Dynamic presentations

Tutorial
Chamika Dahanayake

Activity 1: How to become a good presenter?

Imagine you have to make a presentation for the mid-semester exam. Here are
some advice given by various people. Tick the 5 most important ones that are
needed to become a good presenter and at the end add a few more of your own.

1. Know exactly how to start

2. Get straight to the point
3. Be concise
4. Be enthusiastic
5. Make jokes
6. Speak naturally
7. Dont pause at key points
8. Be yourself
9. Write out everything you have to say and read from notes
10. Let your visuals speak for themselves
11. Never compete with your visuals
12. Dont use colour on your slides
13. Welcome questions from audience
14. Finish strongly
15.

16.

17.
Structure of an effective presentation:

A. PRESENTATION

INTRODUCTION

i. Effective Openings
ii. Purpose

Main body

i. Signposting
ii. Introducing Visuals
iii. Delivery

Conclusion

i. Summary
ii. Invite questions

B. DISCUSSION/QUESTIONS

3.2. MAIN BODY

3.2.1. Signposting

In a good presentation, what you say-the content- is much more important than anything
else. However, a clear structure helps. When you move on to your next point or change
direction, tell the audience.

You can do this easily and effectively using the following phrases as signposts to guide
the audience through your presentation:

to move on to go back to summarize to expand on

to recap to turn to to digress to conclude

B.DISCUSSION/ QUESTIONS
Activity 2

Choose one of the signpost expressions from the above list for the following
situations:

When you want to-

1. make your next point To ..

2. change the direction To

3. refer to an earlier point To

4. repeat the main points To

5. give a wider perspective To

6. do a deeper analysis To

7. give the basics To

8. depart from your plan To

9. finish your talk To

3.2.2. Introducing Visuals

Visuals are important in any professional presentation. Visual information is highly

memorable and reduce the amount of talking you have to do.

When preparing visual aids consider the following:

Will it be visible to all the audience?

Is it clear & simple with a strong visual impact?
Does it add to you presentation?

# Slides should have on average around 10-20.

# Use a reasonable font size

# Use colour on your slides; avoid yellow & orange

# Decide beforehand at which point these slides are best displayed.

Activity 3

Introducing a Sequencing Referring to Changing a Concluding

subject text/visuals topic

i. Finally
ii. After that
iii. As you can see from the graph
iv. Now, turning to
v. Now, lets look at
vi. So, to conclude..
vii. Im going to talk about
viii. First..
ix. The aim of the presentation is to
x. What Id like to talk about is
xi. In conclusion, we can say
xii. The next
xiii. The graph shows