variation in emphasis or vocal

stress on the syllables of words within a sentence. The meaning of the sentence changes depending on which word in the sentence is stressed.

• For example:

• Mr. sharma gave her dog biscuits.(and not the dog)• Mr. sharma gave her dog biscuits.(and not her)• Mr. sharma gave her dog biscuits.(not anyone else)

• I don’t think you should marry him.(others may think)• I don’t think you should marry him.(anybody else • could marry him)• I don’t think you should marry him.(you could marry• anyone else)

Intonation refers to the rising and falling pitch of the voice when somebody utters a word/ sentence. By learning and adopting an appropriate intonation pattern. You will be able to express your intention very clearly.

For example:

James bond often introduces himself in films by saying, “The name’s Bond. James bond.”

The name’s BOND. JAMES bond.

When bond is said first, it is stressed and when it is repeated, it is not prominent. Instead James is emphasized. Both have a falling tone.

Consider the following questions and response:

What colour is your car? It is RED. DARK red.Both RED and DARK have falling tone.

Voice modulation • Voice modulation pertains to the way we regulate,

vary, or adjust the tone, pitch and volume of the sound or speaking voice.

• Modulation of voice brings flexibility and vitality to your voice and you can express emotion and sentiments such as impatience, careful planning, despondency, suspicion etc, in the best possible way. If you do not pay special attention to the modulation of your voice, then your voice becomes flat and you appear as a languid speaker with no command over your voice.

• Word stress and sentence stress also play an important role in voice modulation. By accentuating particular word or words in a sentence you can effectively bring in modulation in your voice. If you are a novoice in professional presentations, it is better to initially underline the words that you may like to stress during your presentation. This will help you to avoid sounding dull and monotonous.

Neutral accent • In order to make an effective presentation, you need

to acquire a neutral accent. A neutral accent is one that is grammatically correct, and has no regional characteristics or the influence of mother tongue. It is nothing but globally understandable and comprehensible English.

(vi) Tips on

visual/ Power Point

Presentation

It is said that we acquire 85 percent of all our knowledge visually. Therefore, an oral presentation that incorporates visual aids is far more likely to be understood and retained than a mere oral one.Your goal as a speaker/

presenter is to make listeners understand, remember, and act on your ideas. To get them interested and involved, you need to include effective visual aids.

Your slides should provide an aid to the audience as they hear you present your ideas. Slides are not a script that the presenter reads to the audience. Remember that presentation slides only summarize; they do not tell the whole story. That’s the job of the presenter.

Keep the following ideas in mind to help you prepare your visual/ power point presentation effectively

Keep the following points in mind while preparing slides:

Tips for using slides :