English Presentation

Opening

Clip 1
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for coming along here today. I hope my presentation isn’t going to take too long and that you will find it interesting. The purpose of today’s presentation is to discuss how we can improve internal communications within our company.

Now let me begin by explaining that I’d like to talk about the business case for better communication; secondly, I want to cover different styles and methods; and finally I would like to finish off by talking about some of the basics we need to have in place to deliver good quality, consistent communications across the company. I’d be very happy to invite you to ask questions at the end of the session and I’m sure there’ll be plenty of time for us to discuss some of the points that have been raised.”

Clip 2
“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for finding the time to come and join me for this presentation this afternoon. My name is Tim Mason, I‘m a retail consultant, and many of you will have seen me shadowing you in your jobs and looking through the accounts and so on in the company over the last week. I’ve invited you here today to have a look at my findings. First, I’d like to have a look at the performance of the company, the sales of the company over the last three years; then I’d like to have a look at our market share in the womenswear market and look at our competitors; and thirdly, I’d like to suggest some improvements in our range of womenswear. At the end I’d be happy to answer any of your questions.”

Body

If you look at this first graph, you can see that our sales have increased by 25% in the last year.

As you can see, we have a large percentage of the market share.

We find that good communication is a key factor in improving staff morale.

A good example of the importance of good communication can be seen here

Clip 1
“If you have a look at this first graph, you can see that our sales topped 50 million the year before last. Then last year sales dropped to 40 million, with a slight recovery at the end of the financial year. However, this year sales have continued to drop to an all time low of 30 million. Now let’s look at our market share. As you can see, we have 25% of the market share, 10% down on last year.”

Clip 2
“A good example of how important internal communications are is shown by some findings from research that we have recently undertaken. Good communications is a very key factor in staff motivation. If you look at this slide, you will see how important it is to get the basics in place. You need to identify your communication requirement, agree your objectives and success criteria, identify your target audiences, define the content of your message and determine the style of delivery. A good illustration of the communication process is when all those basics fall into place naturally.”

Questions

Tim:	Ladies and gentlemen, if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them now.
Carrie:	Yeah, can I just ask, graph number 3, that last one you showed us, can you explain to me where you’re intending to find the extra income to increase the designer range in the maternity wear?
Tim:	Yes, a very good question. I’ve looked at the office wear range and it’s quite heavy on material, holiday wear tends to be much lighter, much smaller amounts of material involved and I ...

Tips

Male:	With a presentation, I think the aims and the structure need to be clear.
Male 2:	I like to wait until the end of the presentation before people feed back on what I’ve just said, rather than interruptions throughout the presentation.
Male 3	I think of a presentation … If you’re standing up in front of a group of people, you need to make sure you’re entertaining, make sure you’re engaging, make sure you’re interesting, make sure you’re relevant, make sure you’re talking to the right audience.
Female:	Don’t make it too long, otherwise people fall asleep! Be short, precise and to the point, definitely.

Signposting

Section of presentation	Signpost language
Introducing the topic	The subject/topic of my talk is ... I'm going to talk about ... My topic today is… My talk is concerned with ...
Overview (outline of presentation)	I’m going to divide this talk into four parts. There are a number of points I'd like to make. Basically/ Briefly, I have three things to say. I'd like to begin/start by ... Let's begin/start by ... First of all, I'll... … and then I’ll go on to … Then/ Next ... Finally/ Lastly ...
Finishing a section	That's all I have to say about... We've looked at... So much for...
Starting a new section	Moving on now to … Turning to... Let’s turn now to … The next issue/topic/area I’d like to focus on … I’d like to expand/elaborate on … Now we'll move on to... I'd like now to discuss... Let's look now at...
Analysing a point and giving recommendations	Where does that lead us? Let's consider this in more detail... What does this mean for...? Translated into real terms... Why is this important? The significance of this is...
Giving examples	For example,... A good example of this is... As an illustration,... To give you an example,... To illustrate this point...
Summarising and concluding	To sum up ... To summarise... Right, let's sum up, shall we? Let's summarise briefly what we've looked at... If I can just sum up the main points... Finally, let me remind you of some of the issues we've covered... To conclude... In conclusion ... In short ... So, to remind you of what I’ve covered in this talk, … Unfortunately, I seem to have run out of time, so I’ll conclude very briefly by saying that ….. I'd like now to recap...
Paraphrasing and clarifying	Simply put... In other words....... So what I’m saying is.... To put it more simply.... To put it another way....
Invitation to discuss / ask questions	I’m happy to answer any queries/ questions. Does anyone have any questions or comments? Please feel free to ask questions. If you would like me to elaborate on any point, please ask. Would you like to ask any questions? Any questions?

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/business/talkingbusiness/unit3presentations/1opening.shtml