HELPFUL LANGUAGE MODELS
| Opening | To gain the attention of the audience | Formal: Can I have your attention, please? Let's begin/start/get started/make a start. Informal: Right. OK. Now then… Good. OK. So. Right then. Shall we begin? |
| To greet the audience | Good morning, colleagues. Good morning/afternoon/evening, ladies and gentleman. Hello. | |
| To introduce yourself or to thank the person who introduced you | Let me introduce myself. As you already probably know… My name is… I'm …. of… I represent… I work for….. as….. | |
| To attract attention, to give a smile, to tell a joke, to ask for something, to do something memorable | J ! F | |
| Main body | To define clearly the purpose of your report | I’m going to/I would like to… I am going to speak about... My goal today is to present/to analyze… The goal of my report is to inform/to review/to report… |
| To outline the main points of the report | I’ve divided my report into three parts/sections as follows:… My report will be in three parts… | |
| To inform the audience of the length of the report, what action, if any, is to be taken, the time and the form of questions. | The report will take about 10 minutes. I am going to speak about half an hour. If you have any questions, I will be glad to answer them at the end of my report. If you don’t understand please stop me. | |
| Conclusion | To repeat briefly the main points of the report or give a summary of the main proposal or conclusion | So, … Let us summarize. So, as you could see… |
| To thank people for their attention and invite them to ask questions. | Thank you for your attention/listening to me attentively. Feel free to ask questions./ if you have any questions I’ll be glad to answer them. |
Don’t waste a lot of time at the beginning of your presentation introducing yourself, your organization and the subject of your talk. It is essential to state the purpose of your presentation near the beginning. To do this clearly and effectively you need a few simple presentation verbs:take a look at, report on, give an overview of, etc.
The content is much more important than anything else in a good presentation. And a clear structure will help you. When you move on to your next point or change direction, tell the audience. You can do this easily and effectively using simple verbs as signposts to guide the audience through your presentation (See Table 5):
Table 5
VERBS TO GUIDE THE AUDIENCE
| to move on | to expand on | to digress |
| to go back | to recap | to conclude |
| to summarize | to turn to | to elaborate on |
Remember, the simplest way to signpost the end of one stage of your presentation and the beginning of the next is to say: OK. So, … [1, p.16].